Storms especially violent storms are natures power in all its unmitigated glory!
Noisy, forceful, energetic, destructive and life threatening. Where does all this invisible energy come from? Which can’t be seen like electricity but certainly can be heard and felt.
I would like to try and take you on a journey not journey of the small but the large because it’s from the large that we get these unimaginable forces of nature.
Lets start at the beginning of out journey of discovery. I’m going to use of series of short YouTube videos for this journey. A ”Picture” worth a thousand words.
I’ve always been one for the big picture the large or macro events, I like to stand back and think now what’s really going on here? “What produces an event be it human or be natural”.
As an ocean sailor I have to try understand the power of nature. Why? Because sailing oceans in small boat can be a dangerous affair if you don’t understand the forces you are ultimately dealing with. But I also realise that’s part of the adventure of sailing it’s partially the unknown element that makes you realise how small and insignificant I am. Back to the story of storms.
Once there was blackness in the void of nothing! Suddenly and with out warning something came into existence with unbelievable force and energy?
How can something be produced from nothing you might ask? As yet physicists haven’t been able to come with up with a definitive answer all we know is our universe came into existent 13 billion years ago was it big bang or a bounce or to do with string theory what ever it was produce gases that went on to Coalesced over time to produce galaxies, stars and planets.
Any cloudless night when look up into the sky you see thousands of thousands of stars twinkling away an awe inspiring sight. To think all of these stars were produced by gases coalescing together to produce these stars in the sky. Maybe you’ve wondered why solar systems and galaxies spiral 🌀 and why the whole universe is in motion?
Everything in the universe is in rotation which is caused through angular momentum. Technical definition; In physics,angular momentum (rarely, moment of momentum or rotational momentum) is the rotational analog of liner momentum.
It is an important quantity in physics because it is a conserved quantity—the total angular momentum of a closed system remains constant. Angular momentum has both a direction and a magnitude, and both are conserved.
Motorcycles frisbees and rifle bullets all owe their useful properties to conservation of angular momentum. Conservation of angular momentum is also why hurricanes have spirals and neutron stars have high rotational rates. In general, conservation limits the possible motion of a system but does not uniquely determine it.
The largest storms by far in our solar system are on Jupiter one of the largest gas planets in our solar system. Jupiter made mainly of hydrogen hence the blue colour of the planet. But when you look at Jupiter you can see rotational vortices circling around the planet. These storm systems are huge.
Planet earth which spins and rotates around our solar ball of Hydrogen and helium the sun. Earth rotates from west to east anti-clockwise. Earth has 23% tilt hence the seasons we live through winter, spring, summer and autumn.
In the northern hemisphere the earth titles towards the sun and in the winter titles away from the sun.
Lets look at the mechanics of the weather systems how the rotation of the air creates the dynamics of wind, storms and tropical cyclones. The earth doesn’t get hot equally around the planet the suns powerful energy is maximised at the equator and the oceans and the atmosphere are constantly in motion transferring heat away from the equator to northern cooler latitude.
This is the planets heat exchanger (device for transferring heat from one medium to another ). Powerful circulatory system in and the oceans and the surrounding atmosphere. Which in fact is gas ocean working on a similar principle to the liquid oceans. Warm water and warm air circulate away from the equator towards northern latitudes and southern latitudes. Cold air and water circulates in the opposite direction away from Arctic and Antarctic.
We really have to look at the mechanics of atmospheric circulations patterns which are fairly complicated to understand but do have a pronounced effect on weather systems, especially in the northern hemisphere during the winter. When Earth titles away from sun between the equinoxes between September and March in the northern hemisphere. Here are series of short YouTube videos mainly from the metoffice explaining the global circulation, Hadley cells and the Coriolis effect.
Jet streams are a critical part of weather systems and climate change or the loss of multi year ice is increasing the severity of low pressure systems following the weaker meandering jet stream.
Reason why we are having more sustained much longer periods of violent winds and storms really comes down to Arctic amplification.
With the planet oceans and atmosphere slowly heating up the Arctic is melting the multi year ice which is in decline with warmer Arctic. . This is creating a much weaker jet stream which slows it down and it meanders to mid latitudes. They called Rossby waves.
Earths ocean and gaseous atmosphere is a complex system on a rotating planet. The scientific know how of how complex system react is amazing especially how we monitor all aspects of circulation from both space, land and the oceans.
The Met Office Hadley Centre is one of the UK’s foremost climate change research centres in the world. There weather forecasts are absolutely fantastic. We can thank Admiral Fitzroy for that 150 years ago with weather forecasting.
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/climate/met-office-hadley-centre/index
Strangely similar to what I was talking about in my previous post with financial markets. These blocking jet stream Rossby waves slow down the jet stream and produce intense low pressure systems such as jet sting wave form or Weather bomb.
Remember we humans with our high energy lifestyle are emitting carbon into the atmosphere at unprecedented rates. No I’m sorry we haven’t got to grips with this problem. For me what we are undertaking is an experiment with the climatic conditions on earth which unfortunately may not be reversible.
We are going have to live with more violent weather conditions be they violent storms, floods, droughts and heat waves. My fear is that this is far more serious implications than any of care to realise or comprehend?
I recorded the major pressure drop during storm Eunice to 965mb on Friday just before it struck Conwy with high winds and violent gusts.