THURSDAY MORNING OPEN DISCUSSION
Written by: Brian Neudorff
Since weather for us and for much of the United States is quiet today and for the rest of the week, I figured I would use today's post as a chance for all of you to weigh in on whatever topic you wanted too. Looking at all the comments from last night after I had gone to bed, it appears many of you are focused on the recent earthquake activity.
Some of the comments were on the 2012 prediction and end of times or end of the world. Here is how I view the current earthquake activity. First, I want it known and stated that I do not consider myself a geologist or seismologist. I am a meteorologist who happens to have a basic understanding of how earthquakes occur, but lack the knowledge of what is normal or not normal when it comes to earthquake activity. With that in mind, it doesn't mean I don't do research and study when I am curious.
Many of you wonder if the frequency of earthquake activity may or may not have anything to do with the 2012 Mayan prediction. To be honest, I don't think it does. A lot of things in nature happen in cycles and in patterns. Sometimes these cycles can change over ones lifetime and then there are many natural cycles that don't change until many lifetimes have passed.
I also believe that we live in an amazing time when it comes to communication. Something like an earthquake or storm can happen and in mere moments, seconds, we can know what and where just took place. You go back 25 to 30 years and you had to wait days sometimes to find out what took place.
All of your comments got me thinking so I went looking for current news on the current seismic activity and came across this story out of Sacramento that talked about the recent big earthquakes and a seismic expert said these exceptionally large earthquakes are unusual, but they're not unexpected.
Like we see with hurricanes where more and more people are living in high risk regions same goes with people living near areas where the risk of an earthquake is more likely. Because of that stat, there will be more damage and possible loss of life with more people living in high risk areas when it comes to earthquakes and hurricanes.
Now that I've weighed in on that topic you are free to continue it or ask a question on another topic, preferably weather related since that is where the News 8 weather team is most knowledgeable. If you have an astronomy question, I can try to answer that and if I can't I will steer you in the right direction to get the answer. I also like having these open forums from time to time as a way to get more ideas on topics that many of you are interesting in when days and weeks, like today, are not as active.
I read a post from Joe Bastardi who stated that decreased solar activity has been tied to an uptick in tremblers. I'm not sure about that, since I thought high solar activity and solar flares cause the earth to go wild. Anyway, I have been reading a lot about sunspots and I had no idea how critical they are to our normal cycles. It seems that a growing number of experts believe that the recent hemispheric cold is tied to low solar activity in combination with the so2 being released into the statosphere from the recent volcanoes last year. I've even heard talk about the earth being on the brink of shifting into another little ice age due to the sun. We do seem to be shifting back to the way the climate was back in the mid and late 70's in my opinion. I guess my question is, do you think the possibility of shifting into a little ice age is real? And is there any true evidence that sunspots make a difference on our climate?
ReplyDeleteeverybody has to read this startling article from a prominent Russian scientist on a deep and profound cooling that is just a couple years away. Here's the link to the article:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.climatedepot.com/a/3515/Prominent-Russian-Scientist-We-should-fear-a-deep-temperature-drop--not-catastrophic-global-warming
I get chronic migraines, a lot of times they can be due to changes in the weather. Some say it's due to pressure in the air. Do you know if there's any evidence to support it? Or you know, if there's any way to predict when the pressure changes happen so I can plan my day to day life? :)
ReplyDeleteKelly, I found this explanation from the Mayo Clinic's Website:
ReplyDeleteSeveral studies suggest that weather changes trigger migraine headaches in some individuals. Study results indicate that some people who have migraines appear to be more sensitive to weather changes, such as changes in weather patterns, temperature, absolute humidity and barometric pressure. The reason these factors may trigger migraines in certain people isn't known.
If you feel your migraine headaches are triggered by weather, you may be understandably frustrated. After all, you can't change the weather. However, you may be able to lessen the effects of your migraines by recognizing your specific weather triggers early and taking your migraine medication at the first sign of a migraine.
There's no clear evidence of a link between weather changes and other types of headaches.
Of course if your curious about other causes for headaches you can always check out Cory Hepola's Weekly Good Question for this week.
I love predictions. Brian, I know there is no way to forecast way out to Summer, but what are your thoughts on how this Summer will be? Will it be a cool and wet one like last year?
ReplyDeleteJust wondering,because I have a lot of fishing to make up :)
I really wish I could answer that, but to be honest, I haven't even looked into the summer forecast yet. When we get one or have an idea we will let all of you know. At this point we are still trying to get out of winter LOL.
ReplyDeleteI don't know about the summer, but this is crazy how benign the weather has been all winter long. I thought for sure that after missing all of the storms this year (with the exception of the one rogue storm last week) March would come back with a vengence. And here we are, in the first week of March with sunny skies and temps approaching 40, and plenty more days like it ahead. If not for the frozen ground and constant snowpack, i'd figure we'd have a very dry spring. It just won't do anything around here this winter!
ReplyDeleteI remember how last winter came to an abrupt and premature end once March came. This March seems to be a repeat....except at least last year we had lots more storms by now. Grrr.
I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that im optimistic about NEXT winter. el nino will return to near neutral conditions by next fall, and there are some signs that we'll have another year with more than normal blocking at the pole. What that equals is more of the same when it comes to cold....but this time with a more activer Northern storm track. I know, I know, it's ridiculous to even try to predict anything that far out....but anything has to be better than this pesky el nino! (that is, if you like snow)
ReplyDeleteI agree, Aside from the post that Scottie had earlier in the week hinting that there MAY be something next week, It has been an easy go. I haven't heard another word about what MAY happen next week. Seems sunny and 40's will be it :) Or maybe warmer??........
ReplyDeleteIm waiting a couple more weeks before I count out winter. Next weeks looks pretty blaaa, but it looks like it might try to get more exciting for us the week after next week. But if we get a series of misses then too....and the GFS has nothing promising in sight at that point, i'll consider checking out for the winter and getting in the spring mood...but not yet.
ReplyDeleteNow don't hate me snow lovers. I do love winter and I love the snow but I have to admit the sun yesterday and today has me ready for Spring. I want to take walks get my kids out to the parks so they can play.
ReplyDeleteYou do know that today is only Mar. 4th. I find it funny how quickly after 4 to 10 days of a 31 day month we want to say March is a bust and winter is over.
It would be great if the models and our ability to forecast were so good that I could come here and say that by St. Patrick's Day we are going to have a major storm (we're not as far as I see right now) but it would be cool to do.
What I take away from the GFS right now is we are going to see more storms come out of the central United States vs. coming from the Gulf. We'll just have to wait and see how this plays out.
I agree, the sun really has a nice psychological effect. I love snowstorms and long cold winters probably to an unhealthy degree lol. But, I also love every season that we get to experience in this part of the world. I can't wait for that part of spring when we wake up in the morning to 60 degrees and all of the trees bursting with leaves. You know that time of spring when the trees are almost a light / lime green type of color? And then the lilac festival, and then tracking those summertime thunderstorms. It's all great! But before you know it, summer will wiz by, and the trees will be changing and we'll all be speculating on how bad the winter of 2010-11 will be lol.
ReplyDeleteIt also doesnt help that snow this time of year is gross. It's wet and gloppy; it doesn't stick to a darn thing if it snows in the middle of the day; and when it does, the strong march sun gets rid of it the next day. In my opinion, nothing beats a good old fashioned snowstorm in December, when the sun angle is very low, and plenty of fresh cold air building in Canada. Not to mention the lakes are nice and toasty still at that point
ReplyDeleteI believe the recent earthquakes result partly from a release of pressure due to the effect of solar flares on the solar wind-Van Allen belt interaction. We are just leaving a period when the incoming solar wind has been mainly electrons, which hit upon the mainly electron outer Van Allen belt. Due to the earth's orbital motion of 30km per second the incoming 300km per second solar wind has a "running in the rain" effect and has an apparent direction slightly ahead of directly out from the sun. This causes the earth to rotate counterclockwise. The highly positive flares disrupt the rotational pressure. It's like pushing in the clutch in a stick-shift car. There is a sudden release of rotational pressure. The result is what I call "slop quakes".
ReplyDeleteOnce the solar flares become more frequent, the normal quiet-sun pressure will already have been disrupted, so this source of earthquakes will be less effective.
How the spinning of the outer Van Allen belt gets down to the spinning of the hard crust we stand on is extremely complex. The prevailing westerlies sweeping across the temperate zones are part of the answer. The atmosphere rises up on the day side, as if it were attracted outward towards a positive sun, and somes back down in the evening, where one can look for some of the transfer of torque to occur.
The earth is being spun from the outside, as we see the weather systems on TV move persistently eastwards towards the rising sun. We don't see any hand reach up from the powerful inner levels of the earth to spin the atmosphere.
I am William Kinney and this is my theory sketch in capsule form.
Are you educated in this field, William, or just very well read?
ReplyDeleteYou're the Dr. William Kinney from the University at Buffalo?
ReplyDeleteSo here are a couple questions to that theory. Are you suggesting that as we come out of a solar minimum, an uptick of these slop quakes are typical? If so, do you have data to show this correlation? Or, is the fact that the sun is coming out of an unusually long solar minimum helping to aggitate the earth more than it would otherwise? And lastly, suppose this recent uptick in sun spots and some smaller solar flares is just a false alarm, and the sun returns to very low activity within the next months or year. Is that bad news? Afterall, some prominent Russian scientists, among other experts believe that the sun is about to go into a very extended period of low activity that could initiate an ice age.
ReplyDeleteWhat about this rogue wave that hit the cruise ship in the mediterranean sea. It is now projected to have been 33 feet high. And I just learned that a similar bizarre wave crashed in near California a couple weeks ago. No seismic activity to explain it, yet no major storms to explain a 33 foot wave either. It certainly seems that forces outside of our earth are penetrating and making strange things happen.
ReplyDeletei feel smarter after reading this blog
ReplyDeleteWow the IQ of this blog just sky rocketed lol. Who knew all this stuff was so complex!
ReplyDeleteI guess we are all smarter than a Fifth Grader.
ReplyDeletehaha, guess so
ReplyDeleteWhich by the way airs weekdays here on News 8 at 4:30... lol.
ReplyDeleteI can't bring too much to the table about plate-tectonics, but I think its safe to assume that there's a whole bunch going on.
With regards to solar activity relating to weather there's a sea of information out there. One of our favorite sites is www.spaceweather.com. There they monitor daily sunspot activity, solar winds, solar flares, auroral ovals, coronal holes, and any other cool happenings in space. I can tell you with full honestly that this something we hardly even touched on in schooling, as any one of the subjects above could merit an entire life's worth of concentration. Always interesting to hear about relationships between things you never thought to have been correlated.
spaceweather is a great website. I check on it every day like I check the day's weather forecast. One interesting thing to note about the current activity is that although we have seen a notable uptick in sunspot activity, the sun is still struggling to get out of its extra long slumber. Take today, for example. At first glance you think, oh boy, a bunch of sunspots now. But you must put it into perspective. They are very minor spots (more like specs, really). Solar irradiance is also way down. We're only seeing some minor increase in sunspots in a time when we should have been ramping up big time anyway. It is very likely that our solar maximum will be anything but impressive in the coming couple years, followed by a more permanent period of blankness. Then, look out! Big time cold, the likes of which we haven't seen in nearly a century or more. It's already beginning to happen now, and it's no coincidence that it just happens to be occuring during an unusually long solar minimum....yet again.
ReplyDeleteEverybody interested in this topic should google "Maunder Minimum" and "Dalton Minimum"
ReplyDeleteYou will learn a lot about these solar cycles and how they correlate to colder times on earth. Even most global warming alarmists find themselves having to agree with the connection.
Here's an interesting article about a Livingston and Penn paper that discusses the possibility of sunspots "vanishing" by 2015. let's hope it doesn't happen, or we're in for more cold than even the greatest winter weather fans would appreciate. Here's the link:
ReplyDeletehttp://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/06/02/livingston-and-penn-paper-sunspots-may-vanish-by-2015/
About next week, no storms here. Weather pattern looks placid. More sunshine than New York has scandals. A weak cold front will cool us down a bit early next week but back to the 40s later next week. So long snowpack!
ReplyDeleteOne weather question I have is what causes there to be several different types of clouds? Is it just the weight of the materials in them? I unfortunately fell asleep a few times in my Weather and Climate class in college and missed that part (it was way too early in the morning).
ReplyDeleteA lake effect question -
ReplyDeleteI have noticed on late summer mornings here in Sodus Point, around 11am, a lake (Lake Ontario) breeze kicks in. That wind almost always comes out of the northeast. Why?
I am not versed in weather or earthquakes, but, looking at my world map, I noticed the Haiti and Chile earthquakes fall along the same longitude. So, I followed the line up to U.S. and it goes through the Boston area. So I wondered if there is a trough or fault along that longitude and if Armageddon earthquakes will hit the U.S in Boston. Just my ill-educated observation. :)
ReplyDelete