I’ve been watching the various metoffice weather reports of the two major storms that collided with the UK in past two weeks.
Storm Dennis and Ciara came from the west across Atlantic Ocean bringing in lots of high winds containing high levels of moisture that caused intensive and sustain rain with wide spread flooding.
I thought about how the physics of storms arises during the winter and what’s causing extended periods of continuous stormy weather over the eastern North Atlantic.
The man who owns Space X and Tesla motor cars Elon Musk always likes to work on First Principlesthinking when looking at complex business problems.
What is theFirst Principle way of thinking? It’s looking at a problem and breaking it down into small foundational parts.
Weather systems are driven by the atmosphere the planet constantly circulates around the sun giving us the seasons. This is due to the earth axis tilting at 23.5 degrees. In the winter when we get are stormy weather the northern hemisphere is tilt away from the sun.
In coming sun’s energy is dispersed around the globe through the oceans and the atmosphere some is reflected back out to space.
The lower frequency radiation at infrared spectrum is reflected back down to earth by the green house gases such as carbon dioxide, methane, water vapour and ozone, plus other trace gases.
One of the other main drivers of weather systems is the jet streams that circulate the earth above the troposphere. Modern jets fly in the lower regions of the stratosphere hence the name jet Stream.
The Polar vortex circulates around the arctic usually during the winter time it strengthens. However, with global warming heating up the Arctic Ocean the quickest In global terms it’s having a direct effect on the polar vortex.
The polar jet stream or vortex has been meandering into waves and even breaking up into whirlpool type eddies. What this does cause is blocking weather systems bringing constant low pressure systems inundated with moisture.
Scientists now have evidence that these persistent extreme weather patterns are increasing in their frequency, due to the rapid heating of the Arctic that is changing the behaviour of the jet stream. Here is talk by Professor Jennifer Francis arctic climate scientist
Unfortunately global heating has many feedback loops which become detrimental to stable climate weather systems. Interesting talk by another polar climate scientist. Here’s a talk at TED x from Dr David Barber an arctic climate scientist with over 30 years of working in the Arctic Ocean.
Let’s look at the recent met office forecast for the two storms the collided with the UK and caused such catastrophic flooding recently..
The causes of flooding is really to do with amount of moisture due to warm air and fast flowing storm conditions short video of type of flooding:
Storm Ciara and storm Dennis followed within weeks of each other causing significant damage to both infrastructure and water damage to homes and businesses in the UK
What are we to do about this growing climate crisis? We definitely need to adapt that’s means a paradigm shift In the way with live and work.
That means living with nature and replicating its power. We’ll have to quickly learn to do things in new and novel ways. Here’s another TED by Dr Stewart Whitman a professional planner, designer and educator.
So we’ve got to move away from grey infrastructures and build green infrastructures to cope with the new climate situation no more building towns next to rivers or low lying water catchment arrears such as the Somerset levels. We have re wild bringing back species such as beavers to build natural water course dams.
But we could go step further and completely change our landscapes and re wild. Here’s another TED talk by professor Theunis Piersma how Technology won’t save us but how we can live in much more ecological way.