Tag Archive for: climate

Jet stream will get faster as climate change continues, study finds

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Jet stream will get faster as climate change continues, study finds
Jet streams circulate around the world. A new study finds fast jet stream winds (those in dark red) will get even faster over time as climate change accelerates. Credit: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

A new study in Nature Climate Change takes one of the first deep dives into how climate change will affect the fastest jet streams—the powerful, narrow winds in the upper atmosphere that steer much of the Earth’s weather systems and are connected to outbreaks of severe weather.

The research, by UChicago Prof. Tiffany Shaw and National Center for Atmospheric Research scientist Osamu Miyawaki, suggests that as the world warms, the fastest upper-level jet stream winds will get faster and faster—by about 2% for every degree Celsius the world warms. Furthermore, the fastest winds will speed up 2.5 times faster than the average wind.

“Based on these results and our current understanding, we expect record-breaking winds,” said Shaw, “and it’s likely that they will feed into decreased flight times, increased clear-air turbulence and a potential increase in severe weather occurrence.”

Wind, weather and warming

Partly prompted by recent news reports of speed-record-breaking flights over the Atlantic, Shaw and Miyawaki began to investigate and realized there had been very little exploration of how the very fastest jet stream winds would respond to climate change.

To fill this gap, they combined climate change models with what we know about the physics of jet streams.

Jet streams usually move from west to east around the globe in the upper atmosphere, about six miles (10 kilometers) above us. We know that jet streams strongly influence the weather we experience on the ground—especially air temperature, winds and weather patterns, and storms. They also influence the occurrence of severe storms, tornadoes, hail and severe wind.

Jet streams form because of the contrast between the cold, dense air at the poles and the warm, light air in the tropics, in combination with the rotation of the Earth. (This was first shown in…

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As Climate Change Looms, IT Has Many Parts to Play

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As we approach the end of 2022, one of the prevailing stories has been the weather. As scientists predicted, the effects of climate change can be seen in our historic weather patterns and events. The western United States has continued to experience a megadrought, now in its 22nd year. Unprecedented heat waves hovered over Europe and China. Heavy rain and floods drenched other parts of the United States, in particular Yellowstone National Park. Hurricanes Ian and Nicole slammed into Florida, South Carolina, and moved up the eastern coastline. Hurricane Ian’s winds were clocked at 150 miles per hour, making it tied for the fifth-strongest hurricane ever to make landfall in the U.S. Each of these weather incidents caused billions of dollars in personal, commercial and governmental damage. We know climate change will affect information technology in many direct and less obvious ways, as weather events can have profound impacts on IT services, infrastructure and planning across the board — in education, government and business.

Information technology plays a central role in forecasting weather. Technology aids forecasting by providing information on transportation safety, agriculture and utilities before, during and after weather events. Supercomputers allow the National Weather Service to predict ever-changing weather patterns with enough confidence to issue watches and warnings. High-performance computing (HPC) allows agencies to utilize multiple supercomputers to process extremely complex calculations. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s computer, called Hera, was listed in 2020 by Top500.org as the 88th top supercomputer in the world, based on a Cray CS500 with a compute capacity of 45 million hours per month with 63,840 cores and a total scratch disk capacity of 18.5 Petabytes. One Petabyte is the equivalent of 1,000 Terabytes.

Once dangerous weather is forecast and tracked, technology is critical to our ability to assess damage and mobilize any necessary resources. As Ntirety CEO Emil Sayegh said in a contributed piece for Forbes in April 2022, “Almost every organization should prepare…

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The Financial Times and McKinsey’s best business books of 2021 cover pressing topics like global cybersecurity, climate change, and the opioid epidemic

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  • The Financial Times & McKinsey announced the best business book of 2021 on December 1.
  • Judges chose “This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends” by journalist Nicole Perlroth.
  • Below, find this year’s shortlist — ranging in topics from the opioid epidemic to climate change.

The Financial Times and McKinsey have announced the winner and finalists for the 2021 Business Book of the Year award.

This year’s winner, “This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends” by “New York Times” reporter Nicole Perlroth, delivers a crucial and thorough analysis of the cyber arms race, encountering hackers, spies, and criminals clamoring to infiltrate essential computer systems.

Intrepid journalist Nicole Perloth delves into cyber crime to create an urgent, alarming analysis of the threat posed by the cybercriminals arms race.

Originally $21.00 | Save 57%

“Nicole Perlroth has done something that hasn’t been done before: going this deep into the mysterious world of hackers,” Financial Times editor Roula Khalaf said in a press release. “Cyber security isn’t featuring highly enough on CEOs’ agenda. I hope this award will prompt them to read this book and pay attention.”

McKinsey’s Managing Partner Europe, Magnus Tyeman, echoed the importance and singularity of Perlroth’s book. “Nicole Perlroth has written a book that is more than just a timely wake-up call to the fact that the world has largely ignored the realities and profound implications of the arms race between hackers, cybercriminals and businesses and national governments,” Tyeman said. “It is an alarming book, one in which the author makes a compelling, granular and matter-of-fact case for how vulnerable global computer systems have become, even as it also comes with an urgent plea for specific and systematic action.”

Below, you’ll find the six books listed on this year’s shortlist — stacked with journalists and ranging in topics from the opioid epidemic (by the prolific author of “Say Nothing“) to racism, climate change, and meritocracy. 

The winner of the Business Book of the Year…

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A NATO centre for climate security? Canada and Holland say yes

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The Netherlands threw its support behind a new NATO centre of excellence to study the security threats posed by climate change during Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s official visit to Holland.

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said during a joint media conference with Trudeau Friday that like many around the world, “NATO is also focusing more attention on the climate issue.”

“And that’s the reason why we are working on the NATO centre of excellence on climate and security, ” he said, standing next to Trudeau.

“Canada has offered to host the centre. In the Netherlands’ view, Canada would be the perfect home for this platform, given a strong profile and commitment to this important issue.”

Trudeau first announced the intention to ask allies to support the development of such a centre during the NATO leaders’ summit in Brussels in June.

The hope is to have the design and negotiation process take place this year and next, and start establishing the centre itself in 2023. Canada said the centre would help NATO members better understand, adapt to and mitigate against the security implications of climate change.

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Earlier this month, the United States released climate security strategies from several departments, including Defence, Homeland Security and Commerce, to look at ways to deal with how climate disasters could force mass migrations of people, exacerbating conflict and starting new wars.

The Pentagon and British defence departments have been developing climate security plans for more than a decade.

The new Canadian centre would become a strategic addition to the more than two dozen such NATO think-tanks. The centres offer the military alliance expertise and research capability to develop doctrines and approaches to a vast array of global security challenges.

They are headquartered mainly in European countries, and are devoted to the study of civil-military operations, cyber defence, military medicine, energy security, naval mine warfare, anti-terrorism, cold weather operations, among others.

In recent years, NATO’s cyber…

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