WHAT CAUSES WEATHER?

WHAT CAUSES WEATHER?
The Earth’s rotation. It’s that simple. There are many other things that affect the weather but the rotation of our planet is the largest single factor. Coming in a close second is the sun. However, without the Earth’s rotation one side of the planet would be a super-hot desolate wasteland. The other side would be a cold, barren, frigid wasteland. Period! End of story!

Why is that so? Let me give a simple explanation The Earth consists of two hemispheres, the Northern and the Southern. They are attached to each other so turn at the same speed and in the same direction (one’s just upside down to the other). So... let’s just take one half to simplify the illustration. Take the northern hemisphere and flatten it out like a record, to younger people a CD. The equator runs along the outer edge of the CD. The North Pole is at its center. Now start turning the CD or record just as it turns during its operation. As you look down upon it try to estimate the speed of the edge of our flattened Earth as it turns. Well, no need to estimate. We can figure it out easily. At the equator the circumference of the Earth is 25,000 miles. It completes one turn every twenty four hours. Doing a little division we quickly determine that a spot on the edge of the CD (Earth) is traveling at 1042 miles per hour. If you get a little nauseous on a merry go round you might not like my next thought. If you are sitting on the equator of this planet you are moving at 1,042 MPH. If you are in the mid-latitudes of the US you are moving, maybe, at only 700 MPH. The chair you are sitting in as you read this is moving at 700 MPH. The building you are sitting in is moving at 700 MPH. Weird, huh? Haven’t thought about that much? Well, what the heck does that have to do with the weather?

Well, let’s put our CD into a little plastic box and start it turning again. There is air inside the box. As the edge of the CD turns at 1,042 MPH and less towards the pole what happens to the air? What is its speed? At first, for an instant, it is zero. Friction with the surface quickly causes the air to begin moving. After a billion years or so (on Earth) the air began to move at the speed of the surface. If you are sitting in a house in the mid-latitudes the air is moving at 700 MPH. Shouldn’t your house be quickly ripped off of its foundations and shredded. Why doesn’t that happen here on Earth? The answer is that this has been going on for an awfully long time, according to scientists three billion years or longer. Surface friction eventually got the air near the surface to moving. The air higher up began to move as the air below did but at a lesser rate. Eventually, after an awfully long time, the surface air was moving much slower (in relation to the Earth) near the surface of the Earth as it is in fact ‘dragged’ along by the surface. If you look outside on a calm Summer’s day you may think there is no wind, that the air is not moving at all. In fact it is moving at 700 MPH. As are you.

Well, while all of this was happening the Sun began to have its effect. The side of the Earth towards the Sun heated up ( we call the time when the Sun is visible ‘day’). When that side rotated so that it was facing away from the Sun it cooled (we call that time ‘night’). This heating and cooling is so much of a part of our existence that we hardly think about it unless it hits some extreme. However, without the rotation of the Earth we would not be aware of this heating and cooling. On the dark side we would just know that it was awfully cold. On the exposed side we would realize that it was too hot. Likely too hot or too cold for life to exists, at least life as we know it.

Okay. The air is moving in concert with the surface of the Earth. It’s getting hotter near the equator since it most directly faces the Sun ( in the higher latitudes the Earth curves away from the Sun and hits at an angle so is not heated as effectively) and is noticeably cooler near the Poles. The winds are all parallel to each other happily moving in concert with the surface of the Earth. Why then does it get hotter in Summer and cooler in Winter? It should stay the same. Right? Well the Earth rotates on an axis and that axis is not straight up and own (in relation to the Sun). One pole of the Earth (at the tip of the axis) is always closer to the Sun than the other tip. Fortunately the Earth rotates around the Sun. At one part of the cycle the North Pole is closer to the Sun (its Summer). As it orbits 180 degrees from that position the South Pole has moved into the position where it is closer to the Sun. This effect creates our seasons. Without this tilt to the axis of the Earth seasons would be more nearly uniform.

Well, even within seasons there are variations. It will get unseasonably warm and in a couple of weeks get unseasonable cold. Sometimes these changes are minor and sometimes fairly drastic. When you watch your television or internet weather person they always give the temperature and beside it the ‘normal’ temperature. We humans like to complain about the weather. It’s too hot...or it’s too cold. How do we know what ‘too hot’ or ‘too cold’ is? Well the weather person tells us. Isn’t that good enough? After all they are the ‘experts’. Fair enough.

But how does the weather person know what is abnormally hot or abnormally cold? They take an average of the high (or low) temperatures for each date in recorded weather history and that is considered ‘normal’. Isn’t that valid? No it’s not! The reason is that weather temperature measurements have only been recorded since the late 1800s. There were no valid measurements before that time. So... what they should say is that the ‘normal high’ for this date was XYZ degrees based on an average of the last 120 years or so. What is a little disconcerting to me and one of the reasons I began this blog is that some sort of normal weather has been going on for one billion years. How can any man express an opinion on what is a ‘normal temperature when his data or observations are based on a sample of .000012% of all days or years? In what other endeavor would we DARE to express an opinion on such a small sample? None.

Whew!! Sorry! Got my dander up there a little bit. I will continue in a second on seasonal variations but first I would like to illustrate the absurdness of the sample on which global warming adherents’ arguments are based. Let’s take major league baseball as an example. A typical ball player is judged by his batting record (among other things). If we judged the competency of a major league ball player by his batting average using the same sample that global warming advocates use it would go something like this: A player has 3 ½ bats per game and will play 160 games per year or 560 at bats per year. Over a career of twenty years he would bat 11,200 times. He can get around seven pitches per at bat or a total of 78,400 pitches. If we judged his competency based on a sample of .000012% we would give him (or her) a total of 1/1000th of a pitch. How do you do that? Would the pitcher put the ball in his glove and then the sample is up? Ridiculous but no more so that the observations of global warming alarmists. I used one billion years as my base since life has FLOURISHED on this planet for that long. Let’s make the example a little shorter, say a million years. Mammals have certainly flourished during that time period. We would be judging the batter’s competency on ONE pitch. Ridiculous. Read elsewhere in this blog about The Little Ice Age and well as The Medieval Warm Period about weather over the last 1,000 years.

Why do we have such variations within seasons? Why the often quick changes to a Summer cold spell or a Winter warm spell? Why the week to week variations within each season? Well, we do not have perfect circulation with parallel air currents circling the globe. If you go back to the above of how air is moving maybe it seems that the air should follow latitudinal lines around the planet. They do not. Generally in the middle latitudes the air circulates following the pattern of a sine wave. Most of our weather follows the air circulating in the pattern. Take one part of a sine wave and you will have a ‘U’ shape. Lets put the top of the U at the top of the page (nearer the North Pole) and the bottom or closed end of the U nearer the equator. Imagine air moving from the upper left, along the wave, getting closer and closer to the equator. As it reaches the bottom of the U it suddenly veers to the northeast (at least in the Northern hemisphere) and moves away from the equator. This is a miracle of our planet. This upper level air flow takes cold air from the pole and moves it towards the equator. It takes warmer air near the equator and moves it towards the pole. The air is always being transported and mixed giving us an atmosphere which is comfortable for us to live in.

There are many other factors which affect our weather and our temperatures. Ocean currents have a similar ‘heat transfer’ effect to that just described. The Sun gets hotter or colder and the Earth follows; volcanoes throw dust into the air reflecting solar radiation back into space; clouds form and make it cooler; oceans evaporate water into the air causing clouds and other weather. The Earth’s revolutions are not symmetrical. The Earth wobbles a little on it’s axis, with the poles traveling a little closer or a little farther from the Sun, receiving radiation that is a little more direct or a little less direct. All revolutions around the Sun are not the same. Sometimes it’s a little elliptical; other times it’s nearly a circle. All of these factors and their effects on temperatures have or will be described elsewhere in this site.

However, the basic mechanism is as described above.