JET STREAMS AND MONSOONS

The jet stream and the monsoon of the Indian Ocean are things that most people hear about at some time or other. This monsoon is discussed beginning on page 166 at the bottom of the first column with accompanying maps on page 167. The jet stream discussion begins at the bottom of page 170. There is a nice photo of jet stream associated clouds on page 173. The picture is from over Egypt looking southeast toward Saudi Arabia. The climate classifications get tedious and blurred as presented in textbooks and textbooks can get stuck with old (outdated) material. Jet streams were predicted but undocumented until near the end of World War II when military planes encountered these high altitude winds. Information in most texts reflects this fairly recent discovery and subsequent research. An important role of jet streams is to rapidly redistribute heat within the atmosphere. Cold air is brought equator-ward and warm air, although less so, is moved toward the polar regions. The book gets this approximately right. Knowledge of the monsoon has been around since the lands around the Indian Ocean were populated thousands of years ago. 19th century and more recent scientists explained these wind reversals in changing ways that reflect increasing understanding of atmospheric dynamics. Jet streams and the monsoon are now known to be linked so explanations of the monsoon that were popular before knowledge of jet streams developed have been cast aside. Our textbook has not caught up. This handout and class material will correct this issue and provide an extra bonus of some cultural and historical background. This might make the climate being discussed monsoon coastal, p. 234, Fig. 7.11 a bit less tedious. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ The word monsoon comes from the Arabic mawsim, meaning season. Mawsim refers to that part of the year during which ships could safely depart from port, as in mawsim adani, the season of Aden. The sailing seasons were collectively called mawsim al-asfar. The regular periods of northeast and southwest winds, from and to India called monsoon by westerners, are called by the Arabs rib al-azyab and rib al-kaws, respectively. From the fall equinox through winter the northeast winds begin in northern India [a modern explanation will follow later] and bring sunny days and dry cooling air moving to the southwest. From the spring equinox through summer southwest winds heavy with moisture bring torrential monsoon rains. The onset of the rains is always very sudden. It is also very important to a land that has been rainless for months while growing increasingly hot and dry. Early theories of how the monsoon worked failed to explain the suddenness of their sweeping onto the southern part of India and progressing northward uniformly day by day. More to follow but now some background.

Europe, after about 900 A.D., began an economic and cultural recovery from the barbarian invasions that had put an end to the Roman Empire. European rulers and lesser nobility began to demand the goods that the Indian Ocean trading networks supplied to Alexandria and Constantinople via land and water routes across lands controlled by Muslim Arab rulers. In this Islamic world, gold and silver were tools of trade. Gold and silver must circulate, and this circulation, called rawaj, was a social and religious duty. On the eastern ends of the trade networks things were different. They were not interested in European goods. Payment required gold or silver. The gold that flowed to India was hoarded, in the form of temple treasure or jewelry. It has been said that India was the graveyard of gold. It still is. Gold held no monetary value to the Chinese but silver was important. They willingly traded gold for silver while paying for imports with silks and porcelain that others could not produce. [It took the Europeans about 300 years of intrigue, espionage, and bullying to approach the Chinese expertise in ceramics but thats a different story.] Just as India was the graveyard of gold, China was the graveyard of silver. The European merchants who wanted the textiles, ceramics, metalwork, dyes, precious stones, and more had to pay in gold and silver. This flow of precious metals from West to East was a constant of pre-modern world history. This caused the commercial interests of Europe to constantly search for new supplies of silver and gold. They also sought ways to circumvent the traders of the middle east to reduce costs and interference in their business. As the countries of Europe became better organized and capable they began explorations which we know as the age of discovery. That in most cases they were discovering things that others already knew seemed to escape them. Still, this was a time of rapid accumulation and recording of Earths physical geography. Columbus discovered America (1492). Vasco da Gama discovered it was possible to sail around Africa (1498) to reach India. Spain reached Mexico and Peru and it is estimated that up to one-half of all the silver sent back from that region eventually could be found in China. Trading in the Mediterranean Sea (sea at the middle of the world) was controlled from Venice. Synchronized to the clock-like regularity of the monsoon winds in the Indian Ocean was the equally regular sailing of the Venetian convoys, the mude, which set out toward the end of August and made their way slowly through the Adriatic and the Aegean Seas to Cyprus (source of copper) and Alexandria, timing their arrival there to coincide with the availability of monsoonborne goods from the East, and returned to Venice eleven months later. With the return of the mude, spices, textiles and other goods were transported overland and by internal waterways to the trade fairs of northern Europe. These far flung economies were linked and the timing established by sailing seasons (mawsim al-asfar) not then explainable. This is not to say sailors did not know what happened. They just didnt know why these winds came as they did, controlling wealth, life and death. For example, from mid-March, traders knew, the prevailing wind blew from the southwest, and the last ships left Yemen eastbound for India by mid-September, so they could complete their voyage before the northeast monsoon began.

Westbound, the first ships left western India for Yemen on October 16 th, arriving if all went well about 18 days later. If departure and arrival dates were well chosen and the winds behaved, the turnaround times could be very short. Each sailing season was divided into two major periods, one at the beginning, called awwal al-zaman (first of the season), and one at the end, called akbir al-zaman (last of the season). Each offered an advantage: The convoys that left during the first of the season found the readiest markets, and those that left at the last had the shortest turnaround time. Of the two monsoons, the southwest was the more dangerous. In June and July, heavy swells and the famous torrential rains closed the ports of western India. The northeast monsoon, in contrast, beginning in August in western India, meant clear sailing with steady winds and few squalls. Because it arose on the mainland, it carried little or no rain, and could be sailed with ease throughout its season. At times the monsoon will approach southern India, perhaps bringing rain to within sight of the coastal inhabitants, yet remaining stubbornly offshore. After months of dryness and increasing temperatures this is a cruel fate. [Page 234 in the text shows the rainfall by month for a coastal city in southern India.] An explanation in the text for the monsoon is on pages 166-167 with maps. There is nothing about this explanation that can account for the stalling or pausing of the winds as mentioned above. The mechanism discussed would have the winds change direction more regularly as the continent heated and cooled with the high-sun and low-sun periods. As more knowledge was gained, researchers realized that cold air (in January) could not flow up and over the Himalayan Mountains as shown in Figure 5.2, page 167. Cold air does flow from north of the mountain barrier out of the region to the southeast where it doesnt have to flow uphill for thousands of feet. Researchers sought and found a better explanation. One that doesnt require bitterly cold dense air to flow up and over the highest mountain range in the world. And one that does account for the sudden onslaught of the monsoon. The new explanation is based on a jet stream. Well consider it in class.