There are three big drivers of weather for
any place on Earth: the latitude, the local environment, and solar system
cycles.
The biggest weather factor is latitude – are you in the torrid,
temperate, or frigid zone? These climatic zones are defined by the
intensity of heat delivered to Earth's surface by the sun.
In the Torrid Zone, the sun is always high in the
sky. It is generally hot, often moist, with low atmospheric
pressure, muggy conditions, and abundant rain and storms, some
severe. Places close to the Equator get two summers per year (just
one long summer) and very little winter. Farther from the equator,
there are two seasons: "The Wet" and "The
Dry." The Torrid Zone produces many equatorial rainforests and
also contains some deserts. Most people dream of vacations or
retirement in the warm zone.
The Temperate Zone is cooler, with more distinct seasons and
sometimes severe droughts and floods. The granaries of the world lie
within it. But the belt of sub-tropical high-pressure zones also
produces most of the world's great deserts.
The Frigid Zone has low humidity and high atmospheric pressure,
with just two seasons (one cool, with a sun that never sets, followed by a
long, cold, dark, sunless winter). Only a few foolish people long
for expansion of the frigid zone.
The second weather-maker is the local environment – geography,
topography, winds, ocean currents, and human activity.
Oceans dominate Earth's surface and its weather. How
near is the ocean, with its moist, changeable atmosphere and ocean
currents? These can be warm, cold, or variable. Seaside
places have fewer extremes of temperature, and highlands are generally cooler
than lowlands. Lands on the ocean side of mountains have more
precipitation and forest vegetation, while those behind the hills lie in rain
shadows and have more grasslands and deserts.
Winds generally create or define weather. The rotation
of the Earth generates semi-permanent trade winds, which have an easterly
component on the surface in both hemispheres. These are modified by
convectional cells of rising and falling air created by differences in solar
heating of Earth's surface by the Sun. Winds, ocean currents, and
ocean over-turnings combine to create longer-term weather-makers such as El Niño. Contour
maps of air pressure (isobars) are one of the most useful tools for short-term
weather forecasting, and they can have daily or seasonal predictability.
Intense human activity also affects local
weather. Mega-cities and urban sprawl generate and concentrate heat,
producing their own artificial heat islands. People, houses, buses,
trains, cars, trucks, airplanes, factories, motors, generators, stoves,
heaters, coolers, concrete, bitumen, and landfill all generate, absorb,
reflect, exhaust or radiate heat. As many temperature recording
stations are located in or near such islands of man-made heat, this has
distorted calculations of "global temperature."
The third weather-maker relates to cycles in the solar system.
The daily rotation of Earth produces night and day with cold,
fogs, or frosts at dawn; warmer afternoons; and the daily tides. It
also influences surface wind direction, producing areas subject to the trade
winds, the roaring forties, or the doldrums. The monthly lunar cycle
produces tides in the atmosphere, in the oceans, and in Earth's crust – these
affect winds, weather cycles, earthquakes, and volcanic
eruptions. The phases and orbit of the Moon affect the Moon-Sun
forces of gravity to reinforce or reduce the tides, creating Spring Tides, King
Tides, Neap Tides, and Slack Water. Funnel-shaped bays can magnify
tides to create powerful Tidal Bores.
The annual cycle of Earth around the Sun produces the seasons from
summer to winter, with more extreme seasonal effects over land than over
oceans.
The 22-year sunspot cycle affects the frequency of droughts and
floods. A lack of sunspots correlates with periods like the Little
Ice Age. Periodic reductions in the Sun's Earth-shielding magnetic
field allow more cosmic rays to strike the Earth, creating more clouds and more
shading of Earth's surface and producing colder, cloudier
weather. The longer Milankovitch solar system cycles trigger warm
eras like today's Holocene and glacial eras like the one that ended just 12,000
years ago.
Trying to calculate something called "global average
temperature" from this massive variety of ever changing data covering
diverse locations, elevations, times, and weather is an exercise in statistical
sophistry – either meaningless or misleading.
"Climate" is just the notional 30-year average of
weather, so climate is controlled by the same big three factors that drive
weather.
Notice one thing about the three big drivers of weather: not one
is measurably affected by the trace amount of carbon dioxide gas in the atmosphere. Never
does a daily weather forecast mention CO2, and never do weather-watching
farmers or sailors note daily measurements of CO2. However, there
are over one hundred massive computerized climate-forecasting models run by
bureaucracies that use CO2 as a key driver, with variable inputs and rules and
differing results. No one knows which model may have stumbled onto
an accurate climate forecast.
CO2 is a rare (0.04%) colorless natural atmospheric
gas. It does not generate any heat – it just moves heat
around. In the atmosphere, it may slightly reduce the solar
radiation that reaches the surface, thus producing cooler days, and it may
slightly reduce nighttime radiative cooling, thus producing warmer
nights. The net effect is probably a tiny net warming at night, in
winter, and in polar regions – all of which are probably welcomed by most
people. Even this tiny effect shrinks rapidly as CO2 levels rise.
This effect is not used by any practical weather
forecaster. The theory that human production of carbon dioxide can
control global climate is totally unproven and looks absurd. Past
records show that long-term variations in atmospheric CO2 content are more a
result of temperature changes than a cause of them.
Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is the key nutrient of our
carbon-based life on Earth. It has always been there, usually much
more of it than now. It is nothing to be scared about. If
it increases, the net effects will be highly beneficial for all life on Earth. It
is time to stop the carbon dioxide scare stories.
It is also time to stop wasting community money on politically
motivated research and theories that try to forecast future climate with
misdirected carbon-centric computer models.
But what about "climate change" and "extreme
weather," the bogeymen used to frighten children into worship of the Green
Gods? It is also time to cease the vain belief that politicians can
change Earth's climate with laws, taxes, subsidies, international jamborees,
windmills, solar panels, electric cars, or batteries.
Change is the natural order of things on Earth, and all records
are destined to be equaled or broken. From the first ray of morning
sunshine to the frosts at midnight, temperature is always changing – every
minute, every day, and every year, at every place on Earth. The
Earth keeps turning, the planets interact, asteroids come and go, and that big
glowing pulsing nuclear reactor in the sky keeps moving toward the next phase
of its turbulent and finite life.
Moving to the rhythm of celestial cycles, seas will rise and fall;
corals will be drowned or stranded; ice sheets will come and go; droughts and
floods will recur; forests, grasslands, and deserts will expand and contract;
earthquakes and volcanoes will shake the Ring of Fire; tsunamis will crash onto
coasts; lava will pour from ocean trenches and continental rifts; and weak or
unprepared species will be extinguished while others take their place on
Earth's stage.
No level of carbon taxes or emission targets will stop Earth's
climate from changing. Nature rules, not politicians. We
must aim for resilience and be prepared to adapt.
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/04/how_weather_and_climate_work.html
