Jet streams are relatively high speed west-to-east winds concentrated as narrow currents at altitudes of 6 to 9 miles (9 to 14 kilometers) above sea level. These meandering “rivers” of air can be traced around the globe in segments thousands of kilometers long, hundreds of kilometers wide and several kilometers thick.

What is true about warm, saturated air? Warm saturated air contains more water vapor than cold air. Compared to clouds, fogs are? Clouds result when air rises and cools.

Atmospheric rivers are rivers of air that contain high water vapor content. They originate from the equator. Responsible for most of the water vapor transported from the tropics across the mid latitudes towards the poles.

Learn more about these rivers in the sky These columns of vapor move with the weather, carrying an amount of water vapor roughly equivalent to the average flow of water at the mouth of the Mississippi River. When the atmospheric rivers make landfall, they often release this water vapor in the form of rain or snow.

Atmospheric rivers occur in the lower portions of the atmosphere and, when they are forced to ascend by mountains or local atmospheric dynamics, they can produce heavy precipitation. Pineapple Express storms are a subset of atmospheric river that originate near Hawaii and impact the U.S. West Coast.

On any given day, atmospheric rivers account for over 90% of the global meridional (north-south) water vapor transport, yet they cover less than 10% of the Earth’s circumference. Atmospheric rivers are also known to contribute to about 22% of total global runoff.

The short answer: No, outside of the immediate vicinity of the major river it does not have a large impact on the weather of a larger area. Rivers create something called a microclimate, which means that the large river has an impact on an area of no more than a few hundred meters.

Flooding concern for 15 million people This atmospheric river event is being classified as a Category 5 — the highest level — from the Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes. The flooding potential is huge, with roughly 15 million people under some sort of watch or advisory.

They provide the fuel for the massive rain and snowstorms and subsequent floods along the U.S. West Coast. Though beneficial for water supplies, these events can wreak havoc on travel, bring deadly mudslides and cause catastrophic damage to life and property, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said.

An atmospheric river such as this is popularly known as a “Pineapple Express.” “All Pineapple Expresses are atmospheric rivers, but not all atmospheric rivers are Pineapple Expresses,” said Drew Peterson, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Monterey.

Results show that atmospheric rivers are formed by the cold front which sweeps up water vapor in the warm sector as it catches up with the warm front. This causes a narrow band of high water vapor content to form ahead of the cold front at the base of the warm conveyor belt airflow.

Events like these have drawn attention in recent years, but atmospheric rivers are not new. They have meandered through the sky for millions of years, transporting water vapor from the equator toward the poles.

Atmospheric rivers are a concentrated stream of water vapor in the middle and lower levels of the atmosphere. They’re like a continuous conga line of moisture streaming across the ocean without interruption until they encounter an obstacle such as the coast ranges in California.

A warmer atmosphere drives more extreme precipitation across all storm types, increasing the risk of flooding. Atmospheric river storms are projected to increase in intensity and duration in California in a warming climate, with the most intense atmospheric river storms becoming more frequent.

New York City, Philadelphia, Houston, Baltimore, and Miami were ranked as the top five cities with the largest high social vulnerability populations within the future FEMA 100-year floodplain — and thus face a difficult double jeopardy over time.

That includes the risk of megafloods dubbed “ARk storms,” like the extreme atmospheric river in 1861 that flooded California’s Central Valley with so much water that the newly elected governor, Leland Stanford, traveled to his inauguration in a rowboat.

Reginald Newell

Scientists have discovered an even bigger river in South America, and it’s in the sky above the Amazon rainforest. Turns out, this sky river is the reason there’s a rainforest at all…

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Air is soluble in water, and the solubility of air in water follows Henry’s Law – “the amount of air dissolved in a fluid is proportional to the pressure in the system”. The amount of air that can be dissolved in water increases with pressure and decreases with temperature of the water.

With no water supply, all vegetation would soon die out and the world would resemble a brownish dot, rather than a green and blue one. Clouds would cease to formulate and precipitation would stop as a necessary consequence, meaning that the weather would be dictated almost entirely by wind patterns.

Organisms that need air to breathe would die. Plants and land animals would die. Most aquatic organisms would die. However, some bacteria could survive, so losing the atmosphere wouldn’t kill all life on Earth.