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  • Review Article
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Seasonal and regional jet stream changes and drivers

Nature Reviews Earth & Environment volume 6, pages 824–842 (2025)Cite this article

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Abstract

The eddy-driven jet streams, which are regions of strong westerly wind in the mid-latitudes of both hemispheres, exert a leading influence on regional climate. In this Review, we outline the seasonally and regionally varying drivers, characteristics and changes in the jet streams. State-of-the-art models commonly predict a future polewards shift of the zonal-mean and annual-mean jet streams, typically ranging between 0° and 2° latitude by the end of the century under a high-emissions scenario, but with large model-to-model uncertainty. Furthermore, regional and seasonal projections can deviate substantially from the annual-mean and zonal-mean picture, and the drivers of these projected changes are not fully understood. Jet trends have emerged in the reanalysis record since 1979, of which a polewards shift of the summertime austral jet of ~0.3° per decade is the trend most clearly attributable to anthropogenic forcing. Although other trends have been observed, potentially large internal variability and incomplete understanding of the drivers of these trends precludes clear anthropogenic attribution at this point. Research is unevenly distributed across regions and seasons, with winter receiving the most attention, particularly in the North Atlantic. To support physical understanding and impact assessments, future research should provide a more complete picture of the seasonally and regionally varying jet stream drivers, and their changes, especially in spring and autumn.

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Fig. 1: Historical 700 hPa zonal reanalysis wind fields with corresponding CMIP6 model bias.
Fig. 2: Indices of jet latitude and strength in numerical models and observations.
Fig. 3: Drivers of the jet stream climatology and future response in different regions.
Fig. 4: Projected end-of-century change in zonal-wind fields under a high-emissions scenario.
Fig. 5: Observed trends in zonal-wind fields.

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Data availability

CMIP6 data used in this study is publicly available from the Earth System Grid Federation (https://aims2.llnl.gov/search/cmip6/). ERA5 data is publicly available from the Copernicus Climate Data Store (https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/datasets). Code used to analyse the data and produce the figures will be shared upon request.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank two anonymous referees and S. Schemm for their constructive feedback. P.C. acknowledges support from UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) under the UK government’s Horizon Europe funding Guarantee, grant EP/Y036123/1, and from UKRI Natural Environmental Research Council (NERC) grants NE/V012045/1 and NE/T006250/1. T.W. acknowledges support from UKRI NERC grant NE/W005875/1. This work used JASMIN, the UK collaborative data analysis facility. The authors acknowledge the World Climate Research Programme’s Working Group on Coupled Modelling, which is responsible for CMIP, and thank the climate modelling groups for producing and making available their model output. The authors also thank the Earth System Grid Federation (ESGF) for archiving the model output and providing access, and the multiple funding agencies who support CMIP and ESGF. I.R.S. acknowledges funding from the National Center for Atmospheric Research, which is a major facility sponsored by the NSF under Cooperative Agreement No. 1852977.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, Imperial College London, London, UK

    Philipp Breul & Paulo Ceppi

  2. NSF National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO, USA

    Isla R. Simpson

  3. Atmospheric, Oceanic and Planetary Physics, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

    Tim Woollings

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P.B. and P.C. initiated and led the synthesis and writing. I.R.S. created Figs. 1 and 4; P.B. created all other figures. All authors contributed to the writing and editing of the article and gave feedback on the figures.

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Correspondence to Philipp Breul.

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Breul, P., Ceppi, P., Simpson, I.R. et al. Seasonal and regional jet stream changes and drivers. Nat Rev Earth Environ 6, 824–842 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43017-025-00749-9

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