Wild weather caused by the raging Pacific Ocean, nature and warming

In a world getting used to extreme weather, 2023 is starting off with more craziness than ever, and meteorologists say it’s a natural weather oddity with a little help from anthropogenic climate change.

Much of what is causing problems around the world comes from the seething Pacific Ocean carried by the undulating jet stream, experts say.

At least one highway in dry California looked more like a river due to heavy rain from what is technically called an atmospheric river of moisture. The New Year brought cloudless weather to the eastern United States and record high temperatures to Europe as the Northern Hemisphere Wednesday was 2.6 degrees (1.4 degrees Celsius) hotter than the late 20th century average. And this is after the cold air has left the Arctic, creating Christmas turmoil across much of the United States.

“All the ingredients are ready for two weeks of wild weather, especially in the western US,” private meteorologist Ryan Maue said in an email.

Maue said a big driver is the three-year La Niña — a natural, temporary cooling in the equatorial Pacific that is changing world weather patterns — that just won’t stop. It creates literal waves in weather systems that spread throughout the world. And in certain sections of the waves, storms occur when atmospheric pressure drops low and quickly, called bomb cyclones, which are quite wet, and they travel on atmospheric waves that carry the weather, called a jet stream.

According to Maue and Woodwell Center for Climate Research climatologist Jennifer Francis, the jet stream is now unusually undulating. Storms hit the warm subtropics “and create a conveyor belt of moisture that shells the US West Coast,” Maue said.

“I would describe the jet stream and bomb cyclones as a runaway Pacific freight train filled with moisture,” said Maue, a former chief scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the Trump administration. “Climate change is adding more fuel to a locomotive engine.”

More than 5 inches of rain fell in the Sacramento area Saturday, and California braced for more severe storms Wednesday and Thursday. As of Wednesday, snow cover was the third-highest in 40 years, more than 170% of normal.

In addition to La Niña, another natural temporary weather event called the Madden-Julian wobble is intensifying storms in the western Pacific, Maue said.

Francis points to a “clump” of warm seawater off the Aleutian Islands, a phenomenon that is happening more frequently, and to the “insanely warm” Arctic – Wednesday was 5.8 degrees (3.2 degrees Celsius) warmer than 1979– 2000 years. on average – as part of what fills the Pacific Ocean.

With a more undulating than usual jet stream, extremes of all kinds rise and fall and orbit the planet, Francis said.

“You can think of it like jump rope. When you start snapping the rope from one end, that wave ends up going through the whole rope,” Francis said on Wednesday. “Thus, it may be that the disturbance as such, perhaps caused in the Pacific Ocean, may intensify it over Europe as well.”

“There aren’t many opportunities left, but we’re kind of missing this window of opportunity,” NBCLX climate storyteller Chase Kane says of plans to curb emissions to fight climate change. World leaders are discussing emissions plans and more in the next few days as extreme weather sweeps across multiple regions of the US.

A weather station in Delémont, Switzerland, on the border with France, broke its January record with an average daily temperature of 18.1 degrees Celsius (nearly 65 Fahrenheit) on the first day of the year. In Bucharest, Romania, it broke a January record of 17.2 degrees Celsius (63 degrees Fahrenheit) on Tuesday, and 17.9 degrees Celsius (64.2 Fahrenheit) in the Russian Republic of Dagestan, according to extreme meteorologist Maximiliano Herrera.

The Swiss weather service MeteoSuisse joked on its blog: “… this new year’s twist might almost make you forget it’s the dead of winter.”

There’s a “better side” to this extreme weather, especially given Europe’s record-breaking heat wave in January, which eased winter heating fuel shortages caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, said Colorado-based meteorologist Bob Henson of Yale Climate Connections. And in California, which has seen a mega-drought for more than 20 years, exacerbating wildfires, is getting much-needed rain and snow—too much, in fact.

Roads and levees in California were washed out earlier in the week. Schools were closed Wednesday in the San Francisco area as more than 8,000 sandbags were distributed in anticipation of widespread flooding. Flights have been cancelled.

“Excessive rainfall on already saturated soils will lead to a rapid rise in water levels in streams, streams and rivers, as well as flooding in urban areas,” the forecasters said in the report.

With the exception of a spectacular record heat wave in Europe, “which is yet another example of human-caused climate change,” Northern Illinois University meteorology professor Victor Jensini said he didn’t find anything too out of the ordinary.

Weather is inherently extreme, “so the recent events that we’re seeing may be occurring naturally,” said Weather Underground co-founder Jeff Masters, who now works for Yale Climate Connections. “But with the disruption to global weather patterns that climate change is causing, the likelihood of seeing unusual weather events at any time of the year increases.”