Atmospheric blocking as a traffic jam in the jet stream
A traffic jam of air
Persistent meandering of the jet stream can cause atmospheric blocking of prevailing eastward winds and result in weather extremes such as heat waves in the midlatitudes. Nakamura and Huang interpret the poorly understood origins of these systems as the meteorological equivalents of traffic congestion on a highway and show how they can be described by analogous mathematical theory. Climate change may affect the frequency of blocking as well as its geographic distribution, reflecting a simultaneous shift in the structure of the stationary atmospheric waves and the regional capacity of the jet stream.
Science, this issue p. 42
Abstract
Atmospheric blocking due to anomalous, persistent meandering of the jet stream often causes weather extremes in the mid-latitudes. Despite the ubiquity of blocking, the onset mechanism is not well understood. Here we demonstrate a close analogy between blocking and traffic congestion on a highway by using meteorological data and show that blocking and traffic congestion can be described by a common mathematical theory. The theory predicts that the jet stream has a capacity for the flux of wave activity (a measure of meandering), just as the highway has traffic capacity, and when the capacity is exceeded, blocking manifests as congestion. Stationary waves modulate the jet stream’s capacity for transient waves and localize block formation. Climate change likely affects blocking frequency by modifying the jet stream’s proximity to capacity.
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Supplementary Material
Summary
Materials and Methods
Figs. S1 to S5
Tables S1 to S4
Movie S1
Resources
Correction (23 April 2020): In previous versions of this article, the values of in Fig. 2, B and C, were not weighted by the cosine factor. The figure has been updated. Correspondingly, the tabulated values of in tables S1 and S2 have also been updated (fig. S5, C and D, is not affected). This correction does not alter the conclusions of the article.
References and Notes
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Published In
Science
Volume 361 | Issue 6397
6 July 2018
6 July 2018
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Copyright © 2018 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works.
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Submission history
Received: 21 January 2018
Accepted: 11 May 2018
Published in print: 6 July 2018
Acknowledgments
Funding: This work has been supported by NSF grant AGS1563307. Author contributions: N.N. laid out the conceptual framework for the finite-amplitude wave activity diagnostic and identified the connection between atmospheric blocking and the traffic flow problem. He formulated and conducted the 1D experiment and also produced all but two figures. C.S.Y.H. worked out the LWA budget as part of her Ph.D. dissertation study and performed most of the data analysis described in this article. She also produced figs. S4 and S5. Competing interests: The authors do not have any competing interests. Data and materials availability: To evaluate the terms in Eqs. 1 to 3 and to create Figs. 1 to 5; figs. S1, S2, S4, and S5; and tables S1 to S3, we used the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) ERA-Interim reanalysis product (8). Six-hourly global pressure–level analysis for u, v (meridional wind speed), temperature, and geopotential was obtained from http://apps.ecmwf.int/datasets/data/interim-full-daily/levtype=pl/ with 1.5° by 1.5° horizontal grid resolution. We have also used the daily North Atlantic oscillation index downloaded from NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center at http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/pna/nao_index.html to compute data in the last column of table S1. The python package that contains the modules to compute LWA and uREF from ERA-Interim reanalysis data can be found at https://github.com/csyhuang/hn2016_falwa. The scripts to produce the analyses in this paper are contained in the folder https://github.com/csyhuang/hn2016_falwa/tree/master/examples/nh2018_science.
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Funding Information
National Science Foundation: AGS1563307
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