
News agencies around the world have taken a whack at explaining how global warming might be behind Europe's and the UK's bitterly cold weather earlier this year, giant floods, horrid droughts, and climate see-saws just about everywhere. The meteorological hypothesis that has gelled around these extremes is (as I understand it) that the north polar region is warming, it has less ice, and as a result the temperature and heat contrast between the Arctic and northern temperate latitudes has gone down. The border between most of us and the hyperboreal world has gone fuzzy. The jet stream that used to trend solidly west to east is now meandering like the Snake River, hauling cold air to the south, warm air back to the north, and getting stuck in big loops that dump ungodly amounts of precip in one place for a while, then shift and leave the same place drying to chalk dust.
So yes of course this general idea has been in the news a lot. But this week, right about the time President Obama was rolling out his climate action plan that got blasted to the back of the news list by a jet stream of Supreme Court rulings, a particularly welcome and clear account went on the wire:
- AP – Seth Borenstein: 94 in Alaska? Weather extremes tied to jet stream ; It's been wobbling and weaving like a drunken driver, weraking havoc as it goes, he explains.
While his quotes are fresh and the prose and structure are strong, this isn't all news. That's fine. It's an arcane sort of topic that will require a lot of retelling to enter the general public conversation when wild weather comes up at the water cooler or in the TV parlor at home. A hazard in circulating it again and again is hinted in this piece, too: The wandering polar jet is a "relatively new phenomenon that scientists are still trying to understand. Some say it's related to global warming; others say it's not." The naysayers are not all, this suggests, in camp with what President Bush referred to by implied analogy as "The Flat Earth Society." By the way, I imagine many tracker readers already heard the irony that said single-issue dingbat society is pretty much on board with global (planal?) warming as societal threat. Borenstein's story is multiply sourced, reasonably nuanced, laced with up-to-date examples, and seems to reflect a decent grasp of the jet stream's underlying atmospheric physics.
While were at it, another AP weather/climate/energy story has come along with fresh news, well told:
- AP – Jonathan Fahey: What Obama's climate change proposal means for consumers and energy companies ; An sector by sector look at what to expect, neatly told. Fahey has covered energy for several years, and joined AP about three years ago. He also (horn tooting time) is a former MIT Knight Science Journalism Fellow.
And finally, two days ago a tracker post reported initial coverage of Barack Obama's speech at Georgetown laying out what he as chief executive plans to do to counter US greenhouse gas emissions and to get the nation more ready for worse times to come. Some say his plan is too flabby to do much. Well, duh, but not as flabby as what happened when the ball was left in Congress's court.
I also asked for suggestions of stories spurred in part by the speech. I'll put these in that post, too, but from reader Stephanie Ogburn came this selection of stories from the mostly-private subscription service E&E Publishing. Ogburn reports for the service's ClimateWire arm.
- Evan Lehmann: Obama makes a moral case to U.S. for combating climate change
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Joel Kirkland, Peter Behr: Obama plan pivots on powerful economic forces behind utility industry
decisions - Hannah Northey, Jason Plautz: Do Republicans need to produce a plan to counter Obama's?
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Stephanie Paige Ogburn: Scientists underscore Obama's concerns about climate change and severe
weather ; from an AGU meeting, mainly, but directly pertinent to Obama's policy talk. It includes a passage on the wavy jetstream that Seth Borenstein went over in this post's top. A cited source makes an interesting point – that even if sea ice melt and other Arctic events right now are wiggling the jet stream, the place is changing so fast it may be an academic question only. By the time persuasive evidence is in place the Arctic might have entered an entirely different weather regime with a new set of climate forcings to puzzle out. -
John McArdle: As Obama advances his climate plan, GOP harks back to cap and trade and sees
political opportunity
The above is generally aimed at a policy and enviro wonky readership, but it is well done and any reporter who covers these things better have a wonky side, too. This package is a tutorial. E&E puts a few of its stories up daily (and leaves them there for a few more days) for general, free reading at its site http://www.eenews.net/ .
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