Climate Letter #1786

When I write about the upper atmosphere having a separate wind system there is something that needs clarifying.  There are really three separate and distinct wind systems effective at altitudes of about three miles and higher.  Each hemisphere has its own system, both set up in the same way but greatly differing in the details that result.  The third system is a wide belt that circles the planet around the Equator, roughly corresponding with the tropical zone but a little wider.  Also, this entire system slides back and forth, sideways, in response to the annual reversal in the trend of surface air temperatures.  Winds in this system generally seem to have relatively low speeds except when there is storm activity.  As for their directional pattern, all I can say is that tropical storm systems always seem to be moving from east to west as long as they remain in this wind system. Once they move out of it they are often seen turning more eastward and starting to behave more like ordinary upper-level water vapor streams.

Ordinary water vapor streams, for their part, are a little bit like tropical storms in the way they begin, via the movement of new batches of vapor concentration from a warm and wet surface all the way up to the upper atmosphere. However, they do so in a more gentle way, using updraft winds of moderate speed that are a regular part of oceanic atmospheres. I think vapor streams in general can get started almost anywhere in the tropics having plentiful evaporation, air that is warm enough to produce steady updraft winds, and a clear path to the upper atmosphere without too many clouds in places that could impede their movement.

That thought prompts me to make another point of clarification.  I now bwlieve the streams I write so much about are in fact relative stragglers, junior members of a big family.  They are only born in a few locations spotted along the perimeters of the tropical zone, which is what leaves them in position to be picked up by either one of the hemispheric type of upper-level wind systems.  By contrast their brothers and sisters are born in places closer to the tropical center, and the ones that make it all the way up will find themselves in a wind system where most currents move in the same direction as tropical storm paths, from east to west.  This conclusion is drawn from the interpretation of activity revealed on the animated website of total precipitable water (http://tropic.ssec.wisc.edu/real-time/mtpw2/product.php). The intense activity in the central part may be relevant to climate science but I have no idea of how to describe it.  I do think the straggler streams have plenty of relevance, specifically because of the sizable observed effects their vapor has on surface air temperatures as they move poleward in either of their respective wind systems.

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At this time there are six geographical parts of the tropical perimeters capable of producing vapor streams with regularity that are massive enough to have major effects on temperatures in the far reaches of the planet. Four of the six have oceanic sources while the other two emit their vapor from the rainforests of South America and Africa. The two largest sources exist in waters of the western Pacific, north and south; the next in size comes from a region combining waters of the western North Atlantic, Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico, with a bit more added from the offshore eastern Pacific. Vapors from the Indian Ocean mostly move in streams heading south and tend to be more erratic. Finally if the rainforests keep burning and drying out one may need to consider the possibility of a future reduction of their streams’ warming impact in the Antarctic region. I can only leave that prospect for others to figure out.

Carl

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