The Boris Vortex

A meandering river of air turns into a waterfall

Boris Badenoff, reimagined by DALL-E

One of the ways to think about a vortex is to flush your toilet and watch the water swirl. If it swirls clockwise, maybe you are in the Northern Hemisphere, and if it swirls anticlockwise maybe you aren’t. Then again, maybe it is just your toilet.

While the Coriolis effect is a real phenomenon that affects large-scale systems like weather patterns and ocean currents, it does not affect water swirling in toilets or sinks. Swirl direction results from the drain design, not its location relative to the equator.

On the other hand, the Earth's rotation exerts a powerful pull on the larger systems outside your bathroom. A massive air vortex forms in the late summer and autumn as the polar regions begin to receive less sunlight. The decrease causes the air over the poles to cool, which creates a temperature difference between the North Pole and the warmer mid-latitudes. The Coriolis effect deflects this moving air to the right in the Northern Hemisphere, resulting in a counterclockwise rotation—an atmospheric river.

Under typical conditions, the polar vortex maintains a relatively smooth, circular shape centered over the pole. This stable configuration is a barrier, keeping the cold Arctic air contained. The vortex can become distorted or "wavy" due to various factors, including large-scale waves, known as Rossby waves, that can propagate upward from the troposphere. You can also get sudden stratospheric warming, such as from a particularly strong volcanic event, that can disrupt the vortex, causing it to weaken, split, or even reverse direction.

What we have been watching unfold over the past half-century is a weakening of the gradient, and then a weakening of the jet stream. It was gradual at first, but now it has reached the curve of the hockey stick—the exponential function. The Arctic is warming faster than the global average, reducing the temperature gradient between zero degrees north and mid-latitudes. That breaks up the river and creates meanders.

Last week provided a good example. Storm Boris was a deep low-pressure system that brought extreme rainfall to Central and Eastern Europe, including Italy, Austria, Poland, Czech Republic, and Romania. We already knew that 2024 had an exceptionally hot summer in the Mediterranean Sea. Scorching sea surface temperatures made more water evaporate, loading the rain gun. Then, on September 14, one of those polar wave meanders curled back on itself out in the Atlantic between Norway and Greenland—a “cyclonic wave break,” according to one meteorologist. That plunged cold air into Europe. It began snowing in September.

Then the cold wave—a low pressure system—ran smack into the Mediterranean pressure cooker that was boiling away the water and was blocked from continuing to the East. Rain (or snow) events can get an extra kick when there are mountains involved, and this system now found itself stalled over the Alps.

The hot cell moisture swept up from the Mediterranean and curled around the Black Sea (which is also much hotter than normal), then got sucked into the low pressure of what was now being called Boris. It wrapped around the storm like a boa constrictor and squeezed. Central Europe was already experiencing 4-8 mm/day increased rainfall this decade, 20% percent greater than average. Boris dumped 321 mm (over a foot) onto St. Polten, Austria in just 4 days. In the many centuries that records have been kept, Central Europe has never recorded anything like that. Not just in September, but in any month.

The young people of America care deeply about this issue. And I am proud that as vice president over the last four years, we have invested a trillion dollars in a clean energy economy while we have also increased domestic gas production to historic levels.

—Kamala Harris, debate response to the climate question.

Boris is not just the villain from the Rocky and Bullwinkle animated series of the Sixties. Boris is Earth at just under 1.5°C warmer. Children born today can expect to see the average global temperature increase of at least twice that much in their lifetime. Between January and June 2024, the US National Weather Service issued 13000 Severe Weather Warnings, 2000 tornado warnings, and 1800 flash flood warnings. The cost to local governments and taxpayers will be in the tens of billions. After Boris left Central Europe the EU Commission voted €10 billion to begin repairs and resettlement. It estimates climate change will cost at least that much every year for the foreseeable future.

So, when ABC election 2024 debate moderator Linsey Davis said…

President Trump, thank you. We have another issue that we'd like to get to that's important for a number of Americans, in particular younger voters, and that's climate change. President Trump, with regard to the environment, you say that we have to have clean air and clean water. Vice President Harris, you call climate change an existential threat. The question to you both tonight is what would you do to fight climate change? And Vice President Harris, we'll start with you. One minute for you each.

…the candidates should have been pressed to answer. Instead…

You know, Biden doesn't go after people because supposedly China paid him millions of dollars. He's afraid to do it. Between him and his son. They get all this money from Ukraine. They get all this money from all of these different countries. And then you wonder why is he so loyal to this one, that one Ukraine, China? Why is he? Why did he get 3 1/2 million dollars from the mayor of Moscow's wife? Why did he get -- why did she pay him 3 1/2 million dollars? This is a crooked administration, and they're selling our country down the tubes.

—Donald Trump, debate response to the climate question.

The Tubes

Last week I wrote about why the phase change to extreme weather—the new weather norm in the Anthropocene—need not impact food security in the near term. There are two reasons. (1) globalization of plant genomics and cuisine has opened humanity’s book of the accumulated food-making knowledge gathered over millennia and (2) there are enormous (10x and 20x) inefficiencies and astonishing waste in global protein production to consumption pathways. Dietary changes may come, but they are not likely as dramatic (think soyburgers and almond or coconut milk frappes) as the switch to self-driving EVs.

Billionaire venture capitalists may indeed fund drought-resistant grains or vertical farming skyscrapers, but that is not to say those foods will somehow miraculously translate soil microbiome nutrient density to gut microbiome health as well as a biodynamic carrot does. Nor is it to say that extreme weather swings won’t force farmers to build more elaborate greenhouses and Michael Smith-style biodomes.

It will. I have been building Chinese-style earth-sheltered passive strawbale greenhouses since 1995, and they have survived countless record-breaking winters without losing a beet. This is not an uphill slog.

Rather than making this a post about politics, although it is, let’s keep in mind that The Great Change is about the transformation we are all undergoing to a better world. Not perfect. Not without great challenges. At this stage of our history, the consequences of past mistakes and our delay in addressing them will be unavoidable. We are at, to recall Churchill’s remark at the Lord Mayor’s Luncheon, Mansion House, November 10, 1942, “not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”

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Meanwhile, let’s end these wars. We support peace in the West Bank and Gaza and the efforts to bring an immediate cessation to the war. Global Village Institute’s Peace Thru Permaculture initiative has sponsored the Green Kibbutz network in Israel and the Marda Permaculture Farm in the West Bank for over 30 years and will continue to do so, with your assistance. We aid Ukrainian families seeking refuge in ecovillages and permaculture farms along the Green Road and work to heal collective trauma everywhere through the Pocket Project. You can read all about it on the Global Village Institute website (GVIx.org). Thank you for your support.

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#RestorationGeneration.

當人類被關在籠内，地球持續美好，所以，給我們的教訓是:
人類毫不重要，空氣，土壤，天空和流水没有你們依然美好。
所以當你們走出籠子的時候，請記得你們是地球的客人，不是主人。

When humans are locked in a cage, the earth continues to be beautiful. Therefore, the lesson for us is: Human beings are not important. The air, soil, sky and water are still beautiful without you. So, when you step out of the cage, please remember that you are guests of the Earth, not its hosts.

We have a complete solution. We can restore whales to the ocean and bison to the plains. We can recover all the great old-growth forests. We possess the knowledge and tools to rebuild savannah and wetland ecosystems. It is not too late. All of these great works are recoverable. We can have a human population sized to harmonize, not destabilize. We can have an atmosphere that heats and cools just the right amount, is easy on our lungs and sweet to our nostrils with the scent of ten thousand flowers. All of that beckons. All of that is within reach.