Climate-addled jet streams boost drought, flood: study.
"Our work shows that climate change isn’t just leading to more extreme weather through the usual mechanisms," said lead author Michael Mann, a professor at Penn State University in the United States.
"In addition to these effects, global warming is changing the behaviour of the jet stream in a way that favours more extreme and persistent weather anomalies," Mann told AFP.
Jet streams are ribbon-like currents of air that snake across the northern half of the globe about 8 to 11 kilometres (five-to-seven miles) above Earth’s surface.
Jet streams are the reason it takes an hour less to fly from Los Angeles to New York than the other way around.
Connecting the dots When jet streams slow or stall, these weather systems can become more extreme, leading to extended periods of heat or precipitation.
"Relatively small changes to the jet stream can have a large effect on weather and extreme weather," co-author Dim Coumou, a professor at the Institute for Environment Studies and VU University Amsterdam, told AFP.
And what causes these massive air flows to stall?
It is a smaller temperature difference between the Arctic and tropical air that corrals them on either side.
Earlier research linked jet streams with major drought and floods over the last two decades, but said nothing about whether human activity helped drive the process.

State issues drought watch for Loudoun, northern Virginia following dry months.
The Virginia Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) has issued a drought watch for Loudoun County, the northern Piedmont and other northern Virginia jurisdictions following “abnormally dry conditions” across the region from November through February.
In the northern Virginia region, the drought watch advisory applies to both public or private groundwater supplies or private surface water supplies in Fauquier, Prince William and Loudoun counties.
New record low water levels for March have been recorded in two long-term observation wells in Fauquier and Orange counties.
Meanwhile, localities in the Shenandoah, Middle James, Roanoke and Northern Coastal Plain drought evaluation regions are also being advised to “remain vigilant.” Conditions in those areas are now “near drought watch status.” DEQ said although public and private water supplies are currently in “good shape,” conditions could deteriorate as spring and summer seasons near.
DEQ is now notifying all local governments, public water works and private-sector water users in the affected areas, and is requesting they prepare for the onset of a drought event by developing or reviewing existing water conservation and drought response plans.
Virginia is encouraging localities, public and private water suppliers, and self-supplied water users in the affected localities to voluntarily take these steps to help protect current water supplies: – Minimize nonessential water use.
– Aggressively pursue leak detection and repair programs.
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Dramatic photos comparing Squaw Valley at the height of California’s dire drought with the ski resort during 2017’s epic snow pileup are extraordinary.
Squaw Valley Alpine Meadows, one of the area’s largest resorts, recorded only 227 inches of cumulative snowfall for the 2014–15 season.
We asked four ski resorts how many inches they’ve received.
Squaw has already recorded 631 inches of cumulative snow as of March 22, 2017—that’s some 400 inches more than what fell in the complete 2014–15 season.
"Our average annual snowfall is 450 inches," said Squaw Valley Alpine Meadows spokesperson Liesl Kenney.
The back-to-back storms have been a true gift to all Tahoe ski resorts at the end of a five-year drought.
As of March 22, 2017, Heavenly’s season snowfall total was 605 inches, Kirkwood’s 614 inches, and Mount Rose’s a whopping 691 inches.
As a result of this year’s tremendous snow harvest, the ski season will extend well into April and Squaw Valley plans to be open on the Fourth of July.
"This will be the fourth time we’ve been open on the Fourth in the past 50 years.
This year we’ll be open into June.

As East Africa struggles through a drought, scientists say climate change may be making the situation worse as a warming planet may be altering the weather patterns that bring rain to the region. In Somalia, the rains failed late last year. And the rains before that were meager. Livestock have died. Crops have failed. Famine threatens Somalia for the second time this decade. While drought is not uncommon in this dry region, it has gotten worse, Chris Funk, a climate scientist at the University of California at Santa Barbara, said. “What we’ve seen over, say, the last 35 years is that the rainfall during what’s called the long rains in East Africa has declined substantially,” Funk said. He added the explanation may lie in an atmospheric cycle that links East Africa and the Pacific Ocean. WATCH: Experts: Climate change may…

MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — With Sebastian Vettel ascending the top of the podium in his red Ferrari race suit, the new regulations for Formula One cars seemingly needed only one Grand Prix to produce one of the desired effects. Vettel’s drought-breaking win for Ferrari was widely celebrated, with Mercedes drivers Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas having to settle for second and third. Mercedes won 19 of the 21 F1 GPs in 2016, and Red Bull collected the other two titles. Ferrari’s first win in Australia since 2007 has already given 2017 a different complexion. Kimi Raikkonen, who won for Ferrari a decade before, placed fourth on Sunday as Ferrari earned a four-point cushion over Mercedes in the constructors’ standings after the first of 20 rounds. It sets up a genuine contest this season between two of the dominant drivers of the past decade — three-time world champion Hamilton against Vettel, who won four straight drivers’ titles with Red Bull from 2010-13. “He’s proven to be one of the quickest drivers on the grid and for sure I would love to have a close battle,” Vettel said of Hamilton. “Obviously right now it looks like we have equal machinery. “I hope it stays that way and then we will see how it turns out — but it’s obviously a lot of fun to race for victories.” Hamilton had a tense relationship with Nico Rosberg in their duel for dominance at Mercedes, which has dominated the last three seasons. Hamilton won back-to-back drivers’ titles in 2014 and ’15, and narrowly lost last year to Rosberg, who then retired. That made room for Bottas, and the personnel change means Hamilton now expects to look beyond the Mercedes garages for his main rival. “Incredible amount of respect for Sebastian and what he’s achieved in his career,” Hamilton said. “It’s been a…

AP Sports Writer MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) – Sebastian Vettel broke Ferrari’s Formula One drought with a victory over the Mercedes team of Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas on Sunday at the season-opening Australian Grand Prix. Ferrari hadn’t won an F1 GP since Vettel’s victory in Singapore in 2015, and so his leap up onto the top of the podium at the finish in Australia signaled renewed confidence from him and perhaps an end to the domination Mercedes has forged in recent seasons. “For now, we’re just over the moon,” four-time world champion Vettel said. “It’s been a hard winter, and an incredible race today. We’re here, we’re here to fight.” With regulations designed to make the 2017 F1 cars faster – including wider tires, greater aerodynamics, bigger fuel loads and increased downforce – Vettel proved Ferrari’s extra pace in pre-season testing was genuine. “It’s good to know we have a great car but it’s just the beginning … with new regulations, a new generation of cars,” Vettel said. “Mercedes have a great engine and a great car the last couple of years – we’re the ones who’ve had to catch up. Whatever happens this year, the race today doesn’t hurt.” Vettel finished in 1 hour, 24 minutes and 11.672 seconds, almost 10 seconds clear of Hamilton, to give Ferrari its first win…

An emaciated woman writhes on her hospital bed, weakly waving her bony hand to create a current of air. Cholera patient Zeinab Hussein, a 50-year-old farmer, is one of thousands of desperate Somalis who have streamed into Baidoa in southwestern Somalia seeking food and medical care as a result the country’s prolonged drought. The influx has overwhelmed local and international aid agencies. The hospital ward is filled with the sound of crying, malnourished children, many fed through tubes in their noses. The new patients, mostly children, show signs of chronic malnourishment when they arrive at therapeutic clinics run by UNICEF, said aid workers. The cholera epidemic is most prevalent among women and children. Cholera outbreaks often occur in refugee camps due to overcrowding and poor sanitation. Water scarcity also remains a major problem among the new arrivals in the refugee camps. In recent weeks,…

About 300 students at a Long Beach high school are exploring ways to make their community environmentally sustainable and preparing to share what they learned at a youth summit later this month. On their own, students ranging from freshmen to seniors at Cabrillo High School approached teachers a while back about researching ways to stretch water supplies in drought-prone Southern California and to combat climate change locally. “The project is basically student driven,” said Karen Shoop, an English teacher at Cabrillo High who has helped with the project. “Instead of it being a top-down from the district to the teachers to the students, ‘Hey, guess what, we’re assigning this,’ it was a, ‘We’re interested in doing this research. How do we make this happen?’” she…

Just hours after Somalia’s new prime minister named his first cabinet at the presidential compound in Mogadishu Tuesday, a massive explosion occurred just a few hundred yards away. Footage of the aftermath of the blast shared on social media showed several burnt-out vehicles and a crater-like dent in the ground where the explosion occurred outside Somalia’s national theater. Somali police said that at least 10 people were killed in the blast, which happened when a suicide attacker rammed a car bomb into a security checkpoint. On Wednesday, a familiar foe claimed responsibility for the attack: Al-Shabab, an extremist militant group affiliated to al-Qaeda, which is waging war on the Western-backed federal government. The assault is the latest obstacle to meaningful engagement between the new Somali government and Al-Shabab, at a time when analysts and diplomats have said it is most needed: the current drought in Somalia, which is at risk of escalating into famine, is part of what a senior U.N. official recently called the “worst humanitarian crisis since the creation of the United Nations” in 1945. Internally displaced Somali families rest as they flee from drought-stricken parts of the Lower Shabelle region before entering makeshift camps in Somalia’s capital Mogadishu on March 17. Many Somalis suffering from the drought are living under al-Shabab, which controls many rural parts of southern Somalia. Somalia’s government is barely a month old: The new president, Mohamed Abdullahi Farmajo, was only inaugurated on February 22, and the cabinet ministers appointed Tuesday have not yet been approved by Parliament. And yet the challenge facing it is huge. Not even six years after a famine that claimed the lives of more than a quarter of a million people, Somalia is again at risk of human disaster on an enormous scale. Some 6.2 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance, and the United Nations is appealing for $825 million to avert a catastrophe in the Horn of Africa country. There are increasing reports of Somalis across the country starving to death, along with pictures of skeletal livestock, left to perish without pasture. As clean water becomes more scarce, Somalis are turning to unsafe water sources, resulting in cholera outbreaks. The new government has formed a National Drought Response Committee and has urged Somalis in the diaspora to donate; the committee’s chairman tells Newsweek that around $2 million has already been raised, and a further $3 million in donations has been pledged. Aid has started to come from the international community, and the United Nations has also been active in opening drought relief centers in some of the worst-affected areas. But any national response in Somalia is being hampered by the fact that the government does not control all its territory—Al-Shabab still controls significant portions of Somalia, particularly in the South and in rural areas. Former Somali president Hassan Sheikh Mohamud told Newsweek in September 2016 that the militants held around 10 percent of territory in the country. Analysts say that, even in areas that Al-Shabab does not fully control, the militant group still exerts a semi-territorial presence that can deter government or…

Brian Goetz, deputy director of the city of Portsmouth’s Public Works Department, explains how current water levels in the city and at the Bellamy Reservoir, the primary water supply for the city, have returned to satisfactory levels following last summer’s drought. [Rich Beauchesne/Seacoastonline] PORTSMOUTH — Drought conditions are slowly improving in southern New Hampshire, but experts say groundwater wells for towns and private residences could still have a ways to go before recharging back to normal. Much of Rockingham County, including Seacoast towns, dropped from being in a “severe” drought to a less-extreme “moderate” drought Thursday on the U.S. Drought Monitor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. “Moderate” is the second-least severe drought classification on the monitor, the least severe being “abnormally dry.” Drought experts and public works officials in the area say reservoirs should now be high enough to serve municipalities and water customers without issue this year, as surface water supplies recharge more easily in the winter than wells. They say groundwater wells, which rely on a thawed ground for precipitation to reach them, are still below normal levels and need more time to be replenished. Tom Ballestero, director of the University of New Hampshire’s Stormwater Center, said last year that bedrock wells on residential properties were likely deep enough to last through the drought than shallower wells. Last week, he said that may no longer be the case as bedrock wells monitored by the U.S. Geological Survey have been showing levels lower than normal. He said that may also be happening with other bedrock wells, which can be 300 feet deep and recharge slowly because of their depth. Municipal and…