Name: The Arctic Jet Stream Affects Global Climate. Here's Why.
Uploaded: undefined
Duration: undefined

NOVA

A team of scientists explore the skies to learn how the Arctic atmosphere can have global implications.

The jet stream is a band of wind that influences weather in the northern hemisphere.

The Arctic Jet Stream Affects Global Climate. Here's Why.

Arctic Jet Stream Affects Global Climate. Here's Why.

Carlisle Companies

Viking

NOVA Science Trust Logo

A team of scientists explore the skies to learn how the Arctic atmosphere can have global implications.

The jet stream is a band of wind that influences weather in the northern hemisphere.

Planet Earth

The Arctic Jet Stream Affects Global Climate. Here's Why.Published: October 13, 2021Narrator: With just over two weeks between first sunrise and 24-hour daylight, every day there’s more opportunity for one team to take to the skies.John Cassano: Let’s do this.Gina Jozef: Let’s do it.Three, two, one, go. Hell, yeah.Wooo!John Cassano: Way to go, team drone.Gina Jozef: We did it. Wooo! First flight: success.John Cassano: The plane will spiral up, from near the surface, to a thousand meters, and we’re measuring the state of the atmosphere. So, that’s the temperature, pressure, humidity and wind.It’s flying really well. I am so happy.Narrator: And right away, there are exciting findings.John Cassano: The first flight we did had this real sharp temperature inversion, where the temperature increases with height. It’s the opposite of what we normally see, where we live.Narrator: This phenomenon, characteristic of the poles, is caused by the icy surface cooling the air just above it.Along with these crucial surface winds, there are other polar winds, much higher, that have a powerful effect on the climate, far beyond the Arctic.The jet stream is a band of high-altitude wind that whistles around our planet at over a hundred miles an hour, influencing much of the weather in the Northern Hemisphere. It’s driven by the temperature difference between the warm equator and cold Arctic.Many scientists think the faster warming Arctic may be weakening the jet stream, causing it to become unstable. It’s a controversial theory, but if true, it could have catastrophic results.John Cassano: Cold air is able to escape out of the Arctic and cover parts of Europe or North America and give us really cold winter weather. Or if the jet stream pushes very far north and then you get these intrusions of warm air up into the Arctic.Narrator: The weaker jet stream might also be causing weather patterns to get stuck over the same area for longer, prolonging droughts and floods.John Cassano: It impacts everything we do. It impacts farmers and where they can grow crops, where rain falls, how often droughts occur, how often heatwaves occur, how often blizzards occur, I mean, all of the weather that we experience.Narrator: In addition to altering weather patterns in the Northern Hemisphere, the warming Arctic is also speeding up global warming, which will affect weather everywhere. And as ice on land also melts faster, it accelerates global sea level rise. What happens in the Arctic affects us all.

United States

Northern Mariana Islands

Puerto Rico

American Samoa

Guam

U.S. Virgin Islands

U.S. Minor Outlying Islands

US & Territories

Colossal explosions shake a remote corner of the Siberian tundra, leaving behind massive craters. In Alaska, a huge lake erupts with bubbles of inflammable gas. Scientists are discovering that these mystifying phenomena add up to a ticking time bomb, as long-frozen permafrost melts and releases vast amounts of methane, a potent greenhouse gas. What are the implications of these dramatic developments in the Arctic? Scientists and local communities alike are struggling to grasp the scale of the methane threat and what it means for our climate future. (Premiered February 2, 2022)

In the Arctic, enormous releases of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, threaten the climate.

Arctic Sinkholes

The top half of Jupiter in blue and green against a night sky

A composite image of Jupiter using images captured by the James Webb Space Telescope. Image Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, Jupiter ERS Team; image processing by Judy Schmidt.

Explore the cosmos, delve into ancient history, and follow an extreme rescue with NOVA’s most-watched documentaries released in 2022.

NOVA’s most popular science documentaries of 2022

Four bright orange loops brand off of a dark blue blob

A transmission electron micrograph of HIV-1 virus particles (orange) replicating from the plasma membrane of an infected H9 T cell. Credit: NIAID, Flickr

Scientists have cured a handful of people of HIV by piggybacking on treatments they received for blood cancer. But does that bring a widespread cure any closer?

The Arctic Jet Stream Affects Global Climate. Here's Why.

Support Provided By

Explore More

Arctic Drift

Think You Know the Polar Vortex? Think Again.

How polar bear guards protect the largest Arctic expedition ever

Transcript

Credits

Support Provided By

Explore More

Arctic Drift

Think You Know the Polar Vortex? Think Again.

How polar bear guards protect the largest Arctic expedition ever