Eli5 the sun is always there blasting out heat, why do we have different seasons and why do we have massive heat waves now?
In: Earth Science
everyone’s explained seasons but the reason we had a massive heat dome event was because the jet stream- a powerful current of air that passes over the northern (or southern) part of a hemisphere that keeps cold arctic air behind a “wall”, is beginning to weaken and collapse.
normally when you have hot air, it rises, disperses, and the high pressure goes down. But due to the jet stream “wall” all that hot air had nowhere to go to become cooler, and just basically kept getting hotter and hotter and hotter until it was unbelieveably fucking hot. It was boxed in on all sides by that jet stream wall.
We’re had similar but with cold air from the arctic, resulting in horrific cold spells that dip down into ridiculously cold temperatures, called a polar vortex.
if the jet stream weakens that badly again, this will happen again.
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