After the 1883 eruption of the Krakatoa volcano , weather watchers tracked and mapped the effects on the sky over several years . They labelled the phenomenon the " equatorial smoke stream " . In the 1920s , a Japanese meteorologist , Wasaburo Oishi , detected the jet stream from a site near Mount Fuji . He tracked pilot balloons , also known as pibals ( balloons used to determine upper level winds ) , as they rose into the atmosphere . Oishi 's work largely went unnoticed outside Japan because it was published in Esperanto . American pilot Wiley Post , the first man to fly around the world solo in 1933 , is often given some credit for discovery of jet streams . Post invented a pressurized suit that let him fly above . In the year before his death , Post made several attempts at a high-altitude transcontinental flight , and noticed that at times his ground speed greatly exceeded his air speed . German meteorologist Heinrich Seilkopf is credited with coining a special term , '' Strahlströmung '' ( literally " jet current " ) , for the phenomenon in 1939 . Many sources credit real understanding of the nature of jet streams to regular and repeated flight-path traversals during World War II . Flyers consistently noticed westerly tailwinds in excess of in flights , for example , from the US to the UK . Similarly in 1944 a team of American meteorologists in Guam , including Reid Bryson , had enough observations to forecast very high west winds that would slow bombers going to Japan
1883 eruption of the Krakatoa volcano
1883 eruption of Krakatoa
Jet stream