Bill H.’s Post

A color-enhanced image of surface water temperatures shows the Gulf Stream crossing the Atlantic Ocean from the Florida Straits. (Image credit: NOAA/NESDIS) The Gulf Stream is almost certainly weakening, a recent study has confirmed. "The flow of warm water through the Florida Straits has slowed by 4% over the past four decades, with grave implications for the world's climate. The ocean current starts near Florida and threads a belt of warm water along the U.S. East Coast and Canada before crossing the Atlantic to Europe. The heat it transports is essential for maintaining temperate conditions and regulating sea levels. "This is the strongest, most definitive evidence we have of the weakening of this climatically-relevant ocean current," lead-author Christopher Piecuch, a physical oceanographer at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, said in a statement. The Gulf Stream is just a small component of the thermohaline circulation — a global conveyor belt of ocean currents that moves oxygen, nutrients, carbon and heat around the planet, while also helping to control sea levels and hurricane activity. Beginning in Caribbean before flowing out into the Atlantic through the Florida Straits, the Gulf Stream brings warmer southerly waters (which are saltier and denser) northward to cool and sink in the North Atlantic. After dropping deep beneath the ocean and releasing its heat into the atmosphere, the water slowly drifts southward, where it heats up again and the cycle repeats. This process is vital for maintaining temperatures and sea levels across the U.S. East Coast — whose waters are kept up to 5 feet (1.5 meters) lower than water further offshore by the sweeping motion of the current. As Earth’s climate warms, an enormous influx of cold, fresh water from melting ice sheets is spilling into oceans, possibly causing the Gulf Stream to slow or even veer toward outright collapse, according to scientists. But due to the scale and complexity of the system, this is hard to prove." Read more: https://lnkd.in/ekMaQJFe

🌍 Understanding Convection Cells and Prevailing Surface Winds 🌬️ Convection cells and prevailing surface winds are key components of Earth's atmospheric dynamics. Here’s a detailed explanation: 🔄 Convection Cells: - Convection cells are large-scale patterns of air circulation that form due to the uneven heating of Earth’s surface. - There are three main types of convection cells: Hadley, Ferrel, and Polar cells. 🌞 Hadley Cells: - These cells are located between the equator and 30° latitude in both hemispheres. - Warm air rises at the equator, creating low pressure and causing clouds and precipitation. - This air moves towards the poles, cools down, and sinks at around 30° latitude, creating high pressure and dry conditions. 🌍 Ferrel Cells: - Located between 30° and 60° latitude in both hemispheres. - Air flows poleward near the surface and equatorward at higher altitudes, creating a complex pattern of circulation. - These cells act as a transitional zone between the Hadley and Polar cells. ❄️ Polar Cells: - Found between 60° latitude and the poles. - Cold air sinks at the poles, creating high pressure. - This air moves towards the equator, warms up, and rises at around 60° latitude, creating low pressure. 💨 Prevailing Surface Winds: - The movement of air in convection cells generates prevailing surface winds. - These winds are influenced by the Coriolis effect, which causes them to curve due to Earth's rotation. 🌬️ Trade Winds: - Found in the tropics, blowing from the northeast in the Northern Hemisphere and the southeast in the Southern Hemisphere. - These winds converge at the equator, forming the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ). 🍃 Westerlies: - Found in the mid-latitudes, blowing from the southwest in the Northern Hemisphere and the northwest in the Southern Hemisphere. - These winds are responsible for much of the weather in the mid-latitudes. 🌬️ Polar Easterlies: - Found in the polar regions, blowing from the east in both hemispheres. - These cold winds flow away from the high-pressure areas of the poles. 🌎 Impact on Climate and Weather: - Convection cells and prevailing winds play a crucial role in distributing heat and moisture around the planet. - They influence weather patterns, climate zones, and ocean currents. Understanding convection cells and prevailing surface winds helps us comprehend the complex dynamics of Earth's atmosphere and their impact on global weather and climate. Stay curious and keep exploring! 🌟 #Meteorology #ClimateScience #WeatherPatterns #AtmosphericDynamics #EarthScience #LearnAndGrow Follow me 👉🏻Pratham Pathak for more amazing content 💯✈️!!

12 months of record ocean heat has scientists puzzled and concerned The huge temperature anomaly — which climate change alone is unlikely to explain — could be a bad sign for hurricane season. NBC News 3/15/24 “I pray we’re having a once-in-a-lifetime year of hot sea surface temperatures, but I do fear there may be something else going on that is causing a long-term change in sea surface temperatures we hadn’t predicted,” said John Abraham, a professor at the University of St. Thomas who studies ocean temperatures. “All bets are off now, this is something that is so unusual, it’s challenging our past expectations.” If ocean temperatures continue to break records, that could bleach corals, generate more intense and fast-developing hurricanes, drive coastal temperatures up and make extreme precipitation more likely — events scientists already observed in 2023. Temperatures first soared to record levels in mid-March last year. The data used to measure these trends dates back more than 40 years and comes from networks of monitoring buoys and robotic devices designed to help meteorologists make weather forecasts. Abraham suspects the main cause of the trend is climate change, with some natural ocean processes that aren’t well understood playing a role, as well.

Earth's Oceans Continue Yearlong Streak of Heat Records. When the ocean's average surface temperature hit a new record high in March 2023, it set off alarm bells in the scientific community - but few experts predicted that ocean temperatures would keep climbing off the chart. The average sea surface temperature has set a new daily record every day for the past 12 months, and is now beating the records set last March. In the near term, the most immediately visible effect has been coral bleaching - the loss of photosynthetic algae that lives on (and grows) a coral reef. Australia's famed Great Barrier Reef is in the middle of a damaging bleaching event now, and the Florida Keys' corals suffered through historic bleaching conditions last year. The ocean surface temperature is still rising, and climate scientists aren't entirely sure why. Climate change would be an easy explanation, but the pace is much faster than the increases predicted by climate models. The El Nino weather pattern is a major natural driver of average surface temperature, but it is currently fading, and the thermometer is still rising. One possible explanation could be cleaner air. Since the IMO2020 sulfur regulation took effect, ships are emitting far less SOx in their exhaust, meaning that there is less sunlight-absorbing pollution over the trade lanes. A similar phenomenon may be occurring with Saharan dust storms, which usually send vast quantities of particulate matter drifting out over the Atlantic - but are not doing so with the usual intensity. Reduced levels of these pollutants would let more light through to the surface, heating up the ocean. “I’m not hearing any scientists that have a convincing explanation of why it is we’ve got such a departure,” marine geophysicist Rob Larter of the British Antarctic Survey told the New York Times. "The impression at the moment is that things have gone further and faster than we expected." Marine scientists warn that the heat could get worse in 2024, and that could have big implications for the hurricane season. Warm water fuels tropical storms, and the North Atlantic has never been warmer in recorded history. When combined with an expected La Nina weather pattern, which favors hurricane development in the Atlantic, the heat could fuel an "explosive hurricane season," meteorologist Stephanie Abrams of The Weather Channel said last week.

🌧️ Fascinating Read: Discussing the science behind atmospheric rivers and their profound impact on weather patterns, particularly in California. These massive streams of vapor in the sky play a crucial role in shaping our climate and weather events. The recent storms in California highlight the power and unpredictability of these natural phenomena. It's a compelling reminder of the importance of understanding and adapting to our changing climate. 🔗 Read the full article here: https://lnkd.in/gmETvZAs #ClimateChange #EnvironmentalScience #AtmosphericRivers #CaliforniaStorms

What’s an atmospheric river? A pineapple express? AP explains the weather phenomenon This GOES-West GeoColor composite satellite image taken at 5:30 p.m. EST, Wednesday, Jan. 31 2024, and provided by The NOAA: National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), shows a storm moving over California and the Western U.S. (NOAA via AP) This GOES-West GeoColor composite satellite image taken and provided by The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), shows a storm moving over California and the Western U.S. The storm that pummeled California this week was fueled by an atmospheric river, a plume of moisture that extended across the Pacific to near Hawaii. WHAT IS AN ATMOSPHERIC RIVER? Atmospheric rivers are long and relatively narrow bands of water vapor that form over an ocean and flow through the sky, transporting much of the moisture from the tropics to northern latitudes. READ MORE A first responder helps a resident evacuate from a neighborhood after a mudslide, Monday, Feb. 5, 2024, in the Beverly Crest area of Los Angeles. A storm of historic proportions unleashed record levels of rain over parts of Los Angeles on Monday, endangering the city's large homeless population, sending mud and boulders down hillsides dotted with multimillion-dollar homes and knocking out power for more than a million people in California. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez) Less rain forecast but historic Southern California storm still threatens flooding and landslides Vehicles are stranded on a snow covered expressway on the outskirts of Wuhan in central China's Hubei province on late Monday, Feb. 5, 2024. Widespread snowfall and freezing weather continued in central and eastern China disrupting transport and stranding travelers amid the annual Lunar New Year travel rush. (Chinatopix via AP) Thousands of vehicles stuck on highways in China as snow snarls Lunar New Year travel FILE - Residents wade down a street through receding floodwaters, two days after Hurricane Patricia, in the village of Rebalse, Jalisco State, Mexico, Oct. 25, 2015. A handful of powerful tropical storms in the last decade and the prospect of more to come has some experts proposing a new category of hurricanes: Category 6, which would be for storms with wind speeds of 192 miles per hour or more. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell, File) Dial it up to Category 6? As warming stokes storms, some want a bigger hurricane category They occur globally WHAT IS A PINEAPPLE EXPRESS? It is a nickname for a strong atmospheric river in the tropical Pacific near Hawaii. ___ WHERE DID THE TERM ATMOSPHERIC RIVER COME FROM? The name came from research published in the 1990s by scientists Yong Zhu and Reginald E. Newell of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Atmospheric rivers are often referred to as ARs. https://lnkd.in/dHgRVbqd

The Role of Atmospheric Rivers in Shaping Weather in the Pacific Northwest Atmospheric rivers (ARs) are narrow, concentrated bands of moisture in the atmosphere that play a significant role in weather patterns around the world. These “rivers in the sky” transport vast… #Pacific >>> Read more

Wonder why it was so windy over the weekend? Read our recent article to find out why storms are named, what causes extreme storms in the UK, and if climate change will make storms more intense and frequent. https://lnkd.in/e8XE-hbu

What’s an atmospheric river? A pineapple express? AP explains the weather phenomenon This GOES-West GeoColor composite satellite image taken at 5:30 p.m. EST, Wednesday, Jan. 31 2024, and provided by The NOAA: National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), shows a storm moving over California and the Western U.S. (NOAA via AP) This GOES-West GeoColor composite satellite image taken and provided by The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), shows a storm moving over California and the Western U.S. The storm that pummeled California this week was fueled by an atmospheric river, a plume of moisture that extended across the Pacific to near Hawaii. WHAT IS AN ATMOSPHERIC RIVER? Atmospheric rivers are long and relatively narrow bands of water vapor that form over an ocean and flow through the sky, transporting much of the moisture from the tropics to northern latitudes. READ MORE A first responder helps a resident evacuate from a neighborhood after a mudslide, Monday, Feb. 5, 2024, in the Beverly Crest area of Los Angeles. A storm of historic proportions unleashed record levels of rain over parts of Los Angeles on Monday, endangering the city's large homeless population, sending mud and boulders down hillsides dotted with multimillion-dollar homes and knocking out power for more than a million people in California. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez) Less rain forecast but historic Southern California storm still threatens flooding and landslides Vehicles are stranded on a snow covered expressway on the outskirts of Wuhan in central China's Hubei province on late Monday, Feb. 5, 2024. Widespread snowfall and freezing weather continued in central and eastern China disrupting transport and stranding travelers amid the annual Lunar New Year travel rush. (Chinatopix via AP) Thousands of vehicles stuck on highways in China as snow snarls Lunar New Year travel FILE - Residents wade down a street through receding floodwaters, two days after Hurricane Patricia, in the village of Rebalse, Jalisco State, Mexico, Oct. 25, 2015. A handful of powerful tropical storms in the last decade and the prospect of more to come has some experts proposing a new category of hurricanes: Category 6, which would be for storms with wind speeds of 192 miles per hour or more. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell, File) Dial it up to Category 6? As warming stokes storms, some want a bigger hurricane category They occur globally WHAT IS A PINEAPPLE EXPRESS? It is a nickname for a strong atmospheric river in the tropical Pacific near Hawaii. ___ WHERE DID THE TERM ATMOSPHERIC RIVER COME FROM? The name came from research published in the 1990s by scientists Yong Zhu and Reginald E. Newell of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Atmospheric rivers are often referred to as ARs. https://lnkd.in/dki8yF9R