BSK

deerchaser007 · Jul 20, 2008

I remember you saying that you went to college and studied meteorology. I was talking to my grandmother and we were talking about the difference in rainfalls from years past. She remembers when she was a kid and even older when it would rain for days at a time. Good steady soaking rains. Even snowfalls in the winter were much more abundant. BUT,.. i can remember even when i was a kid those days when it would just rain all day long. And snowfalls were more than now. What has caused these changes in rainfall?? Now it seems all we get is tropical downpours or heavy storms. And its been this way the past 10 to 15 years. AND,. we are lucky to see 1 or 2 snowfalls a year.

I don't want to get into a global warming debate,..i just think its strange how the patterns are changing.

And the reason i put this on the QDM forum is alot of us food plotters and managers watch the weather and rainfall predictions throughout the year,.. thought others might like to talk on it also.

Thanks for any info you can share!!

Boone 58 · Jul 21, 2008

Good point Deerchaser, in the 60's we had really good and frequent snows each winter...........
cant remember anything like that in the last 35 years.
Something does seem to have changed.
The rain never comes in the spring like it did in the 70's/80's.
What do you make of it BSK?

BSK · Jul 21, 2008

The climate is always changing. It has throughout history and always will. The climate is never static. That's something the eco-freaks don't understand. With the climate, change is normal; stasis (a static, unchanging climate) is not. Our climate is always in flux in both the short term--year to year and decade to decade--and the long term--eons and eras. The climate has changed dramtically back and forth from colder to warmer multiple times in human history, and dramatically so.

The question that hasn't been answered yet is what factors cause these fluctuations in climate? The answer will have a great deal to do with changes in ocean currents, but what causes those changes in currents is what is not understood. We do know what a profound effect ocean currents have on climate. Just look at the El Nino and La Nina currents of the east Pacific off South America. Those warmer or cooler than normal water temps, respectively, in only a very small portion of the world's oceans has profound effect on the weather world-wide.

deerchaser007 · Jul 21, 2008

I'll be honest ,. i didn't understand a word of that!! BUT,. sounds like you know what your talking about. SO,.. from what i can put together on that,.. what we are experiencing now is not what we will be experiencing in 10 years or maybe 5 years , or even next year. The pattern could return to normal,.. then go back and forth just like it has in the past. Is that correct??

deerchaser007 · Jul 21, 2008

camoman270 said:
Good point Deerchaser, in the 60's we had really good and frequent snows each winter...........
cant remember anything like that in the last 35 years.
Something does seem to have changed.
The rain never comes in the spring like it did in the 70's/80's.
What do you make of it BSK?

I remember being the kid in the window wanting it to stop raining to go out and play. My grandmother would say its set in for the day,. better just watch TV. NOW,.. i tell my kids,.. it will stop raining in about a hour then you can go back out. Strange on the changes since them days. Seems BSK knows more than i ever will. Hope he is right.

BSK · Jul 22, 2008

deerchaser007 said:
I'll be honest ,. i didn't understand a word of that!! BUT,. sounds like you know what your talking about. SO,.. from what i can put together on that,.. what we are experiencing now is not what we will be experiencing in 10 years or maybe 5 years , or even next year. The pattern could return to normal,.. then go back and forth just like it has in the past. Is that correct??

Correct. The weather (short-term) and climate (weather long-term) not only go through cycles, fairly significant changes occur over hundreds of years. We have gone through mini ice-ages in the last few hundred years and extremely warm periods, much warmer than today, such as back in the 14th through 17th Century when North America and Europe were extremly warm (and probably caused the period of human history called The Renaissance). At that time it was so warm in Europe that English vineyards outproduced French vineyards for wine quality. During all other periods of human history it has been too cold in England to grow wine grapes.

In localized areas of the U.S. we will see short and decade-long swings in weather, just like the Oklahoma dustbowl was a short term swing in climate. The Southeastern drought has been an ongoing climate swing that has lasted nearly a decade.

In addition there are swings in weather that appear to last about 30 years. These are caused by known fluctuations in solar energy output.

So much of the driving forces of the climate are not known. However, what we do know is that some of the major influences that drive the weather are the temperature and flow patterns of ocean currents and solar energy output (which does fluctuate). In fact, we are in a solar minimum that should cause the world's climate to cool a bit. And despite all the hype about global warming, the world's climate (averaging temperatures from everywhere in the world) has actually cooled over the last decade.

However, we still know so little about how the climate works that not a single computer climate model has ever been able to predict the following years weather accurately. We can't even predict the weather beyond a couple of weeks. These forecasts of a runaway greenhouse effect are absolute bunk. Those very models have never predicted anything accurately. Carbon dioxide is actually a fairly weak greenhouse gas, and carbon dioxide is only a small part of our atmosphere. Much more powerful greenhouse gases exist and make up a much larger percent of the air (water vapor for one).