Have you ever thought what a jet stream could look like? You might quickly think that it is just a stream of air, you cannot see it. I have always thought like this until I found the picture on left side. It is borrowed from Nasa’s Earth From Space website. Isn’t it beautiful? Awesome! For some people it is probably not impressive at all, but I find it very interesting. You see the contrast between blue ocean and white clouds. You see the Canadian soil down there, very far away. I find it stunning!

I am interested not just in astronomy but also in meteorology. Observing the space and atmosphere is very interesting and I never get enough of it. Jet streams belong into the class of “large scale meteorological phenomena” and they are difficult for amateurs to observe. Images like this one provide a good change to actually see the jet stream. It makes this pretty much abstract phenomenon much more real in human mind. It helps you to understand this phenomenon.

What is a jet stream by the way? Let’s see what Wikipedia says:

Jet streams are fast flowing, relatively narrow air currents found in the atmosphere at around 11 kilometers (36,000 ft) above the surface of the Earth. They form at the boundaries of adjacent air masses with significant differences in temperature, such as of the polar region and the warmer air to the south. The jet stream is mainly found in the tropopause, at the transition between the troposphere (where temperature decreases with height) and the stratosphere (where temperature increases with height).

Jet streams can affect airplanes either by increasing or decreasing their velocity. It is understood that jet streams usually appear above a bad weather. Some people even claim that jet streams are the sources of tornados, meaning that tornados occur due to jet streams. Jet streams were discovered during the second world war by Japanese. After the discovery the Japanese attempted to attack American and Canadian cities and forests with a hydrogen balloon loaded with a bomb. The idea was that jet streams carry the balloons with payload above America and Canada where they were expected to land and cause damage.

Jet streams are up there almost all the time, and in principle they move across the whole planet. The strongest stream is the polar jet stream while the less stronger streams are the subtropical jet streams and arctic jet streams. As the figure left side shows, the main jet streams flow from the west in the upper atmosphere.

Jet streams are interesting. Take a look at Nasa’s Earth From Space website. There are many other interesting images as well, for example those Earth landscapes and meteorological phenomena seen from the space.

Image source.