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temperature gradient, thus not much to drive winds. Hence, the jet streams are primarily a
winter phenomenon.
The jet streams are of great interest to climate scientists because they influence and
are influenced by atmospheric processes taking place lower in the troposphere, including
the formation of mid-latitude depressions (or storms) described earlier. They can also act
as the mediators of teleconnections. This term is used here to describe a situation where an
atmospheric event in one geographic locality is related to events perhaps thousands of kilo-
metres away. For example, the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) influences the loca-
tion of the jet streams, resulting in temperature and rainfall events as far away as North and
South America and Western Europe.
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