Relax. Air Crossing The Equator Is Not The Sign Of Our Climate Doom

True, there was air flow across the equator over
the easterm Pacific Ocean recently, but despite
some claims to the contrary, this was really no big deal.  n

The jet stream crossed the equator!! We're all gonna die!!!!!!

Or not.

Some bloggers made some waves, and probably got a nice uptick on click views when they claimed last week  that the jet stream crossed the equator.

These folks said this  was unprecedented, that it was a sign that global warming mucked things up so much that we're now getting jet stream mayhem and who knows what terrible things that will cause?

Problem was, the air flow they detected crossing the equator was not the main jet stream, and it was something that happens all the time and is completely normal.

Oh well.

One of the bloggers alarmed by the jet stream was Robert Scribbler, who wrote that the jet stream has moved out of the middle latitutes where it belongs and now sometimes goes high into the Arctic and deep into the tropics in epic waves.

He said it's gotten to the point where upper level air flow between the northern and southern hemispheres is starting to happen.

Scribbler wrote: 

"If this is the case, then it's bad news for seasonality. Prevention and reduction of a mixing of air parcels between hemisphers by the thick, hot tropical air mass that has generated a strong division between summer and winter during the Holecene Climate Epoch.

However, erode that boundary and you get more summer heat spilling over into the winter zones and vice versa. You get this weather-destabilizing and extreme weather generating mixing of seasons that is all part of a very difficult to deal with "Death of Winter" type warming scenario."

Despite Scribbler's alarm, winter isn't going to go away any time soon. Winters are trending warmer, overall,  But winter will not be canceled.

It's true scientists are looking at how climate change is affecting the jet stream. It might be making it bulge much more to the north at times than it used to, and dip much more to the south in spots at times than it used to.

There's no firm conclusions on that line of study yet, but what is clear, and mainstream climate scientists jumped all over Scribbler for this, is that he was incorrect when he said the main jet stream crossed the equator recently.

There was lower and upper atmospheric flow across the equator recently over the Pacific Ocean, But that, according to the Washington Post, this cross-equatorial air flow has to do with atmospheric shifts brought on by the summer monsoon season. It's totally normal.

It doesn't happen every day, but it probably has nothing to do with global warming.

I don't mean to jump all over Scribbler, either.  His blog is often quite good.

And he did note that his "end of seasons' scenario is not happening now, but might in the future.

Sometimes, though, people who are rightly worried about climate change see something dangerous in everything that happens in the atmosphere now.

Climate change is real, that's obvious. And it's causing more extreme weather events. But not every oddball weather or atmospheric event is related to climate change. Sometimes - global warming or not - the weather just gets in a weird mood.

People who deny climate change decry climate "alarmists," who they say are creating panic over something that we need not worry about.

Well, we do need to worry about climate change. But let's not feed the denial crowd with false alarms.

There's plenty of real alarms out there to deal with.