Saturday, February 21, 2015

I’ve never argued the fact that our planet’s climate is changing. I just argued that it was “global warming” and that it’s all our fault.
I worked in a US Air Force weather station on the communications side for a few months and it was long enough to spark an interest in me. The station was on Charleston AFB, SC and it was called the “Latin American Forecast Center.” They tracked hurricanes. It was the main Atlantic hurricane tracking center before NOAA took over and moved it to Miami. The Hurricane Tracking planes called in their data to us via a radio/telephone patch, the forecasters transcribed it, and I (and my fellow communications troops) typed them up, and sent them out on the Air Force weather network. One time there was so much going on in the Atlantic (3 or 4 storms) that they put one of the calls through on the Comm side phone and I got to transcribe the message.
My theory about weather has been that it’s cyclical. It’s definitely not an exact science. I’ve always said that I don’t think that we and our “carbon footprints” are solely responsible for the changes happening. I think it’s all happened before and that volcanic and seismic activity have just as much to do with it as we do.
For example, the recent earthquakes. I found an article on the NASA site. They say that people shouldn’t worry and that it shouldn’t affect anything drastically, I can’t believe that this doesn’t have something to do with the recent, drastic weather changes, and the changes in the jet stream:
·       The March 11, magnitude 9.0 earthquake in Japan shortened the length of each Earth day and shifted the planet’s axis. Calculations indicate that by changing the distribution of Earth's mass, the Japanese earthquake caused Earth to rotate a bit faster, shortening the length of the day by about 1.8 microseconds (a microsecond is one millionth of a second).
·       The 2010 magnitude 8.8 earthquake in Chile shortened the length of day by about 1.26 microseconds and shifted Earth's figure axis by about 8 centimeters (3 inches).
·       The calculations also show the Japan quake shifted the position of Earth's figure axis (the axis about which Earth's mass is balanced) by about 17 centimeters (6.5 inches), towards 133 degrees east longitude.

These are three of the largest earthquakes since 1900, and although I know that Earth's figure axis should not be confused with its north-south axis; they are offset by about 10 meters (about 33 feet). This shift in Earth's figure axis will cause Earth to wobble a bit differently as it rotates, but it will not cause a shift of Earth's axis in space—only external forces such as the gravitational attraction of the sun, moon and planets can do that.

Look at the last two winters (2013-2014 and 2014-2015). The amount of snow that fell across the Northern US, although not completely unprecedented, was more in those two years than in numerous previous years put together. Boston’s average snowfall for a winter is usually around 40 inches spread out over 6 months (November –April.) So far just for 2015 Boston has had over 7 feet and it’s snowing again today.

In a normal year, the Great Lakes are about 30% frozen. I remember the Detroit River freezing, maybe once when I was a kid growing up there (sometime in the 50’s.) Right now the Great Lakes are almost 90% frozen. I heard something like 88% yesterday on the news. An AP article said that with more frigid temps and at least one more winter storm on its way that percentage could go up. The most widespread freeze was 95% in 1979 but it got up to almost 93% in March of 2014. One likely explanation for the rapid buildup of ice is that 2014's freeze lasted so long — Lake Superior wasn't completely ice-free until June — and the summer was so mild that the lakes didn't absorb much heat. We started this season with below-water temperatures to begin with.

The ice blanket reaches across more than 90 percent of Lakes Superior, Huron and Erie, while Lakes Michigan and Ontario are more than halfway covered.

Niagra Falls is almost completely frozen.

Coast Guard cutters open channels for vessels hauling vital cargo such as heating oil and road salt. The Detroit-based tug Bristol Bay has struggled for days to free the Arthur M. Anderson, a freighter stranded about 70 miles east of Cleveland in ice up to 10 feet thick. The Canadian Coast Guard has dispatched an icebreaker to assist.
The job has taken so much longer than expected that the Bristol Bay's crew ran low on food and had to receive a delivery by helicopter, which lowered supplies in their rescue basket.
Things will get even busier in mid-March, when the shipping season begins for the lakes' regular traffic of vessels carrying iron ore, coal, grain and other bulk cargo.
In our area, we are normally averaging highs in the low 60’s this time of year, with lows it the low 40’s. We’ve set several new records for lows in the last couple weeks.
Here’s the forecast for the next ten days from three different sources:
The
Weather Channel
WeatherBug
Weather Underground
day/date
temps
conditions
temps
conditions
temps
conditions
Sat-21
57/51
cloudy
62/43
rain
56/51
rain
Sun-22
66/47
rain
43/30
rain
68/47
rain
Mon-23
45/26
rain
37/29
mix
46/27
rain
Tues-24
44/34
partly sunny
50/26
sleet
46/35
rain
Wed-25
53/33
rain
41/28
mix
53/33
rain
Thur-26
44/27
mix
36/30
mix
45/26
ice pellets
Fri-27
43/30
rain
42/40
thunderstorms
44/30
ice pellets
Sat-28
50/40
mix
52/42
thunderstorms
50/40
rain
Sun-1
59/43
rain
55/39
rain
58/43
rain
Mon-2
57/40
partly sunny


58/40
partly sunny

And this new trend that The Weather Channel came up with in 2011 of naming winter storms. I’ll admit that it does make it easier to keep track of. And as bad as they’ve been, maybe it’s a good idea. A lot of folks are saying it’s a bad idea, or that it’s just an advertising ploy, or that it creates panic in the viewers. It may be that, but creating a little heightened awareness can’t really be a bad thing when it gets as bad as it has been the last couple years.   



No comments:

Post a Comment