CO2 is Changing the Jet Stream in Ways that will Create more Harveys
The flooding over Houston has become absolutely devastating, and now it is officially record-breaking. Parts of Southeast Texas have now seen 50 inches of rain since Friday — and the rain is still falling.“The record for total rainfall from a tropical system has been BROKEN!” the National Weather Service tweeted Tuesday morning. The previous record for wettest tropical system in the continental United States was 48 inches. Harvey had already hit 49.20, and the rain was still coming.
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Global Warming Linked To More Extreme Weather And Weaker Jet Stream
“The kind of stalled weather pattern that is drenching Houston is precisely the sort of pattern we expect because of climate change,” climatologist Michael Mann explained in an email to ThinkProgress. Earlier this year, Mann co-authored a study explaining how human-caused warming is changing our atmosphere’s circulation, including the jet stream, in a way that leads to “increase in persistent weather extremes” during the summer.
“I agree with Mike [Mann] that the weak steering currents over the south-central US coincident with Harvey are consistent with our expectations for a warmer world, which of course includes effects of a very warm Arctic,” Jennifer Francis, a climate scientist at Rutgers University, told ThinkProgress.
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