NASA image: Rossby Waves of the JetstreamA series of major extreme weather events in the Northern hemisphere including the heatwave in the United States in 2011, the Russian heatwave of 2010, the Pakistani floods of 2010 have now been attributed to a common physical cause. The scientists suggest in a new scientific study that man-made climate change repeatedly disturbs the patterns of atmospheric flow - the atmospheric Rossby waves of the jet stream - around the globe's Northern hemisphere through a subtle resonance mechanism.
"An important part of the global air motion in the mid-latitudes of the Earth normally takes the form of waves wandering around the planet, oscillating between the tropical and the Arctic regions. So when they swing up, these waves suck warm air from the tropics to Europe, Russia, or the US, and when they swing down, they do the same thing with cold air from the Arctic," explains lead author Vladimir Petoukhov.
