High Temperature UK Wednesday 24/7/19

I was watching the U.K. Met office forecast especially on temperatures and July’s temperature records are and will be broken as the hottest temperature in July on record ever!

That’s quite a sobering situation as the whole of Europe is experiencing extremely high record temperatures.

Along the Russian arctic coast the temperatures have been as high as 90 degrees Fahrenheit. What’s causing these high temperatures?

The jet stream in our polar regions are fast flowing air streams near the altitude of the tropopause. They flow from west to east. Tropopause is the boundary between the troposphere and the stratosphere. Lies about 9 miles above the surface of the polar region.

Due to the arctic warming it directly effects the jet stream and it slows it down and breaks it up and it meanders much further south. Warm equatorial air masses such as maritime and continental ( ocean & land ) get blocked and the normal cycle of warm air cooling and sinking down over the arctic virtually stops. The warm air gets trapped and the temperature increases over large land masses such as Europe.

This is real problem with the arctic sea ice melting which directly effects the jet stream and the normal airstream circulation that cools the equatorial air masses down coming up from the south. It’s quite technical subject but professor Paul Beckworth has a 15 minute video explaining how air masses are circulated around the earth, worth a watch. He’s a little geeky but really knows his subject.

Climate change is a real problem that is happening here and now. U.K. having 35 degree Celsius temperatures isn’t at all normal. I’m typing this on my boat Barada and the sweat running down my face and off my nose.

Just imagine how things will get for us if temperatures started rising during the summer months to as high as 50 degree Celsius. Phew that would be awful, I’d be sailing north to the arctic each summer to keep cool!

Scary prospect s few years ago when I was working in Saudi Arabia at Yenbo on the Red Sea. I was working outside in 40 degrees Celsius. I had to get overhead cover as I was welding a large container handling machine. You couldn’t work under direct sunlight it would of mean’t going down with heat exhaustion. Which I once had as a young soldier. Not nice as it has the potential to kill you, as your bodies thermal control system gets out of equlibrium.

Climate change is something we have to get to grips with ASAP! 

UK Met Office Explanation about the jet Stream.

Paul Beckworth Earths Atmospheric Circulation Patterns