Scientists in Antarctica Discover Global Link to Wind Patterns and Severe Weather
The more scientists learn about our planet, it seems, the more they discover just how connected everything is – no matter how far apart.
Most recently, planetary scientists have discovered an almost unbelievable connection between equatorial winds along the middle of the Earth and waves in the air above Antarctica – over six-thousand mile away.
The research team calls what they have discovered a Quasi-Biennial Oscillation (QBO).
Credit: Danny Hampton, Ian Geraghty, Zimu Li
This discovery connects the effect of winds blowing around the equator to the impact that they have at the remote poles.
This information will add to the information used when meteorologists and climate scientists create models of the atmosphere which are used to predict weather and analyze and predict climate change.
In North America in recent years, there have been severe winter storms brought about by what has been referred to as a Polar Vortex.
This recent discovery will help us to better understand how weather in other parts of the world influence these vortexes, and will ultimately allow forecasters to have more advanced prediction models for the severe weather which they create.
“We have now seen how this atmospheric pattern propagates from the equator all the way to the high latitudes of Antarctica, showing how these far-away regions can be linked in ways we didn’t know about before,” said Zimu Li, lead author of the study, published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres.
According to the study, the QBO causes the upper atmospheric winds along the equator to periodically reverse direction between east and west. It appears that the polar vortex over the south pole gets larger during easterly flow and gets smaller as the winds flow to the west.
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