Ozone depletion trumps greenhouse gas increase in jet-stream shift

I fail to believe that a small concentration of ozone at altitude can drive the behavior of the Southern jet stream. It is similar to claiming the trace gas CO2 drives anything. There is simply too little gas to do what they claim.

Appreciate how the little density atmosphere at jet stream level is moving all lower tropospheric denser air masses even sometimes from east to west in northern hemisphere if one cares to check on satellite images… And the faster jet streams also get a more convoluted trajectory in winter… Dust drives landslide and if you blow on the dust, landslide will change direction… tail wags dog too/sarc off.

Don’t know about you,but if I lived in the Southern hemisphere,I would be more worried about a NORTHERN shift in the jet stream.

Uh… the reason there’s an ozone “hole” over the south pole is because its the south pole

Look folks, there’s holes at both poles. If you don’t believe me just take any globe out of its stand and have a look.

There is nothing in the work that tells us that ozone depletion causes the change rather than the change causes ozone depletion that I can see. Any correlation does not tell us the first thing about which is the cause and which the effect. They taught us that at thirteen in my day but no climate scientist seems to be aware of this any more. When climate scientists were told in 2002 that the effects were zonal not global they rewarded their peers by removing them from the professions by a total removal of all grants. My lack of faith in climate science has reached a new low from a base line I thought could sink no lower.

“Climate models are usually run for many years; they don’t look at the day-to-day weather,” said Feldstein. “But we learned that the four wind patterns fluctuate over about 10 days, so they change on a time scale that is similar to daily weather. ”
Who’ld have thunk it??????????????
And someone needed a grant t come up with that?? Who doles out the grants in America??

“Understanding the differences between these two forcings is important in predicting ……who will get the most funding…..”
I have to agree with some of the posters here. My belief in the ability of “climate scientists” like these is approaching zero. I now greet almost every one of these sort of papers with a snort of derision from the outset.
This is not good.

Yeah, right.?
Modelled or from empirical measurement?

Brent Walker says:
January 31, 2013 at 6:56 pm
The Extreme and Far UV emissions provide the energy to create Ozone in the upper stratosphere, mesosphere and lower thermosphere and the various nitrogen oxides in those locations. Over time the more EUV and FUV emissions there are the greater the depth of the Ozone column. The more Ozone there is the more the jet streams move to the poles and the less depth to the Rossby waves (loopiness of the jet stream). What we are seeing at present is a long term reduction of about 40% in the EUV and FUV emissions and a reduction in Ozone resulting even in a hole in the Ozone layer in the last two Northern Hemisphere springs. So the jet streams are migrating towards the equator and the Rossby waves are getting deeper.
If you look at today’s map of the jets streams in both the Northern and Southern hemisphere you will see the jet stream that in the summer normally crosses Australia either just below the continent or at least across Melbourne is currently crossing NSW and Southern Queensland. Also the lower polar jet stream is rising almost from Antarctica to partially link up with the jet stream crossing the continent before diving to below the South Island of New Zealand – in other words a rather extreme loop but one which has caused weather forecasters to suggest there may be some summer snow on the alps in northern Victoria and some rather wild weather in NSW. Also there are parts of the Northern Hemisphere jet stream that appear to have crossed the equator into the Southern Hemisphere in the Pacific. You have to look at both the northern and southern hemisphere jet stream maps to see this.
How the Ozone layer affects the jet streams is not fully understood. But planetary waves and gravity waves are thought to play a part. But it may be as simple as the lower Ozone levels allow more infra-red heat to radiate from Earth into space. This means less is being trapped in the stratosphere and these slightly lower temperatures in the stratosphere then cause a general shift in the jet streams toward the equator where the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere are warmer.
Until recently climate scientists were blaming increasing levels of atmospheric CO2 for causing the gradual migration of jet streams towards the poles in the last three decades of the 20th Century. Given that atmospheric levels of CO2 are still increasing and the jet streams are now moving towards the equator they have had to revise their theories. Also there is no talk of CFC’s affecting the Ozone layer this time. That 1970′s scare was mostly furphy given that the solar cycle at that time was fairly weak.
The answer of course to the question of “How does the ozone hole affect the Jetstream?” is that it doesn’t. The ozone hole is another indication of weak UV and EUV.
As Pamela Gray says:
January 31, 2013 at 7:11 pm
Between the two potential chicken and egg systems, the jet stream affecting oceans, or oceans affecting jet streams, I look at stored energy available. Me thinks the relatively dense sloppy slurpy stuff called water (and there are how many tons of it?) has far more energy available to affect jet stream position and loops (how dense and energy absorbent is that made-of-air ribbon thingy anyway?) than the jet streams have on oceans. I have no Ph.D. after my name, no meteorology course under my belt, yet I can figure that the oceans have my vote. Once again, who the hell let this person do research???? And on my &^%$* dime!
The place on the Earth where there is the most energy is the equatorial regions between the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn as they are receiving direct insolation all year from the Sun. The hot SSTs lead to towering convective storms up to 12 miles or more in the atmosphere lifting the tropopause to 60,000 – 70,000 ft . These are the updrafts of the Hadley cells when the Sun’s energy especially, in the short wave frequencies, is high then the light penetrates deep into the oceans heating them. As the sea surface temperatures increase the convection increases. The Hadley cells grow and push the Ferrel cells the temperate convective bands poleward causing the Jetstreams to become latiduninal and reducing the depth of the Rossby waves. At the same time the increase in the EUV/UV increases the amount of ozone being formed in the upper atmosphere reducing the size of the ozone holes at the poles. When the EUV/UV reduces then the Hadley cells reduce the Ferrel cells move equatorward and the jetstreams become loopy with large Rossby waves making them more meridonal.
The ozone level and the Jetstream meridonality are effects of the same cause – the lowered level of EUV / UV short wave radiation from the Sun.
We then see the knock on effects of that in the formation of blocking (omega) highs due to the ocean temperatures in the North Atlantic and Rossby waves in the Jetstream. These blocked Rossby waves lead to areas that are having dry polar air drawn equatorward or wet tropical air drawn poleward resulting in areas of continual rain and storms and areas of continual drought. The increased length of the meridonal Jetstream increases the amount of cloud formation in the frontal systems as their track is longer leading to higher albedo and cooler SSTs. This is just the pattern that can be seen at the moment. It is probable that the same pattern with blocking highs as last year will pertain and in the northern hemisphere the areas that had drought in the mid-west will have more drought and the areas that had lots of rain such as NW Europe. will continue to receive lots of rain Similarly the rather bad weather in the southern hemisphere will repeat although due to the lack of land masses and mountains they tend not to get the same blocking highs but rather unseasonable and extreme weather as loops in the Jetstream pass them.

“Not only are the results of this paper important for better understanding climate change, but this paper is also important because it uses a new approach to try to better understand climate change; it uses observational data on a short time scale to try to look at cause and effect, which is something that is rarely done in climate research,” said Feldstein. “Also, our results are consistent with climate models, so this paper provides support that climate models are performing well at simulating the atmospheric response to ozone and greenhouse gases.”
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“Use observational data on a short time scale”
Since “looking for cause and effect on short time scales” is not a new approach to their scientific method, I’d have to say the new approach must be “using observational data” to “better understand climate change”.
I wonder if the observational data was from the models?
Dummies…and here you thought the science was settled.
While these brilliant scientists on their own figured out another “new approach to better understand climate change.”
Thank goodness someone is finally looking at short time scales.
One other note they mention: “changes in the Southern Hemisphere jet stream.”
I thought the SH temp and snow were doing ok.
cn