CrusaderFrank
Diamond Member
- May 20, 2009
- 148,642
- 71,960
- 2,330
Not Old Rocks, but I can't think of any way that CO2 concentration in the atmosphere could directly impact Jet Stream but I have yet to hear anyone assert such. Please demonstrate the reputable climate researchers that have claimed that CO2 directly shifts the jet stream. A warmer/warming climate will exhibit different atmospheric circulation patterns than a cooler/cooling climate, and climate can be warmed/cooled according to atmospheric CO2 concentrations, but that is not a direct, but rather a secondary or even tertiary (or greater) effect of atmospheric CO2 concentration.
CO2's primary effect is to retard the exodus of energy from our planet's atmosphere. It is the spread of this excess energy throughout our atmosphere, oceans and land surfaces that are the realms of weather and weather trends or climate. It is those trends that results in changes toward new, higher energy states, ranges and patterns.
So why are you chalking up the heat wave to AGW and not the Jet Stream?
I, personally, wouldn't attribute any single weather event to AGW. Climate is the composite of (trending of) weather patterns over extended time frames. It is one thing to say that the summers in some areas are generally starting to get warmer and drier and that this is in accord with what one would expect to see in some AGW (or CO2 forced) environments than it is to say that we can directly attribute this particular weather pattern and confluence solely and entirely to AGW circumstances. The former, in my consideration is properly qualified and reasonable, the later might be supportable but stripped of AGW significance by removing it from larger weather trends is inappropriate and not typically very rigorous. You might be able to "chalk up" more pole shifted summer routes for the primary northern hemisphere jet streams across the N. Am continent as a consequence of warming climates and you might be able to support that heat waves often result from such northern route jet streams, but this is very different from saying that increased CO2 caused this particular heat wave episode.
Climates have been getting drier..and wetter forever.
Egypt was like a rain forest when Giza was built and unless the Egyptians had cars, it was AGW that changed the climate.