BuzzFeed, of all places, as a great and simple way that explains why the weather of 2014 has been so extreme. In North America it has been more cold than the new “normal,” the UK has been hit hard by flooding, and in the South Pacific there has been above average rainfall. Crazy people think this is evidence that global warming (AKA climate change) isn’t happening. Those people clearly don’t live in reality. This awful weather is a result of something that’s been predicted for quite some time: the loss of power in the jet stream.
Why is this good news? Well, clearly this anthropogenic climate change isn’t good – but helping people understand what is going on and why is good news. Just look at these cute this climate gifs:
The jet stream is a basically a long tube of fast-moving air, flowing west to east around the globe, several miles up in the atmosphere. There’s actually two parts of the jet stream that matter here – the Asia-Pacific jet stream (where it leaves Asia over Japan) and the North Atlantic jet stream, which runs up from the Americas in the general direction of Europe. Both have a huge influence over our weather – but when it’s operating normally, it generally means we get fairly standard winters.