The world’s on fire
Blame a kink in the jet stream, climate
Those sweltering, swimming or choking on wildfire smoke in the Northern Hemisphere can blame it on the jet stream.
Kinked, buckled, stuck or stalled, it doesn’t matter how you describe it, the ribbon of wind that circles the Earth is doing strange things and the calamity list includes wildfires across Scandinavia, Greece and California, record heat in Texas, Japan and Africa and flooding rains along the East Coast that could last another week.
‘‘We are seeing some extreme jet-stream behaviour, where the jet stream is contorting into these extreme loops both sharply towards the poles with ridges of high pressure and dips to the equator with troughs of low pressure,’’ said Jeff Masters, cofounder of Weather Underground in Ann Arbor, Michigan. ‘‘The extreme configuration is getting stuck in place which means that places are getting long periods of extreme weather.’’
Globally, at least 170 people have died in fires, floods and heat on three continents. Electric markets around the world – and the coal and natural gas that generate the power – have spiked as days of high temperatures through Asia, North America and Europe continue to mount and weary residents turn to air conditioning to keep their misery at bay.
Temperature records were shattered in Japan when readings reached 41 Celsius; Waco, Texas, hit an all-time high of 45.5 C; and Finnish Lapland touched a new mark.
The situation in Scandinavia has been ‘‘pretty mind boggling,’’ with the Baltic Sea water rising to 15 degrees (8.3C) above average and Lapland north of the Arctic Circle reaching the 30s, Masters said.
‘‘That is really eye catching sort of heat.’’
Earlier in July, Ouargla, Algeria hit 51.2 C, which is the highest temperature recorded in Africa, said Kevin Trenberth, distinguished senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. California and the US Southwest have also had a string of temperatures at or near 48.8 this July.
‘‘In very arid conditions, those sort of things are possible and we are seeing more of them in different places around the world,’’ Trenberth said.
Science will need time to study if this extra-hot summer is because of climate change or bad luck for those baking, soaking and choking, but this is what global warming would look like. The exact cause of why the blocking in the atmosphere got going this July might require a bit of study too, said Greg Carbin, branch chief at the US Weather Prediction Centre in College Park, Maryland.
‘‘Everything is backed up,’’ Carbin said.
‘‘And it is global.’’
High on Carbin’s list of potential suspects, but not the only possible perpetrator, is a large high-pressure system lazily spinning clockwise in the western Atlantic Ocean, dominating the basin, and leaving weather patterns backed up like cars stuck in rush hour traffic.
Climate scientists say they have high confidence that human-driven warming is a part of the heatwaves, simply because the composition of the atmosphere has changed so dramatically in the last generation or two.