Jetstream winds have a tremendous amount of influence on the movement of any precipitable water (PW) concentrations that have entered the upper part of the troposphere. According to a new theory about the sources of global temperature change, which we might as well identify either as Carl’s theory or the Campbell theory unless someone else has worked out all the details, PW movement in the upper troposphere has a tremendous amount of influence on air temperatures at the surface below through its extraordinary powers of exercise of the greenhouse energy effect. We therefore want to gain as much knowledge as possible relevant to the full scope of jetstream behavior and its mode of influence. I keep looking for new and better ways to describe these things, and have a few more thoughts to bring forward today. As usual, Today’s Weather Maps, when properly collated and interpreted, are the primary source of information.
Lately I have been seeing a need to add one more major pathway of the circumpolar type to the other three that I normally talk about, and today I want to confirm my own full acceptance of its existence. I have also made some adjustments with respect to the positioning of the other three pathways and how they all interact depending on intermittent states of proximity with one another. Air pressure configuration in the upper troposphere remains unchallenged in its power to govern every detail of jetstream activity, and must thus be constantly referred to. This map will get us started:
Notice how the red zone is divided. The darker red portion, mostly between 30N and about 28S, must cover more than one-third of Earth’s surface and is basically jet-free except for a few odd spots. (It ends up being sidelined by my theory.) The lighter red strips on either side are relatively narrow by comparison, but we still need to give attention to how their width varies from place to place. This variability is an important part of the analysis, because these light red strips each contain two major circumpolar pathways in all widths. It’s only in the wider places that they become visibly separated; in the narrow spots they tend to get squashed together, close enough to appear as if they were one. The full width of any one pathway and its wind, as viewed on the maps, is on the order of a few hundred miles, which makes it easy for paths to overlap. Overlapping is the predominant cause of any bright green shading on the maps, a sign of mutual acceleration of velocities—more air must somehow keep moving within a reduced amount of space. The location of pathway centers, by inference, is off to the sides, meaning somewhere near the borders of the bright green shadings. With these thoughts in mind, let’s open the global jetstream map and talk about a few refinements in the positioning of all four of the major pathways:
One of the two major pathways in the light-red zone can be picked out following a track located within the medium-level shading just off the edge of the darkly shaded central area. You can find it in isolation in some places in both hemispheres on the map. The other one of these pathways is less well marked by shading changes, generally found on a track within the central part of the light red shading. The green-zone perimeter pathway, as I now see it, is probably centered a bit to the inside of the green shading and not on the very edge. The blue-zone perimeter pathway, completely fragmented as it may be in the north, can be adjusted in the same way, piece by piece. All of the pathways are physically defined by an extra degree of sharpness in the way air pressures at two specific adjacent levels depart from one another as they meander either around the globe or on a smaller scale when courses have been fragmented. Isobars do a very good job of tracking the course of all kinds of meanderings and should always be kept in mind.
Carl