“I see a screw-up coming.” John Pomeroy shook his head in disbelief as the rainfall warnings arrived at his research station in southwestern Alberta. Environment Canada had predicted 100 millimetres of rain or more might fall in the Canadian Rockies. And now they were issuing a “high flow advisory, instead of the flood warning” that he fully expected. Where were the clanging alarm bells?… A compelling explanation comes from Jennifer Francis, a research professor at the Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences at Rutgers University. Because the Arctic regions are heating up faster than any place on earth, she explains, the temperature difference between north and more temperate regions is shrinking… “Theory tells us that a decrease in the west-east flow tends to slow the eastward progression of waves in the jet stream,” she says. “Because these waves control the formation and movement of storms, slower wave progression means that weather conditions will be more persistent. In other words, they will seem more “stuck.”
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