At the end of October 2024, a gray gloom went down to the British islands. Nothing unusual there. But this troubled shroud was particularly persistent, even for the United Kingdom. Some regions have barely seen the sun for fifteen. Residents of the village of Odiham in the Hampshire, for example, only appreciated 12 minutes of sun in the first 11 days of November. And according to the Met Office, the United Kingdom's weather service, the country as a whole saw only 8.3 hours of sun over this period, well below the average for this period of the year. Meanwhile, in Spain, a slow storm in the Valencia region sparked torrential showers, causing sudden floods that killed 231 people.
For both events, you can blame the Jet Stream – rapidly evolving air currents that flow east to the east worldwide. In October 2024, the polar jet completed, trapping a high-pressure high pressure high-pressure system in the United Kingdom and a low pressure system on Spain. It is not unprecedented: the jet stream clogs from time to time. But even the occasional observer could have noticed that meteorological events seem to dwell longer in the northern hemisphere, from Europe to North America. Now climatologists rush to determine if global warming Makes the jet stream more erratic, as some have predicted.
We need an urgency of answers. If we do not get a clear image of how the jet flow changes and what it means for our time, we could considerably underestimate the extreme events to come. “We really have to continue to understand these extremes”, …
