the weather

[Icey101]

so is the weather patterns changing ?

here in Aus, i have noticed something different going on in the last few years.

Its summer now, and there seems to be unusual changes in air temp that comes in waves. For example yesterday we had high temps of 40 plus cel. Now today a cold air change has come and we are now down to 20 plus cel. To me its like these cold and hot air pressure belts are blowing around the globe in waves.

I cant really remember this type of weather in the past. When i was a kid we used to have a warm hot summer and a cold winter and spring and autumn was in the middle somewhere...I dont remember any weird weather patterns. Sure there were heat waves but not constant hot and cold changes like this.

[Simo98]

Weather patterns change. People have this funny idea that they're always the same for some reason, they're not. I find it a really interesting human trait to be honest, for some reason we expect things not to change when all they ever do is exactly that.


Although a major contributing factor to what you are talking about is that the past couple of years we've been in La-Nina as opposed to El-Nino, which is why we've had some really uncharacteristic weather, these patterns have a huge effect on Australia.

Our weather has been really weird over the past few years, this year it's started to return to "normal".

[Clark Dark]

HAARP

[Simo98]

[Relic]

It's been changing here as well. It seems that for the past few years, Fall's been starting in August. I can remember when that used to be a real hot and brutal month, now it seems like the month is predominantly cool and rainy.
But worse than that is the fact that in 2011 we got a once-in-a-century hurricane, followed this past year by an even worse once-in-a-century hurricane/nor'easter/super storm.
It makes one wonder what's next....
I do agree that weather is cyclic though so this may all be perfect normal who knows, it may just be that the cycles span generations rather than a few years making it not so obvious as such.

[T-Bird]

Hi.

Originally Posted by Icey101

so is the weather patterns changing ?

In a small scale/short period of time, definitely.
Outside the "hype" not really.

As far as we can tell scientifically anyway.

And the main reason being...

Originally Posted by Icey101

I cant really remember this type of weather in the past. When i was a kid we used to have a warm hot summer and a cold winter and spring and autumn was in the middle somewhere...I dont remember any weird weather patterns.

Unless we put it in writing with exact figures and measurements we don't remember.

When the oldest weather "data" collected by generations of farmers and fishermen have been studied, there's been very little change over the last few centuries.

Sure, there's been some anomalies here and there, but those have been pretty isolated and sometimes very local.

There are also certain cycles of changes that can usually be seen only on data collected over a period of 100 years or more.

Not to make things any easier, any extensive and really meaningful scientific data about the weather patterns is locally about 500 year old max, and globally about 100 years old. If even that.

Since the aforementioned cycles are occuring at the interval of decades or centuries or even milleniums, as far as we can tell from the grossly inaccurate and incomplete data we currently have, we have about 1000 years of study and data collecting ahead of us before anything conclusive can be said about the weather.

If, on the other hand, we want to backtrack with soil samples or polar cap ice drillings, we run into this small problem of scale. The "accuracy" is often 1000 years, and those samples only tell about the conditions on the polar regions, not really much from anywhere else. Accurately anyway.
One vital piece of information that also ends up on the editing room floor all too often when the documentaries are made, is the seldom voiced fact that soil moves, and the ice tends to melt. So the time-scales are rather difficult to line up.

Growth rings on the trees are not much better, very inaccurate and even more local than anything else. Not to mention the fact that those time-lines don't go very far either.

Regards
Sam

[Mike M.]

Here in Michigan.....I moved into my house in July of '91 and I remember the winter of '91/'92 very well. Lots of snow and the lakes in my area were all frozen over. It was a typical "Michigan winter."

From about '95 on the weather here is very unpredictable....at least in my region of the state. For the most part we don't get anywhere near the amount of snow we use to, the winters seem warmer and the summers are anybodys guess. I remember the summers of '04 and '05 were beyond brutal but then the next few were so cool that I barely used my AC at all. Sure, you still get your typical days for the season, but not like it use to be.

Ya know how many times I shoveled my driveway last winter? Zero.

[jrthebassguy]

2012 was the hottest year for the U.S. on record. We keep breaking that record every other year it seems. Quick, someone call Al Gore, I'm super serial!

[Einherjar]

Been very odd in Colorado the past three years. Granted we've always had fairly unpredictable weather. I remember moving here from N.J. in 97 and there were blizzards in October. Which was apparently considered normal for the state. Yet this year we got 60-70 degree weather in December/january. I'm just gonna go ahead and blame Cthulhu. G*dd*mn cephalopods.