Extreme weather may be due to gravity waves not climate change

Although such waves are “invisible” on standard radar and forecast equipment due to their unusually short wavelengths, gravity waves are often the main destabilizer in certain inexplicable weather events.

They often appear to the naked eye as normal bands of clouds, but can be measured only by special component modules in weather models that have the capacity to detect them, Science Daily reported.

Research funded by the German Research Foundation and led by a team from Goethe University in Frankfurt believe gravity waves influence the movement of water vapor, wind speeds, and temperatures during extreme weather events.

The so-called “MS-GWaves” unit of this research has already determined that the effects of gravity waves are seen mostly in the upper layers of the atmosphere, but they may become strong enough that even the lower atmospheric layers are affected by them.

The level of complexity involving their interaction with weather events means that very little is known about how they work. But it has already been established that gravity waves affect air traffic, a major determining factor in predicting turbulence, for instance, as well as unusual weather extremes such as sudden heavy rains and storms.

Professor Ulrich Achatz from Geothe University‘s Department of Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences, has focused on using radar, high-performance lasers, rockets, and research planes to better understand tis particular field.

As Achatz and his team have compiled huge amounts of data using these means, and they have been able to better refine their hypothesis as to how gravity waves form and disperse throughout the atmosphere.

Researchers have thus been able to refine their hypothesis and even reproduce it using high-resolution numerical models, which will aid in better determining how and why extreme weather events occur.

Thus far, Achatz and his team have refined the weather and climate model known as ICON that is used both by Germany’s National Meteorological Service (DWD) and the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology.

The new model, known as UA-ICON, can more precisely predict the influence of gravity waves in the upper atmosphere, which will allow for meteorologists to better predict weather events that, before the model existed, would have been seen as inexplicable or unpredictable.

Their research directly contradicts the official narrative that man-made climate change is automatically to blame for every type of extreme weather event.