“The climate always changes”… that’s true. Over tens of thousands of years Earth’s tilt changes a bit and so does Earth’s orbit around the sun… sometimes closer to a circle, sometimes an ellipse. This changes the amount of sunlight Earth receives and thus Earth’s avg temp 🧵 1/

https://twitter.com/weatherprof/status/1783629515756859753

As a result of orbital changes, every ~100,000 years the Earth sees an ice age. In between - where we are now - are warm periods called interglacials. Notice the difference is only 10 degrees F!
Those changes are natural and generally gradual.
But a century ago that changed 2/

The science behind this weekend’s 265 mph jet stream! A trans Atlantic flight reached an astonishing 835 mph. So Lets talk about meteorology, how climate change factors in and not breaking the sound barrier… 🧵 1/ The reason: two jets converge into 1 over the US and a sharp contrast of frigid vs warm air enhance the wind.
The result: a 265 mph upper level jet helps boost a Newark to Lisbon flight to peak speed of 835 mph reaching Lisbon in 5:44…. About an hour faster than normal! 2/

A testament to how extreme & overwhelming the climate is this summer is, this Record “Shattering” heat dome has been barely covered by the national media. It’s largest US heat dome in recent memory and in a large part of the nation’s middle the most intense, by a long shot. 1/ The highest heights (altitude to reach the 500 mb pressure level) on record in Omaha, Springfield & Topeka were around 6000 meters. Heights reached 6020 to 6030 meters. That’s a huge anomaly. This is a measure of heat dome strength… hotter air expands and raises the dome. 2/

There’s so many extreme weather and climate stories this weekend, with #Hilary’s impact, many are flying under the radar. This summer we are 1.5C above preindustrial and here’s just a small glimpse of my timeline. I’ve excluded a bunch of events. 1/ 2/

I've posted a lot lately about how hot the Gulf of Mexico waters is. The question I always get is, how may this impact hurricanes? I'll answer that and show you just how "off the charts" the Gulf sea surface heat is in this thread, with a couple of stellar visuals 1/ First the Q of hurricanes. This shows the "maximum" potential wind a hurricane can achieve IF conditions are perfect (light wind shear, minimal dry air, no land interaction). The scale maxes out in the Gulf at 170kts (195 mph). BUT perfection is almost never achieved. And this 2/

Wow. Even for the bath tub waters in the Gulf of Mexico this is impressive. Clearwater Beach this afternoon 93.4F. Buoy 100 miles west of Tampa Bay 91.5, Old Port Tampa 95, Port Manatee 93. These #'s are about 3-4F above normal. Gulf is at record hot levels which helps... 1/ ...explain, with winds from the west, why the low temperature this morning was only 84 (daily record). Dewpoints along the coast have been running 80-82... During the early morning that means a heat index of 95 and with 95+ degree highs, heat index numbers are 110-115+ 2/

Think July was hot in the desert SW? Aug says hold my beer. A monster heat dome likely by next weekend - the most intense yet this summer. Magenta indicates where all-time record heights are forecast. This on top of PHX so far beating its hottest month on record by almost 4F!! 1/ So far in July PHX avg temp is 102.9
Old record 98.9 in 2020. To beat your hottest month’s temp by ~4 degrees is remarkable. Enter August… This next heat dome is forecast to be around 4 sigma. These heat “ridges” measure the column heat by how high the 500mb pressure sfc is 2/

Another day of astonishing heat in the shallow waters of Florida Bay & the Keys!! 99.1 F on the edge of the Everglades. Close to a global record. This water is murky/dark so it absorbs more radiation. But even if it's elevated, it shows just how intense this marine heatwave is 1/ Here's the proof. And notice how a nearby site is 97.5. But it's worth mentioning there was a paper recently showing that these shallow water instruments are possibly registering readings up to a 1 degree elevated. 2/

This summer we’ve seen a very amplified pattern in the jet. This graphic helps explain how meteorologists forecast heatwaves. We look for upper level ridges (termed heat domes when they come with anomalous heat). Right now we have a series of heat ridges and also cool troughs 1/

https://twitter.com/weatherprof/status/1681087826425782278

That means in certain places who are trapped under cool troughs in the upper levels we also have pockets of cool air at the surface. So in the US some areas were actually quite cool in June. 2/

With record hot ocean I’ve had a lot of Q’s about the impact on hurricanes. Water temp is only one factor. I’d argue shear, or lack of, is more important. This shows the “potential” strength of hurricanes right now based only on heat/energy from the ocean. Dark blue=H5=Cat 5 🧵 The dark blue shading near South Florida and the Gulf of Mexico is appearing weeks early because water temps are at record levels, far above record levels in near South Florida. So if somehow a storm found it’s way here with low shear it could achieve this potential BUT 2/

Lots of talk about the very warm Gulf of Mexico, specifically focused on South Florida. Sea “surface” temps in the Florida Keys are 92-95 degrees. That’s boiling for them! More typically it would be in the upper 80s. This map shows departures from normal of ~5 degrees F 🧵 1/ The bleaching alert status is Alert level 1. The scale goes to 2. I bring this up because coral are extremely sensitive to slight changes (just a few degrees) in water temp. They have a narrow thermal range. The alarming part is that less than 5% of Keys coral cover is left. 2/

Communicating climate requires eye catching and simple visuals. This graphic adapted from @SafeClimate is one of the best I've seen showing the stark recent rise in temperature. Today's warming rate is >50X the rate after the last ice age More info: 1/ https://t.co/GgnFU4zqNRbit.ly/46EL0Oq
The peak of the last ice age ended 20K years ago. From 20K to 10K years ago the climate warmed ~3 degrees C in 10K years. To put that into perspective, in just 200 years, we will likely warm the climate by ~3C. That is a rate 50X greater. The rate of warming and...

This vividly illustrates the temperature spike in the Main Development Region of the Atlantic in 2023. Sea surface temps really began to increase in April. The gray shading is the 90% of historic record. 1/ This is compared to a 1961-1990 reference baseline. The image was created using a nifty program from @derjaku 2/

Recently there’s been a lot of discussion about scientists and TV meteorologists dealing with trolling or threatening messages when they communicate climate. I’ve been heavily involved in this space, so here are some thoughts that may help. 🧵 1/ First, the voices that deny climate change are a very small part of US society, 1 in 10 or less. Poll after poll from Yale/ George Mason show this exact number. It hasn’t changed, evidence that this group is basically immovable in their views. 2/

The "Ring of Fire"... it's a term meteorologists use when the edge of a heat dome helps feed intense severe weather like the violent tornado yesterday in West Texas and the 97 mph gust squall line in Houston. Storms fired up on the edge of the record breaking ridge 1/ Excessive heat feeds/fuels storms from the south, adding energy. The edge of the ring of fire marks the contrast between extreme heat and warm, and that zone tends to have stronger winds aloft which aid supercell intensity & forward speed. Rings of fire often produce derechos!

In one of my last tweets (

https://twitter.com/WeatherProf/status/1671275494229065731?s=20

) I posted about how unusual the jet stream is for this time of year. Below you can see in red that much of the Texas & Canada Ridges rank in the 99.5 percentile and small portions of each in record max territory. So 1/ So... while each mid-level heat dome is extremely unusual, neither is impossible. I'd argue however to have two adjacent heat domes simultaneous carving out a jet amplified to the degree it is right now in June is the remarkable part of this. 2/

When I look at this jet stream the word insane comes to mind. It's even more astonishing when you consider it's mid June! This configuration, likely enhanced by climate heating, is fueling a record heat dome so extreme that even experts are astonished! @extremetemps says: “Heat wave "Taco" in Mexico is beyond your cat 5, it's cat 7 …it's simply something in its own league, nothing like this even can attempt to compare. Records obliterated all over with insane margins and beaten as many as 7 days in a row”

In 2018 #ShowYourStripes began as 100s of meteorologists around the globe like @BernWoodsPlacky sported @ed_hawkins genius Warming Stripes visual to promote climate change awareness. This Wednesday June 21st is the 5th year!! Please join us by downloading your stripes 1/ You can download global and regional stripes here: showyourstripes.info 2/

Global Oceans are severely hotter than we have ever observed since records began. There are several ocean heat waves. El Niño = danger for Galapagos marine life. Boiling Tropical Atlantic = early hurricanes. Cat 5 marine heatwave in UK! Here's a quick tour and thread 1/ Since ~1970 the Tropical Atlantic has warmed by 1.5 - 2 degrees F. This warming can be attributed to both greenhouse warming and decreasing aerosols. Each 1F increase in SST's = a "potential" intensity increase in strong tropical cyclones of 10 mph. 2/

Quite a few meteorologists in disbelief at the pattern across the US. Strong subtropical jet stream feeding widespread severe weather in the south. A winter El Nino pattern in summer. A polar jet extension in the Ohio Valley too with incredible high-latitude blocking. 1/ We have theories as to why high latitude blocking has been so overbearing. Many believe it’s Arctic Amplification. Some feel it’s a reflection of stratospheric forcing. It’s probably both. But my observations - thinking back to the 2015-2016 El Niño - there’s just more energy…

Great animation from NOAA which shows how this El Nino has developed. Warm anomalies start as an east-based event and then those anomalies grow westward. Want to understand how this changes the atmosphere? NOAA has a couple more useful visuals 1/ In a "normal" or neutral year (no EL Nino and No La Nina) you'd expect the "relative" warmest water to be over the western Pacific near Indonesia. That warm water means rising air and thunderstorms there and sinking air in the E. Pacific. Over the Atlantic the air rises.