Originally Posted by
1066
LB Excellent thread. Thanks for all your knowledge and memories. I've praised the MMU;s elsewhere for their service to the early Airbridge crews in the S Atlantic.
If its not too much of a thread drift I'd love to hear your thoughts on when our TV forecasts started referring to the jet stream as the reason for our weather patterns in the UK.
At Oakington in 1968 us multi engine types who were going to fly all over the world were taught that, in the Northern Hemisphere the jet stream was located as a consequence of the surface fronts.
Up the back of the cold front, over the top of the depression and down in front of the warm front. By the 1990s, by now with BA, I was night stopping on US east coast 4 or 5 times a month and the TV forecasts there were always talking about the jet stream indicating that the jet drove the position of the surface fronts. Much the same as TV forecasts do here now. A case of chicken and egg?
Love to hear your thoughts on this.
1066
Big question. Both explanations are simplistic, they are "models" to aid understanding. Consider the earth/ oceans/ ice caps and rotation of the earth as a dynamic system. There are usually 4 or 5 massive upper-air wave peaks and troughs girdling the N hemisphere, and they tend to drift eastwards with development happening as well as movement. Sometimes the stately "long waves" get stuck, sometimes they reduce to 3, sometimes the tops or bottoms cut off, sometimes the contrasts driving them weaken, sometimes strengthen.
I don't think that answers the point but the weather we experience is a consequence of dynamic interactions of heating/ cooling from below, friction, turbulence, sea temperature discontinuities ........... I could go on. And then the fiendish consequences of H2O existing in three phases with heat exchanges as it changes state.
I used to be indecisive but now I'm not so sure.