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Meteorologists saw several possible and related causes for the heat waves and cooling patterns. High pressure systems over Scandinavia and northern Russia, as well as over the Pacific Northwest of North America, allowed stable air masses to build up heat domes and “block” incoming fronts that could bring changes in winds, precipitation, and temperatures. These blocking patterns worked together with unusual bends and meanders in the jet stream, which took on a see-sawing north-south pattern over the northern hemisphere. The jet moved air northward over the Pacific Ocean and warmed northwest Canada and the west coast of the U.S.; it dove south from cooler areas of Canada into the central and eastern U.S.; and it drove warm Atlantic air north into northern Europe. The jet took a similar north-south zig-zag in western and eastern Siberia. This pattern is more common in winter than in summer.
NASA continues:
Records for high temperatures (mid-30s°C, mid-90s°F) were approached or broken in Latvia, Poland, Belarus, Estonia, Lithuania, and Sweden in late July and early August. Searing temperatures also dried out forests and fuelled wildfires in Siberia; in the U.S. states of Oregon, Washington, and California; in the Canadian provinces of British Columbia, Alberta, and Northwest Territories; and even in Sweden. At the same time, cool air moved from high northern latitudes into much of the U.S., setting record-low daytime and nighttime temperatures as far south as Florida and Georgia. Temperatures dropped to the winter-like levels in the mountains of Tennessee.
Additionally, Arctic sea ice extent was its sixth lowest and continued to decline by 14 percent per decade, Super Typhoon Haiyan recorded the highest wind speed for a tropical cyclone with sustained winds reaching 196 mph, record high temperatures were recorded in the Arctic, including record temperatures being recorded 60 feet down into the permafrost.
originally posted by: Iamthatbish
Please clarify for me.
I myself don't deny the climate is changing, I believe there a cycles and we are witnessing this. This causes me not to believe in global warming. Global warming makes everyone money that is not helping their own cause.
How do reports on weather that we all agree is changing sway anyone's mind?
originally posted by: IceHappy
a reply to: Rezlooper
So its just not because of Meat eaters and lovers of the cow alone...
Of course climate is changing....
I don't understand why people are confused... duh Salt Lake was under salt water 6 times..... hmmm seems a no brainer but then Al Gore wants free money is that not what he sold his shot of POTUS to W for and a Nobel....
originally posted by: Painterz
The point is the climate is changing much faster than it has ever done so before, and human emissions are the root cause.
If we want to avoid catastrophic climate change within our lifetimes, then something has to be done now.
Well in fairness, something had to be done 20 years ago. Now? It's probably too late.
And the reason it is too late? Too many people buried their heads in the sand and refused to accept there was a problem.
And I think this is why people get very frustrated and angry with climate change deniers. Because those of us who believe the mass of science that is around now, see climate change deniers as being the people most responsible for the almost certain horrible deaths of quite possibly ourselves, and definitely our children.
...
Figure 12: The annual number of magnetic storms is represented by each bar of the histogram. Superimposed is the smoothed sunspot number. The dashed lines indicate solar minima and the dotted lines indicate solar maxima. Note the correlation of magnetic activity with solar activity and the apparent increase in magnetic activity with time
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originally posted by: Painterz
The point is the climate is changing much faster than it has ever done so before, and human emissions are the root cause.
If we want to avoid catastrophic climate change within our lifetimes, then something has to be done now.
Well in fairness, something had to be done 20 years ago. Now? It's probably too late.
...
Extreme Nile floods and famines in Medieval Egypt (AD 930–1500) and their climatic implications
Fekri A. Hassan
Abstract
Nile gauge records of variations in Nile floods from the 9th century to the 15th century AD reveal pronounced episodes of low Nile and high Nile flood discharge. Historical data reveal that this period was also characterized by the worst known famines on record. Exploratory comparisons of variations in Nile flood discharge with high-resolution data on sea surface temperature of the North Atlantic climate from three case studies suggest that rainfall at the source of the Nile was influenced by the North Atlantic Oscillation. However, there are apparently flip-flop reversals from periods when variations in Nile flood discharge are positively related to North Atlantic warming to periods where the opposite takes place. The key transitions occur at∼AD 900, 1010, 1070, 1180, 1350 and 1400. The putative flip-flop junctures, which require further confirmation, appear to be quite rapid and some seem to have had dramatic effects on Nile flood discharge, especially if they recurred at short intervals, characteristic of the period from the 9th to the 14th century, coincident with the so-called Medieval Warm Period. The transition from one state to the other was characterized by incidents of low, high or a succession of both low and high extreme floods. The cluster of extreme floods was detrimental causing famines and economic disasters that are unmatched over the last 2000 years.
Earth's Magnetic Field Is Weakening 10 Times Faster Now
by Kelly Dickerson | July 08, 2014 11:29am ET
Changes measured by the Swarm satellite over the past 6 months shows that Earth's magnetic field is changing. Shades of red show areas where it is strengthening, and shades of blue show areas that are weakening.
Credit: ESA/DTU
View full size image
Earth's magnetic field, which protects the planet from huge blasts of deadly solar radiation, has been weakening over the past six months, according to data collected by a European Space Agency (ESA) satellite array called Swarm.
The biggest weak spots in the magnetic field — which extends 370,000 miles (600,000 kilometers) above the planet's surface — have sprung up over the Western Hemisphere, while the field has strengthened over areas like the southern Indian Ocean, according to the magnetometers onboard the Swarm satellites — three separate satellites floating in tandem.
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Underwater volcanoes, not climate change, reason behind melting of West Antarctic Ice Sheet
By James Maynard, Tech Times | June 10, 10:43 PM
A tearing apart of the ground under the Antarctic ice sheet is adding to significant dangers for one of the world's most sensitive regions. Warm water is circulating under the ice sheet, contributing to its melting and slide toward the sea.
(Photo : University of Texas Institute Geophysics)
Melting of a major glacier system in western Antarctica may be caused by underwater volcanoes, and not by global climate change, according to new research.
Thwaites Glacier, a massive outlet for ice that empties into Pine Island Bay, is flowing at a rate of one-and-a-quarter miles per year. The bay opens up into the Amundsen Sea.
The Thwaites Glacier has been the subject of scrutiny by climatologists in the last few years, as new information about the severity of the melting becomes available. Traditional models had assumed heating from subterranean sources was fairly even around the region. New data provides details about areas where little was previously known.
University of Texas researchers studied how water moves underground in the region. They found liquid water was present in a greater number of sources than previously believed, and it is warmer than estimated in previous studies.
"It's the most complex thermal environment you might imagine. And then you plop the most critical, dynamically unstable ice sheet on planet Earth in the middle of this thing, and then you try to model it. It's virtually impossible," Don Blankenship, senior research scientist at the University of Texas, said.
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Weather is the state of the atmosphere, to the degree that it is hot or cold, wet or dry, calm or stormy, clear or cloudy.[1] Weather, seen from an anthropological perspective, is something all humans in the world constantly experience through their senses, at least while being outside.
~
Weather generally refers to day-to-day temperature and precipitation activity, whereas climate is the term for the average atmospheric conditions over longer periods of time.
Climate is a measure of the average pattern of variation in temperature, humidity, atmospheric pressure, wind, precipitation, atmospheric particle count and other meteorological variables in a given region over long periods of time. Climate is different from weather, in that weather only describes the short-term conditions of these variables in a given region.
Climate (from Ancient Greek klima, meaning inclination) is commonly defined as the weather averaged over a long period.[3] The standard averaging period is 30 years,[4] but other periods may be used depending on the purpose.
The difference between climate and weather is usefully summarized by the popular phrase "Climate is what you expect, weather is what you get."
originally posted by: pikestaff
Yet Antarctic sea ice is at its most extensive ever, so it seems what the north looses, the south gains! What about all the reports of mean average global temperature staying the same for the last sixteen years? Europe continuing to have cold summers? Even reports of snow in the Namibian desert? Snow in New Zealand for the first time in seventy five years? Even a report of snow in Brazil? No, I do not have links, just a good memory, and sheets and sheets of printouts.