The Week That Was: 2021-07-10(July10, 2021)
Brought to You by SEPP (
www.SEPP.org)The Science and Environmental Policy
Project Quote of the Week:“It Ain’tWhat You Don’t Know That Gets You Into Trouble. It’s What You Know for Sure That Just Ain’t So.”–Attributed to Mark Twain Number of the Week:–1,000 Times
THIS WEEK:By Ken Haapala, President, Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP)Heatwave:The extreme heatwave of the US northwest and Canadian southwest is over. Carbon dioxide levels remain about the same, the greenhouse effect remains about the same, but the temperatures are back to normal with cooling sea breezes returning along the coast. So, what was the cause?US northwest veteran meteorologists Chuck Wiese and Cliff Mass address the issue differently but similarly. Any influence from greenhouse gases was too small to be significant and the heatwave was similar to heatwaves of the past under the intense June sun. The natural flow of a high-pressure system slows when the jet stream moves in north-south directions rather than the usual west to east direction. As stated in last week’s TWTW, the jet stream is guided by naturally occurring Rossby Waves. Journalist Stu Cyrk published the technical explanation by Chuck Wiese which includes calculations.Wiese recognized past heatwave records in the Portland area and was initially skeptical of forecasts of the records being broken by numerical weather models because the models are frequently wrong.
https://www.sepp.org/twtwfiles/2021/TWTW%207-10-21.pdf
