In late October 2024, a gray darkness descended on the British Isles. There is nothing strange there. But this dark cover was particularly persistent, even for the UK. Some regions barely saw the sun for a fortnight. Residents of Odiham in Hampshire, for example, enjoyed just 12 minutes of sunshine in the first 11 days of November. And according to the Met Office, the UK’s weather service, the country saw just 8.3 hours of sunshine during that period, below the average for this time of year. Meanwhile, in Spain, a slow-moving storm over the Valencia region brought torrential rains and floods that killed 231 people.
For both events, you can blame the jet stream, the fast currents of air that travel from west to east around the world. In October 2024, the polar jet contracted, trapping a high pressure anticyclonic system over the UK and a low pressure system over Spain. That’s not unprecedented: the jet stream occasionally twitches. But even the casual observer may have noticed that weather events seem to be lasting longer in the northern hemisphere, from Europe to North America. Now, climate scientists are scrambling to figure out whether or not global warming the jet stream is becoming more erratic, some have predicted.
We need urgent answers. If we don’t get a clear picture of how the jet stream is changing and what that means for our weather, we could be significantly underestimating the extreme events coming our way. “We really need to keep pushing to understand these extremes”…
