The explanation is Rossby’s waves

The extreme heat has undoubtedly been the defining feature of last June. However, between warm episode and warm episode, we have seen the passage of troughs that brought us some thermal relief, accompanied, yes, storms and even hails. Right now we are in full of relief, next week, the situation seems uncertain.

Cold air, hot air.Meteorologists expect the beginning of the week that is standing out for an abrupt contrast between the north and center and south of the peninsula. The reason is in the presence of two differentiated air masses, a cold to the north and one of warm air to the south.

Rossby’s waves. To explain what happens at the atmospheric level, it is convenient to detail before one of the phenomena involved, the not well -known Rossby waves. What exactly are these waves? It’s about Atmospheric waves of planetary scale that mark the alternation of trough and dorsal in middle latitudes, such as ours.

These waves move west to this dragged by the meanders of the polar jet. In principle, waves are governed by a kind of balance, what meteorology calls compensatory behaviors: if the pressure decreases in some area, in another it must fall.

“Strange dynamics ”. The problem is that we are entering unknown territory. As recently explained the physicist, disseminator and researcher JJ German Through your account in Twitterthis should imply, that as time passes, conditions such as those lived in the month of June should be “compensated” with more or less opposite conditions in the coming weeks.

But there is a problem and we are in unknown territory. “As this year we have, indeed, a strange dynamic, just this will not happen: a trough with the opportunity to” sweep “the Iberian Peninsula … and it is only going to touch the north and northeast. The rest almost nor does it find out,” It points to German.

That is, everything seems to indicate that after the succession of hot episodes marked by the extreme anticyclonic time, the “calm” of the troughs will not arrive or, at least, it will not arrive with the intensity that you would expect.

What can we expect? The story seems to be repeated, more or less. The troughs that are now giving us a breath of heat will last little and next week the heat will return. Although not quite: during the first days of the week a mass of warm air will settle on the center and south of the peninsula while a mass of cold air will remain in the north.

Meanwhile, the situation will not be far from what we have seen at other times of transition, in which the heat will coexist with the appearance of storms. The State Meteorology Agency has activated various notices today and tomorrow, both for rains and storms and by maximum temperatures.

In some areas of the northwest we can see even areas where notices by maximum temperatures will share space with storms or rainy warnings. From Sunday the expected notices are only because of the high temperatures.

In Xataka | A buoy in Mallorca has revealed the weather problem facing Spain: the Mediterranean Sea is in flames

Image | ECMWF