Like a River Flows

In my last years of teaching at the Augustana Campus of the University of Alberta, I did something out of the ordinary at the start of the first class in a course. I teach psychology, so why would I start the course by showing pictures of rivers? After spending so many years teaching lots of the important things in psychology, I had decided that there are other important things that students should know about, especially because no one else has told them.

I started by showing them a picture of the Amazon River, which has lots of meanders, or slow-moving curves. Next, I showed a picture of the fast-flowing North Saskatchewan River which has a much straighter path with few meanders.

At this point there are lots of puzzled looks as the students were thinking “Has he finally lost it?” I asked them if they could guess why I showed them these rivers.

I asked them if they remember some of the extreme weather events that had occurred over the past couple of years, or even earlier. For example, did they recall the heat dome that enveloped BC in 2021 when the town of Lytton was destroyed by forest fires? Did they recall that in February 2023 the state of Texas underwent a deep freeze that knocked out the entire power system for days? Were they aware that more recently the temperature reached a record high of over 40 °C in London, England?

Then I said “Here’s another type of river I want to show you. It’s what called an atmospheric river.” At this point I showed a picture of the jet stream. This picture, which is labelled normal, showed a relatively straight jet stream. Then I told them that the jet stream is driven by the difference in temperature between the frigid air in the Arctic above the jet stream and the much warmer air below the jet stream. Under normal circumstances this is a big difference, and the jet stream is quite fast. Under these conditions the fast jet stream stays quite straight.

But the problem is that the Arctic air is warming rapidly which drastically reduces this difference. This makes the jet stream slow down, increasing the number of meanders in its path. Then students could see why the fact that slow rivers meander is so important.

Southward meanders mean that the cold Arctic air travels south resulting in extremes like the Texas freeze. Northward meanders draw hot tropical air north, which accounts for the heat dome of 2021 in BC and the London heat wave in 2023. Incidentally, this also accounts for why Great Britain and the rest of northern Europe have experienced very cold winters in the past few years, as south meanders have brought frigid Arctic air down to these countries.

I presented this information to students to provide them the ability to counter claims they may have heard, or may hear, that extremely cold winters “prove” that global warming is a myth. For example, Republican Senator from Oklahoma James Inhof, who was the Chairman of the Senate’s Environment (my emphasis) and Public Works Committee once opined that “It’s very, very cold out. Very unseasonable.” To prove his point, he pulled out a snowball threw it at the Senate Chair. Apparently, he did not know about the jet stream and its meanders being able to explain the frigid winter, or if he did, he chose not to mention it.

I concluded that this was important information for students. Research shows more than half of young people say climate change makes them feel afraid, sad, anxious, angry, powerless, and helpless. Helping them understand climate change will help empower them. Having this discussion was definitely worth sacrificing my opportunity to present them with other invaluable psychology content for that brief time in class.

The feedback I received showed that students found this information to be useful. Indeed, some have said that there are people they know who should definitely be told about this. Hopefully, students will share this information with others. For me, this was a positive outcome. It’s always rewarding when students see the value of what you are telling them.