From: Gene Thompson (gthompso@ccsf.cc.ca.us)
Date: Tue Nov 28 2000 - 21:03:29 PST
Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2000 21:03:29 -0800 (PST) From: Gene Thompson <gthompso@ccsf.cc.ca.us> Subject: "The Comin Global Superstorm" Message-ID: <Pine.HPX.4.21.0011282055430.20280-100000@fog.ccsf.cc.ca.us>
That's the title of a book I read recently that's already in made-for-TV
format and includes absolutely no references or citations, so following up
the "information" is difficult. About a third of the book is along the
lines of "Mysteries of Science" or worse, but the description of the storm
seemed right. Hence this posting. My meteorology isn't good enough to
figure out if what they write makes sense. Anyone out there help?
The scenario goes like this -- global warming changes the huge current in
the Atlantic that drives the weather in that hemisphere. As a result, a
huge temperature differential builds up between the troposphere (warm) and
the lower stratosphere (very cold). Eventually that cold air is gonna
fall, and because it's so cold in comparison, it keeps moving south till
it hits the equator and is boosted back up into the stratosphere, still
essentially unheated. The picture is of a storm (or storms) that runs
from the pole to the equator and has too much energy driving it to stop
until a massive snowfall takes place.
There were more details and a lot less physics (I see my attempt to
understand what they were saying has snuck into the above description),
but does any of this sound like anything anyone else is hearing from legit
sources? I do know the stratosphere is getting colder....
Ellen Koivisto
George Washington High School, SF
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