#westerlies

Global wind patterns in July. Physical Geography. 1898.

Theo Bleckmann & The Westerlies - This Land - Bleckmann is always an intriguing singer; here he teams up with a brass quartet

Theo Bleckmann and The Westerlies present This Land, a new collaborative project that merges the candor of the human voice with the limitless expressiveness of brass, highlighting the power of music to invigorate protest movements and provide internal solace amidst external turmoil. This Land features original compositions as well as arrangements and settings of voices of truth from past and present, including Bertolt Brecht, Joni Mitchell, Woody Guthrie, Agha Shahid Ali, and others. Bleckmann delivers the words of these luminaries with the utmost precision and clarity, using his impeccable technique and command of live electronic effects to evoke sounds that range from the brightest clarion to the murkiest dark. The Westerlies exploit all of the expressive capabilities of their instruments, sometimes brazenly heroic, sometimes painfully intimate. Fearless improvisers and generous collaborators, these artists form an ensemble that is lithe, organic, and formidably cohesive. Although stalwart in their resistance to the boundaries of genre, Bleckmann and The Westerlies welcome the listener into their world with open arms. This Land is a universe all its own. There is an inherent sense of power, solace and beauty in these songs; the message is resistance, but the music is irresistible.

Saunders and her colleagues are finding clues that over the past 12,000 years of Earth’s history, higher wind speeds and greater concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have gone together. If this link between wind and CO₂ holds true today, it will lead to higher levels of the greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, which will speed up climate change, which could further intensify the westerlies.

The westerly winds encircling the globe in both hemispheres between 30 and 60 degrees latitude are driven by two major forces. Global atmospheric circulation systems called Hadley cells are created by warm air rising near the equator, traveling toward the poles and then cooling and sinking back toward Earth near 30 degrees latitude in each hemisphere. The Coriolis force created by Earth’s rotation deflects some of that downward-moving air toward the east, which forms the westerlies. (Graphic by Knowable Magazine)

Excerpt from this Smithsonian story:

The world’s oceans take up more than a quarter of the carbon humans are emitting into the atmosphere, partially mitigating the greenhouse effect of that carbon. And the Southern Ocean accounts for nearly 40 percent of this marine carbon absorption, even though it makes up only one-fifth of Earth’s ocean surface area. There could be enormous consequences for our already warming planet from even a small reduction in the Southern Ocean’s ability to suck up carbon from the atmosphere.

Scientists say this reduction may already be happening, and they suspect that the westerlies in the Southern Hemisphere, which are stronger than their northern counterparts because they blow mostly over open water, are to blame. Records of actual wind speeds, as well as estimates of wind speeds from measurements of atmospheric pressure, provide clear signs that the westerlies in both hemispheres are shifting toward the poles and intensifying. Climate models show that these changes are partly due to global warming, and research is afoot to determine if they are hindering the Southern Ocean’s capacity to pull carbon out of the atmosphere.

“There are questions about what’s going to happen if the winds continue to get stronger,” says paleoclimate scientist Krystyna Saunders of the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation in Sydney. “How much can the oceans actually absorb?”

Saunders and her colleagues are finding clues that over the past 12,000 years of Earth’s history, higher wind speeds and greater concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have gone together. If this link between wind and CO₂ holds true today, it will lead to higher levels of the greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, which will speed up climate change, which could further intensify the westerlies.

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