Do you know what your jet stream is doing tonight?

                                           The jet stream actually doesn't look like that

Do you ever wonder what the jet stream is doing while you're not looking?  

Sure, you occasionally see maps that show the jet stream shooting across the United States, usually when the weather channel is trying to explain why the weather is so unusually hot or so unusually cold.  The jet stream is always portrayed as a thin, continuous and sinuous band of high speed winds snaking its way around the planet.   You can also see the same kinds of diagrams in many geography and science textbooks.

But thats all wrong.  The jet stream actually isn't like that at all.   Global Warming is changing the jet stream to something quite different. 

You don't believe me---then why not see the jet stream for yourself?   Real-time meteorologic data from around the world can now be accessed from data feeds provided by NOAA and other agencies around the world who collect meteorological data.   This is the same data that is used by the US Weather Service and various weather sites like Weather Underground when they make weather predictions.  

One of the best places to see the jet stream is at a site called Earth: An Animated Display of Global Wind, Weather and Ocean Conditions.   Click through on the link I've provided and it will take you to a real-time display of the jet stream.  Click around on this web site and you can access a lot of other interesting real-time meteorologic data as well.

Global Warming is changing the way the jet stream behaves and the way it operates.  The amplitude of the waveforms in the jet stream are becoming bigger and the wavelengths are becoming smaller so it is becoming more and more sinuous.  This allows warmer temperatures to penetrate far into the north, and is partly responsible for the melting of the Arctic Ocean sea ice.  Some climatologists also think the changes in the shape of the jet stream are causing more extreme weather events in temperate latitudes----such as more severe droughts and extreme heat events in the summer and more intense cold outbreaks of cold polar air in the winter.  The realization that global warming caused by CO2 building up in the atmosphere is changing the shape of the jet stream helps explain why we are seeing more of both extreme warm AND extreme cold weather events.

But you don't have to believe me that global warming is changing the shape of the jet stream.  Now you can see the jet stream for yourself.