On 11/08/2015 12:43, Martin Brown wrote:
On 11/08/2015 10:35, xmetman wrote:
After listening to Carole Kirkwood talking about what a wet and cold
summer its been over Scotland
this year on this mornings Breakfast Weather, it does seem to me that
as far as the media are concerned
most of today's weather woes in this country today, including this
one can be blamed on the jet stream,
or lack of jet stream, or the position of the jet stream.

They tend to over simplify. Jet stream location and strength is mostly
of interest to commercial airline operators and optical astronomers.

So if the answer to most of the world's climate problems is the
ubiquitous "jet stream", what about its
part in global warming? I haven't seen any research that looks into
the role jet streams play in global warming,
but I'm sure it won't be long before there is a slew of scientific
papers about it.

You could always try feeding suitable terms into a search engine. eg.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...ore-pollution/


Or for the wet summer of 2012 also blamed in part on the jet stream:

http://blog.metoffice.gov.uk/2012/07...limate-change/


If this is true, just what controls the position and strength of the
jet stream, and the answer
to that must be the general atmospheric circulation, but of course
that's not half as catchy,
dynamic or sexy as the phrase "jet stream". I just can't imagine John
Hammond for instance spending
an hour in a BBC Horizon program to explain the intricacies of the
Hadley cell and the northeast trade winds,
when he can talk over a 3D animation and fly through of a North
Atlantic super jet blowing at 250 knots.

I think they *have* done stuff on the trade winds and roaring forties a
lot more often than you give them credit for.

I'm sure that the phrase "jet stream" will be cropping in many
conversations about the weather in the coming years,
you can easily picture one old dear saying to another in a bus queue
"I know Enid the weather has been simply terrible,
and you know it's all down to the orientation of the Jet stream over
Iceland you know".

It might even be true.

It seems that when the jet stream takes to meandering around it can trap
weather in a nearly static configuration over the UK.

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The most genuine answer would probably be a QI response of "Nobody knows" !
Dave