Super Moon

 While watching the  news   the  meteorologist  said  to  look  for the  moon  tomorrow  because  it  will  be  a  super moon .  This    sparked  my interest  in  what  the  super  moon  was  and   why  it  will  look  so  different from any  other night. So  i  looked up  some  information   to  help  me  figure it out. I  think  it  is  funny  how  it  worked out  that  we  have to  do the  moon phase journal  , its perfect timing  for  an event that we  might  have other wise  missed .

March 19 is the undoubtedly the best night to take your dear ones out for a moonlight dinner as the white orb will be 15% brighter 10% larger than normal. And if you miss it, the incident will repeat in 18 years.

Termed supermoon, experts say the full moon will occur at the same time as perigee (when the moon is at the nearest earth orbital point). The moon, otherwise at a distance of 3,84,400 km from earth, gradually comes 20,000 km closer and then moves away.

“There is no scientific significance to this. It is a non-event for astronomers. It is just that the two events are occurring together. News about earthquakes and other things are all rumors. One can only enjoy it as being bigger and brighter compared to average full-moon days,” said Piyush Pandey, director Nehru Planetarium.

Pandey added, “After 29.5 days, we have a full or new moon. Perigee and apogee occur after every 27.3 days when moon is closest and farthest. The day when both happen at the same time is termed as supermoon. This takes a lot of time as after the incident, the gap increases by 2.2 to 4.4 days and so on. They come together again only after 18 years.”

Commenting on the local weather, RV Sharma, deputy director, Indian Meteorological Department (western region), said, “There is no change in weather. Moon affects tides, which is a common incident.”

Jet stream

So, this morning  i was watching the  the news and   the weather  came on .  While giving the forecast the  weather man  said  that  we  will  be  having unusually warm temperatures due to the changes in the  jet stream. This made  me  wonder  what causes  changes in the jet stream so   I have  some  information I  found  on  what  causes these changes.
Jet streams are caused by a combination of a planet's rotation on its axis and atmospheric heating (by solar radiation and, on some planets other than Earth, internal heat). The Coriolis effect describes how a planet's surface and atmosphere rotate fastest relative to each other at the planet's equatorwhile virtually not rotating at all at the poles. Jet streams form near boundaries of adjacent air masses with significant differences in temperature, such as the polar region and the warmer air towards the equator.^[2]

In general, winds are strongest under the tropopause (except during tornadoes, hurricanes or other anomalous situations). If two air masses of different temperatures or densities meet, the resulting pressure difference caused by the density difference (which causes wind) is highest within the transition zone. The wind does not flow directly from the hot to the cold area, but is deflected by the Coriolis effect and flows along the boundary of the two air masses.^[22]

All these facts are consequences of the thermal wind relation. The balance of forces on an atmospheric parcel in the vertical direction is primarily between the pressure gradient and the force of gravity, a balance referred to as hydrostatic. In the horizontal, the dominant balance outside of the tropics is between the Coriolis effect and the pressure gradient, a balance referred to as geostrophic. Given both hydrostatic and geostrophic balance, one can derive the thermal wind relation: the vertical derivative of the horizontal wind is proportional to the horizontal temperature gradient. The sense of the relation is such that temperatures decreasing polewards implies that winds develop a larger eastward component as one moves upwards. Therefore, the strong eastward moving jet streams are in part a simple consequence of the fact that the equator is warmer than the north and south poles.^[22]

The thermal wind relation does not immediately provide an explanation for why the winds are organized in tight jets, rather than distributed more broadly over the hemisphere. There are two factors that contribute to this sharpness of the jets. The first factor is the tendency for developing cyclonic disturbances in midlatitudes to form fronts — sharp localized gradients in temperature. The polar front jet stream can be thought of as the result of thisfrontogenesis process in midlatitudes, as the storms concentrate the north-south temperature contrast into relatively narrow regions.^[15]