Wind is the engine of weather. At local latitudes, it causes a change between areas of high and low pressure. It brings both sun and rain. And in the winter months, it regularly blows into strong storms. But climate change is causing a change in existing wind conditions around the world. With devastating consequences.

The wind system is starting to swing.

Atlantic hurricanes, which gather over the tropics and regularly devastate entire regions on the East Coast of the United States, are getting stronger and bringing more and more rain. The damage they cause is devastating. Rising temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere are causing the wind system to swing at an altitude of about ten kilometers. The Arctic Current drives areas of high and low pressure around the Earth. At speeds of up to 500 kilometers per hour, it hunts in a west-east direction around the planet.

Impact on Europe

However, in recent years, meteorologists have noticed that the wind is increasingly experiencing weaker phases, which has fatal consequences for Europe as well. Droughts like in 2018 or rain disasters like in the summer of 2021 are becoming increasingly likely. Researchers are looking for the cause in the Arctic. Temperatures there are rising faster than in the rest of the world.

Changing winds accelerate climate change

Meteorologists have already noted an alarming development in Spitsbergen. Climate change is changing the wind, and changing winds are accelerating climate change, a vicious cycle that has turned the driving force of weather into a dangerous driving force of climate change. (Torsten Mehltretter)