What ‘climate whiplash’ means for the UK

[John Nissen]

Hello,

This whiplash [1] is due to the sticking of the jet stream wave in one position and then sticking in another. The sticking trend is a consequence of the reduced energy driving the jet stream wave eastwards around the planet.  This is inevitable from rapid warming of the Arctic which reduces the temperature gradient to lower latitudes. Refreezing the Arctic has potential to reverse this trend, I claim.  How could this be confirmed?

Cheers John 

[1]  Wet winter, hot summer? What ‘climate whiplash’ means for the UK https://share.google/lO2uvz0Gzg59qqL5i 

[Alan Gadian]

John,

There are frequent new words to describe meteorological structures, but this is a new one to me.

The jet stream meanders more in the Northern cf the Southern hemisphere .  There are a lot of factors in this.  Meandering jet streams with a capital “omega “ shape which can form blocking structures where the flow becomes semi stationary and the mid latitude westerly movement becomes reduced .  This is not as common in the southern hemisphere.

These structures often promote enhanced meridional heat flux (v’T’) towards the pole and subsequent equator ward movement of cooler polar air.  In fact the meridional transfer (v’qv’) of water vapour also moves heat energy. //the whole function of the atmosphere is to transfer excess subtropical heat to the pole —— and why MCB in these subtropical regions works well to stop the polar ice caps melting.

So this above introduction is all to say, reduce the poleward temperature gradient and as you rightly say will stop the ice melting by reducing the meridional heat flux  … and possibly reverse the trend.  Thus cooling the poles to me is less likely to work as. well .  north / south of 65 degrees latitude only represents a small part of the atmosphere 

Parkes & Gadian (2014?) shows the effect on the reduction of the meridional heat flux by seeding 5% of subtropical stratus.  Obviously there are other methods that can be used to cool the subtropics —- space mirrors et al. but someone else is going to have to do those sums

Regards

Alan

Alan Gadian

(+44)/(0) 7754519009

On 4 Mar 2026, at 10:23, John Nissen <JohnNis...@gmail.com> wrote: