The main purpose of this ongoing blog will be to track United States extreme or record temperatures related to climate change. Any reports I see of ETs will be listed below the main topic of the day. I’ll refer to extreme or record temperatures as ETs (not extraterrestrials).😉
Main Topic: The Combination Of A Climate Changed Jet Stream And La Niña Is Leading To Extreme Weather This Week
Dear Diary. It’s becoming more and more painfully obvious that our warming world is changing our weather and not in a good way. Across the United States we see extreme examples of how weather can be affected by climate change this week. From west to east today we have terrible fire weather in California, record cold in the Rockies, Winter Storm Billy producing rare October ice storm for much of the Southern Plains, and Hurricane Zeta brewing in a warmer than average Gulf of Mexico that has a date with New Orleans tomorrow.
Record cold you ask in association with global warming? Why yes if we consider our affected, changing jet stream:
Let’s look at our Tuesday jet stream pattern across the Northern Hemisphere:
This is definitely not the he hemispheric 500 millibar pattern I was used to looking at and forecasting from during the 1980s and 1990s. The cold pocket that is responsible for funneling record cold from the north pole into the Rockies has been squeezed by surrounding warmth all the way south into Arizona. We see another cold pocket on the other side of the planet approaching China. There are many other warm and cold perturbations all across the hemisphere, which are a symptom of a weakened, amplified jet stream affected by climate change. Others have noted weather affected by these changes:
It’s amazing to me that meteorologists are covering a southern Plains winter storm and a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico simultaneously, but that is indeed the case this week:
Now let’s add La Niña to the mix and we can get more extremes, even in a world before the effects of global warming became plain:
Here are more frigid “ET” reports from Tuesday:
Well, obviously this week there will be a well above average number of important messages related to deadly weather. Let’s compartmentalize these for today starting with messages concerning Zeta, then the California fires, etc.
The latest messages, as usual, will be at the top of all lists:
First Zeta:
Second, “Billy” the ice storm:
Third, the tender dry, fiery, windy West:
Here is more climate and weather news from Tuesday:
(As usual, this will be a fluid post in which more information gets added during the day as it crosses my radar, crediting all who have put it on-line. Items will be archived on this site for posterity. In most instances click on the pictures of each tweet to see each article. The most noteworthy items will be listed first.)
Now here are some of today’s articles and notes on the horrid COVID-19 pandemic:
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Guy Walton “The Climate Guy”