This ridiculous claim made me think of this line:
Sometimes, number one, you just have to bow to the absurd – Jean Luc Picard, Star Trek TNG
From RAW Story and the Tabloid Climatology department:
In a column on Tuesday, environmental blogger Robert Scribbler noted that the Northern Hemisphere Jet Stream had merged with the Southern Hemisphere Jet Stream.
“It’s the very picture of weather weirding due to climate change. Something that would absolutely not happen in a normal world,” he wrote. “Something, that if it continues, basically threatens seasonal integrity.”
“Like many extreme events resulting from human-forced climate change — this co-mingling of upper level airs from one Hemisphere with another is pretty fracking strange,” Scribbler explained. “Historically, the Tropics — which produce the tallest and thickest air mass in the world — have served as a mostly impenetrable barrier to upper level winds moving from one Hemisphere to another. But as the Poles have warmed due to human-forced climate change, the Hemispherical Jet Streams have moved out of the Middle Latitudes more and more. ”
“That’s bad news for seasonality,” he continued. “You get this weather-destabilizing and extreme weather generating mixing of seasons that is all part of a very difficult to deal with ‘Death of Winter’ type scenario.”
University of Ottawa climate scientist Paul Beckwith called the new behavior“unprecedented.”
“Our climate system behaviour continues to behave in new and scary ways that we have never anticipated, or seen before,” Beckwith observed. “Welcome to climate chaos. We must declare a global climate emergency.”
In a YouTube video, Beckwith said that the jet stream behavior signaled “massive hits to the food supply” and “massive geopolitical unrest.”
Umm, the tropics are an “impenetrable barrier”? Riiiight. OK have a look at Beckwith’s deer in the headlights video:
I like the “impenetrable barrier” line…as if everything in the atmosphere is somehow fixed and rigid. It reminds me of the sort of thinking that said we’d never get into the stratosphere. Even in recent times, we have been told that the stratosphere is a “barrier” to the mixing of air.
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/1520-0469(1996)053%3C0905:RWPSAM%3E2.0.CO%3B2
Beckwith Scribbler may have borrowed that “impenetrable barrier” phrase from a recent story about the Van Allen radiation belts.
http://www.sci-news.com/space/science-impenetrable-barrier-earth-02302.html
BTW Paul Beckwith is one of the founders of the Arctic Methane Emergency Group (AMEG) and so when I pointed out that studies have shown no methane emergency, he obviously needed to find a new emergency.
and
Looks like Beckwith has a classic case of Emergency Deprivation Syndrome.
It’s really nothing but:
But, Dr. Roy Spencer really has the last laugh in a story he posted about this yesterday:
“Climate System Scientist” Claims Jet Stream Crossing the Equator is Unprecedented
June 29th, 2016 by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.
Paul Beckwith has a masters degree in laser optics, which he has somehow parlayed into being a “Climate System Scientist” to spread alarmism about the climate system.
But his post “Unprecedented, Jet Stream Crosses Equator” suggests he knows little of meteorology, let alone climate.
A “jet stream” in the usual sense of the word is caused by the thermal wind, which cannot exist at the equator because there is no Coriolis force. To the extent that there is cross-equator flow at jet stream levels, it is usually from air flowing out of deep convective rain systems. That outflow often enters the subtropical jet stream, which is part of the average Hadley Cell circulation.
There is frequently cross-equatorial flow at jet stream altitudes, and that flow can connect up with a subtropical jet stream. But it has always happened, and always will happen, with or without the help of humans. Sometimes the flows connect up with each other and make it look like a larger flow structure is causing the jet stream to flow from one hemisphere to the other, but it’s in no way unprecedented.
We’ve really only known about jet streams since around WWII…one of my professors, Reid Bryson, was one of the first to advise the U.S. military that bombers flying to Japan might encounter strong head winds. The idea that something we have been observing for only several decades on a routine basis (upper tropospheric winds in the tropics) would exhibit “unprecedented” behavior is rather silly.
I especially like this portion of Paul’s post:
“We must declare a global climate emergency. Please consider a donation to support my work..”
Nice touch, Mr. Beckwith.
About 10 minutes after publication this post was updated to correctly attribute a quote to Robert Scribbler, and the “tabloid climatology” graphic was added. – Anthony
UPDATE: Joe Bastardi adds this via email
In 1975 (or 1976) we had a cold front ( from the south) cross the equator. I remember people flipping out about that, the awe of it, not that it was some kind of magical sign of impending doom. In any case that is even more impressive to see a trough from the south push so much to deliver such an event.
Here is the article reference in the journal:
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/1520-0477(1976)057%3C1435%3AASHCFP%3E2.0.CO%3B2
Here is the 1957 version:
http://docs.lib.noaa.gov/rescue/mwr/092/mwr-092-11-0513.pdf
UPDATE2:
The normally pro-AGW Capital Weather Gang calls this claim “utter nonsense”.
Ryan Maue, a senior meteorologist with a doctoral degree who works at WeatherBell Analytics, agreed with Mass that the cross-equator flow is totally normal and not evidence of a joint hemispheric jet stream. “Cross-equatorial flow at both upper and lower levels is part of the seasonal transition of the Western Pacific monsoon through boreal summer,” he said.
To be clear, the hypothesis that global warming is destabilizing the polar jet stream is a legitimate idea that has been published in peer-reviewed journals, though it remains controversial. But even the scientist who developed the hypothesis, Jennifer Francis, a professor of meteorology at Rutgers University, suggested it had been misapplied by Scribbler and Beckwith. “I’d say cross-equator flow cannot be unprecedented, maybe not even all that unusual,” she said.
…
Such information viewed through the lens of a non-specialist may come across as both credible and alarming but damages the reputation of the science when ultimately shown to be flawed.
“This fear-mongering helps no one,” Maue said.
UPDATE3: (7/3/16)
Even Michael Mann says the claim is bunk.
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This is what happens when people who haven’t studied either weather or climate start blogging about weather and climate. They write up sensationalist nonsense. Spencer and Bastardi know about weather and do a good job of debunking this nonsense from non-scientists. Wind flow across the equator happens pretty frequently. It’s weather.
Fire up the jet stream modulator!!!
The phenomenon presented here is climate alarmist weirding.
One eyed crowd correcting the blinds… Thanks for the laugh.
What we have is a global Stupid emergency. The Stupid has built up to unprecedented levels, such that “scientists” will spew any kind of nonsense like Scribbles and Beckwitless have. They just can’t help themselves.
Global Climate Emergency!!!???? I’m afraid my town’s Civil Alert System has fallen into disrepair.
You’ll notice, by studying this graphic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Radiocarbon_bomb_spike.svg, that it takes about 5 years to homogenize the Northern and Southern Hemisphere atmospheres.
I wonder how that happens with that “impenetrable barrier” in-between?
The mother and the fetus also had an “impenetrable barrier” in-between, and then there was diethylstilbestrol (DES)!
Is it just me, or did Beckwith say “el ninyo”?
What should he have said?
A wall along the equator up to the tropopause should nip this problem in the bud. Another reason to vote for Trump.
too far south
“Never cross the streams!”
And don’t pay the ferryman… 😉
The sky is falling! The sky is falling!
At 1.57m in the video Beckwith raises one of those telescopic back scratchers presumably to scrape that naughty Northern jet stream southwards.
No credentials are needed in the game of yelling fire in the theater.
I feel like academic “science” outside the hard fields is falling to pieces.
Not all scientist outputs have collapsed, but they all bath in the noxious ethical failure environnement.
Do we need to “bail out” the ethics of the university? Can we print ethics?
I wonder if the model’s ever do it. I’m thinking not though….
Sinuous Rossby waves appear to be related to low solar activity, according to a number of papers (eg link) and notably Mike Lockwood in reference to the jet stream blocking events occurring during the last solar cycle minimum.
It’s fun we are seeing climate catastropharians try to pin it on CO2 again, just as we’re seeing the solar cycle drop towards the next minimum.
the most astounding part of this post is the claim paul beckwith has a job …… at a university .deary me, this is the same beckwith that claimed the arctic ice was going to disappear in 2013 right ?
do universities on the other side of the atlantic do any background checks on who they employ ?
Another place makes the list of schools to avoid in the college search process.
If I suggested that the solution to this problem is simply to move the equator, would I be thinking outside the box.
We may all have to pay an additional “move the equator” tax.
A “global climate emergency”?
I guess that depends on how many “Hiroshima Bombs” the jets are carrying.
(Of course, I say that in jets..er..jest.)
So it isn’t a Hollywood storyboard?
Yes, Mr. Scribbler, we are screwed, not by the weather, but by the likes of you.
Raw Story has removed the scam report from its site without any apology for its publication.
No, the story is still there.
http://www.rawstory.com/2016/06/unprecedented-scientists-declare-global-climate-emergency-after-jet-stream-crosses-equator/
Darn, all a myth (at leased it mythed us). I truly was hoping that I’d finally get to breathe some of that fine air from the neighborhood of Australia. Look how wonderful THEY are.
Air is heavy. There’s about 14.7 pounds of it above every square inch of the earth’s surface. There’s a whole lot of square inches of the earth’s surface. All that air mass generally moves along with the surface below it. When it doesn’t, we call it ‘wind’. Since the equator is moving along at over 1000 mph, there’s a whole lot of momentum in the moving air at the equator. Whenever that air gets a slight trend to move south, there ain’t nuthin’ at the equator that’s gonna to stop it. (Don’t tell Trump. He might decide to build a wall there.)