RJS Weather Theory (intro)

[Roger J Smith]

NOV 1/05 ... About two weeks ago I placed a long-range forecast on the site. Nothing unusual there, everyone does it sooner or later, right?

This little article is more about the subject of what can happen rather than what will happen. In other words, this is a discussion of persistence vs pattern change, and (to quote Arnold) things of that nature. And a note of warning, don't start reading this if you have important things to do, because this can wait for a rainy day, so to speak. I go from this rather mundane topic to the brave new world of introducing what my research is all about. Everything in its own time, though. A full explanation would take about 500 times the material in this posting. And I plan to go as slowly as necessary over a long period of time, if people are even interested. If it turns out otherwise, then so be it, but I hope you are as intellectually curious as most of you seem to be.

My experience in LRF is almost all on the North American side of the "pond," and over here, we actually have weather that moves (shock and horror). By this, I mean we are used to seeing large departures from normal from one month to the next, and not all of them positive either. Global warming as it is commonly known seems to have set in for parts of North America, in particular, the Canadian arctic where it is undeniably milder now than it was 40 to 70 years ago. For large parts of the southern half of Canada and much of the USA, there has not really been substantial warming. As recently as the winter of 2003-04 there were fairly large negative anomalies in the order of 3-5 Celsius degrees all over the map. Here on the west coast, though, we seem to be in the same boat as the British Isles -- a growing absence of obvious cold months. It all points a finger at ocean currents and SSTs as a prime element of this warming, whether you see it as greenhouse or natural (I see it as partly one and partly the other).

When I say the patterns move, I'm referring to the phenomenon that quite often, one month will be well above normal while the next one might be well below. On the whole, persistence still works about 62% of the time (for Toronto, which has a very long period of record, 1840-present) but that's probably a lower frequency than in the CET even before this modern period of almost constant warmth. Some months seem to have a better chance than others of flip-flopping -- February, May, September and December seem to have the habit of bringing pattern reversal.

Your typical North American anomaly map will take one of about four basic forms. The first is widespread warmth that emanates from a strong ridge over the Rockies and then tapers down to something closer to normal on the east coast, with colder than normal in the subarctic. This is due to a strong zonal flow. Then, there's either the cold west and warm east, or vice versa, for two more typical patterns. A strong trough is often present at either 100 or 80 degrees W and this determines which of the two is likely to show up. Then the fourth pattern is somewhat analogous to your European blocking. This will be a very mild pattern over Labrador and the eastern arctic, a cool regime over the Great Lakes, and something close to normal or above in the western and southern states.

From my admittedly short experience with European patterns (although I have studied them historically), the persistence of North American patterns is usually much shorter. There are times when the patterns reverse two or three times in a two-month period.

In my research, which I am hoping to share with you in very small doses so as not to lose the thread totally, perhaps over a year or two, I have been working on the idea that the earth's atmosphere is a continuation from above as well as a response to the conditions below. In fact, I think the forcing from above is probably much greater than is generally accepted in the science as of 2005, in large part because nobody has published very much acceptable material to prove otherwise. My material is sadly in such an extensive series of files and procedures that it is something like trying to teach the inhabitants of one country the entire history and culture of another country in a one-hour TV special. Michael Palin was (is) pretty good at that, and evidently, I'm not. In the interests of full disclosure, I should tell you that I am by training a climatologist and not a meteorologist (such weighty terms for airheads in general) and here in Canada, unless I have a persecution complex, it seems fair to conclude that I have become the Darth Vader of the atmospheric science community. I think there are probably paroled murderers who would stand a better chance of getting a research grant in Canada than yours truly. And if I was an unpleasnt sort of chap, which frankly I'm not, things would no doubt be even more confrontational. If you're familiar with the long-running controversies that attended ice age theory development and continental drift, then you'll have some idea of what the past 25 years has been like for me. But it comes with the territory (no man's land? probably).

The thing I really like about interacting with the weather folks in the UK and Ireland is that there are so many of you who have extensive historical knowledge as well as basic meteorology. This is not so much the case in my homeland or the USA, although I have had some fairly sympathetic hearings from time to time as well as the "depart from this domain" encounters. At this stage, I count it as a "sympathetic hearing" if I am not openly insulted or chased from the building by the high priests of the discipline. But I am a very patient person (just like everyone from the Midlands, right? ha ha).

Some of the points I was thinking of making in this little ramble would include the following (later on I will perhaps start a separate thread on the theory that I have, and it is mine, Anne Elk, etc etc):

(1) I am very skeptical about any claims that global warming has erased the potential for the atmosphere to bring cold and snow to Britain or western Europe. I know it has been a while since you've had this in any great concentration, but I believe that the same could be said for long periods in the past, in fact, 1717 to 1739 was one such period that would have seemed like a lifetime, so imagine the surprise when 1740 rolled around and brought a winter as cold as 1684 had been.

Part of the reason for my skepticism is what I recall from Ontario in 1994. We had gone through a number of very mild winters where you might get a couple of weeks of cold and snow but long periods without any snow on the ground which is highly unusual there. December 1993 was quite mild for the most part, and there was no real sign of cold air. Then suddenly, the pattern totally reversed and January 1994 was as cold a month as eastern Canada has ever had, including way back in the 19th century. We had one day with temperatures that were an astounding 28 degrees below normal night and day. So this climatic regime seems to be one of potential extremes as much as overwhelming warmth. I have the feeling that this winter will prove this same point in western Europe. Once the right circulation develops, and snow cover expands to the right areas, the physics of radiational cooling will overcome the lingering persistence of ongoing warmth. And I think this will happen after mid-January this winter.

(2) Pattern change, even in Europe, can occur very rapidly. As you know very well, what you need to get a cold spell started is a shift in the storm track to the south of 50N and a build-up of strong high pressure over Scandinavia or Germany. But quite often when this does happen, it's because a large cut-off high in the upper atmosphere detaches from the westerlies and becomes stationary or even retrograde in the higher latitudes. This is completely different from the process in North America, where you need a deep trough and below normal heights. So actually, a regime where heights are above normal is not necessarily a bad sign for later in the season. I have become aware of some processes in the atmosphere that seem to have a predictable cycle, although there are so many that we don't notice them very easily because they are all interacting with one another. To give you some idea of the complexity I am trying to follow, there are at least 84 elements to the research model I am studying, and that's after 25 years of work based mainly on North American patterns. I am fully expecting to learn about more complexity in this proposed 5-year study of European patterns. I have done some less detailed work already on all global regions, but as you can imagine, combining this work with the lifestyle of a political dissident (more or less) makes for a challenging work environment. Also, I am not exactly immune from the aging process. Here again, finding that there are young as well as enthusiastic weather fanatics is encouraging to me. This was the land of Newton and Maxwell, after all, so I'm rather excited by the idea that if I stumble and fall some time in the next decade or so, maybe the work could continue (warning -- don't expect a very grand career to fall into your lap, in fact, if you read the Gulag Archipelago that will be a good start).

To return to a more useful point, the research gives me a fairly confident result for high-latitude blocking and retrograde motion which indicates one minor attempt to set up blocking in December and a much more promising window of opportunity after mid-January. Therefore, I think the chances are good that a pattern reversal could take place at just that right moment in time when the Sun is least able to fight back by melting the snow as it managed to do several times in the later blocking episode last winter. And that's the whole key, really, getting the first snow cover to persist long enough to reinforce the second one, and so on. That's the other side of the system that I would need to have much more computer capacity to model, the feedback from the earth's surface into the lower portions of the atmosphere.

(3) I began this whole long research process by investigating lunar cycles, and that was because somebody I worked with in 1980 said, "you know, every time there's a full moon or a new moon, there's a big storm on the east coast (of the United States)." I went from there to discover any number of interesting cause and effect possibilities that are not covered in the literature. I see other people in the UK are working on some of these concepts too. As it happens, I reached a certain limiting point with this work in 1985, then discovered that the earth's Moon was actually part of a much larger system of cause and effect that had many other components much further afield in the solar system. Essentially, we are adrift in a sea of magnetic waves that surround the Sun, but which have something of a predictable nature due to the motion of the larger planets. This is not entirely my own exclusive research, but as far as I know, it is not very widely accepted in modern meteorology, which may all change in a few years' time because I think a lot of things can be predicted on this basis. Some time down the road, I will explain some of this new thinking, then try to find a safe place to hide from what is bound to be a barrage of questions, if not outright rejection, but it's worth having a go, because what this science needs is a theory of cause and effect. By that I mean, why is the weather the way it is on this date in 2005, when it was completely different on this date in any other given year (perhaps with one or two exceptions). The Sun is not the most likely source for those variations, because even the largest solar cycle involves only a 1% variation in solar energy output. Believe it or not, I think I can answer that although at the same time, the answers would be just a foundation for another generation of research.

In any case, good readers, I promise to lay out some of this material at your feet as time goes on. I will try to organize this so that anyone who's interested and reasonably well informed as to basic astronomy and meteorology can easily follow. There is nothing very complex about any of this if you already have that foundation, no e equals mc squared sort of stuff. In fact, I think our distant ancestors may have known some of this material and I wonder if before the scientific age even began, perhaps we lost parts of this knowledge somewhere. Both in Britain and in the southwestern states, ancient monuments seem to ascribe a cultural significance to the declination of the Moon, which is not exactly a hot topic in today's world. As you may know, the Moon is currently approaching its maximum declination of almost 29 degrees, a fact which you will observe at the next few full moons, especially the one in mid-December. You can't see it now because of the Sun, but the declination is very low with the winter new moons -- on Dec 31, if the Sun went dark, you would discover the Moon 5 degrees below the Sun's disk rather than close to it or over top of it.

With this I shall begin my introduction to the research, and I hope when the time comes you will enjoy exploring some of these new ideas. For now, I'll leave you with this very basic overview. The new theory is known as "astro-climatology" which is not meant to endorse astrology in any way, it's a word with the same kind of significance as "astro-physics." By this frame of reference, I do not mean to imply that there is anything wrong with conventional meteorology. You will observe that conventional meteorology is an empirical science which seeks to explain processes in the atmosphere. This theory adds the dimension of a cause and effect framework, a time-sensitive set of "hypotheses" which seek to predict the nature of atmospheric patterns on all time scales, although the very long time scales are actually already well understood (Milankovich cycles etc). The basic theory states that the earth's atmosphere functions as an extension of the magnetic field, which itself is a reflection of changing conditions in the solar system's magnetic field. The earth's Moon creates an interference pattern in this structure which, to simplify considerably, involves the creation of nine recognizable waves in the mid-latitude westerlies (in both hemispheres). The source of these waves appears to be gravitational interference when the Moon moves between the earth and one of several significant objects such as the Sun, large planets, galactic equator, or massive stars near the ecliptic plane. These nine wave systems are constantly moving and re-organizing. But there are other major components of the system, the Moon's influence is only one of several key components. The others include the structure of "fields" within the solar system magnetic field. These account for both progressive and retrograde motion at various latitudes. And within these fields, there are internal variations which can be linked to the planetary systems. Not surprisingly, the J-fields and S-fields (systems of field sectors linked to Jupiter and Saturn) have a prominent role. The inner planets are also prominent and account for much of the retrograde blocking patterns. Field sectors linked to Mars are fairly weak but persistent due to the relatively slow speeds at which the earth overtakes Mars. I'll explain in a subsequent posting one day how persistent patterns over western Europe can be linked to some of the above. Every one of these factors, isolated in the research, shows a fairly weak signal in the order of 0.5 to 1.5 C degrees, but with so many factors at different time scales, all sorts of combinations are possible. The basic theoretical research was done around 1988-93 using the 150 years of daily temperature and precip data for Toronto. Somebody else might one day investigate all of these cycles using the longer British data set, but I've already done samples to position my research variables over this region. My current research focus is to bring this rather rudimentary portion of the research up to the same level of reliability as I find for my work over North America. It's too early to even speculate where things stand in this regard, but I'm encouraged by the summer forecast I made in May and so far by what I was thinking about October and the first glimpse we have of November. But I know there will be bumps in the road, this is by no means a finished work. I could see this taking another 25-50 years even if a hundred people get on the case with some real funding and support.

Tropcial weather patterms have a relation to this theory that is based mainly on the motion of the inner planets through other field sectors. This is apparently why so many hurricanes follow similar paths, although the exact dynamics change from one case to another.

I think you can see where this would be fairly easy to visualize in the general, and fairly complicated in the real world of the earth's atmosphere. But keep this in mind -- our science is way, way behind almost all the other sciences. Astronomy can predict the eclipses of the Sun and Moon to precision that would make meteorologists dizzy. Nuclear and atomic science, even genetics, are far more advanced than meteorology. Organic chemistry is similarly much more advanced and precise. In fact, if we built bridges and airplanes the way we make weather forecasts, a lot of people would refuse to get on a plane or drive a car. I think of meteorology as being like a typical early 18th century science, all empirical and practical knowledge in a general absence of proven theory. We like to think that we are far advanced over the mid-20th century, but in reality, while the models are better nowadays, the actual understanding of the earth's atmosphere is only moderately advanced. You'd be surprised how little forecasting skill from reasonable prog charts has actually advanced. I have results from operational forecasting in 1977 that show the same day to day skill level as today's forecasts (such as, average 24-hour point temperature error, 1 C degree). And there is no accepted cause and effect theory in meteorology. Say what you wish, at least I have one to place on trial.

Let the inquisition begin!!

May I suggest that people who are interested in this at all, simply absorb this new perspective for now, and await a series of more detailed postings on this theory down the road, perhaps one every week. Then I'm sure you'll have comments, questions, etc. I'd rather not get into a really intense discussion of this right away, just because I know from previous experience that people need more structure before any really sensible exchange of views would be possible. I can guarantee you, there are any number of huge surprises in store if you're patient, and if I don't become a patient!

Any suggestions from the "powers that be" about further structure for this project would be welcome. Just PM me as to where you think this discussion should go, and how much you think people might want to see per week. I would think one topic every seven days, accompanied by real-time examples. Within a year, you'll see the method to my madness, or the madness to my method. Who knows which it will be?

(3)

[Paul]

Thanks Roger, haven't managed to get all the way through your article yet, but will in time, thanks for taking the time to post it - I'm sure it will be a very interesting discussion that follows on

[BrickFielder]

Thanks for posting, it was interesting to read. I am not quite sure about your premise

The basic theory states that the earth's atmosphere functions as an extension of the magnetic field, which itself is a reflection of changing conditions in the solar system's magnetic field.

as I think different densities of rocks moving about it the earth's core have a large affect on the earth's magnetic field, so gut instinct tells me when you say that the earths magnetic fields reflect solar system magnetic fields, that this fact may reflect only part of the mechanics of what is going on. As to the nine waves I can not help feeling that they would largely be swamped out by the eddies round large mountain ranges, chemical transports in the stratosphere and any number of other affects closer to home.

I will keep an open mind though as I suspect magnetic fields can play a small part and assume in the fullness of time you will address my areas of confusion in later posts. It would be nice to see the mathematics behind your theory at a later point as well so I will wait patiently.

[Gray-Wolf]

I look forward to your future posts. Each part of the jigsaw is needed to complete the puzzle and see the picture. Now we might think we've got enough pieces 'in' to have a reasonable 'stab ' at the picture but it'd be nice to at least have all the peices at our disposal so that when we're wrong we can find out why. I support the Chaos theory (Butterflies wing an' all that) so the smallest 'piece' becomes as important as the largest one.

[Roger J Smith]

Brief reply to one question -- what I'm saying about the magnetic field and the atmosphere is more of a conceptual framework, the magnetic field itself is certainly tied to the earth's crust but what I'm exploring is the concept that the atmosphere at any given time can be modelled as a boundary between the terrestrial magnetic field and the external SSMF. You'll see what I mean when I get into this, whether you agree or not afterwards I can't say. And the point about nine waves being broken up etc, the system under consideration follows an empirical framework which takes the mean climatology into account. I have no obvious practical way to verify theoretical predictions that the system might make about distant past or future events, you can imagine I'd be thrilled if I could demonstrate that the system produces reasonably accurate back-casts of known weather events as well as future events as they come down the pipe. It has been my experience that over North America I'm closing in on that, but as I've indicated, my work over the next few months or years in Europe will be at first directed to investigating how the system should be structured in detail, as I already have a broad framework. The factor that probably wasn't made clear that might help you visualize what comes next is that the short waves are derived from astronomical timing while the long waves are derived from a slowly-changing consideration of where the earth is in relation to field sectors.

To give one brief example of today's approaching weather event, the low will be shaped by two sets of variables, one from the lunar orbit and one from internal dynamics of a field sector. The larger background is determined from where the earth lies as of today in the solar system magnetic field. This is why you won't just find nine identical low pressure systems around the globe in each hemisphere. Here's another very basic concept for orientation. The grid being used is essentially the earth's magnetic field and not the terrestrial lines of lat and long -- so the north "meteorological" pole would be around 80N 100W. Although the south magnetic pole is closer to the equator than the north magnetic pole, it makes little difference to the results to place it exactly opposite in Antartica southwest of Perth AU. So you can derive where the "meteorological equator" would lie. I have developed seasonal shift algorithms and otherwise the nine timing lines are roughly equidistant lines of longitude in this system, but they curve more than you might expect, so I'll post a map of this in one of the first sessions. Anyway, if people are patient and take this one step at a time, then I think you'll have a good basis for passing judgment on this concept after about three to six months. As I say, it's fairly detailed but I don't think any given portion of it is very hard to follow. And as for mathematics, it's more along the lines of gravitational theory where you're dealing with a postulated force. In this case it's a postulated reception grid like a person saying, I have a TV set, if I program it for this channel at this time, this is the expected program. So it's mathematical in that sense, and I am developing the physics equations regarding magnetic field intensity. Frankly, there is work for hundreds of people to do if this concept has any merit, it's sort of like back around 1885 in physics when they moved past the ether concept and started to glimpse the first outlines of particle physics. I have the feeling that there is more work ahead than behind in this field.

[TG312274]

Roger that's a pretty amazing post.

"To rturn to a more useful point, the research gives me a fairly confident result for high-latitude blocking and retrograde motion which indicates one minor attempt to set up blocking in December and a much more promising window of opportunity after mid-January. Therefore, I think the chances are good that a pattern reversal could take place at just that right moment in time when the Sun is least able to fight back by melting the snow as it managed to do several times in the later blocking episode last winter. And that's the whole key, really, getting the first snow cover to persist long enough to reinforce the second one, and so on. That's the other side of the system that I would need to have much more computer capacity to model, the feedback from the earth's surface into the lower portions of the atmosphere."

So the snow cover has to stick around, so there can be some sort of recurring effect to bring further colder conditions?

[Roger J Smith]

Just wandering through and this point about snow cover -- I think the general flow pattern might develop regardless of the snow cover, but the surface layers would remain colder then deposit more snow if snow remained on the ground from a previous event. Then I think this could eventually prolong and deepen any given cold pattern within limits that would be defined by some definite future condition, if you "catch my drift." Something like a second-order variation that might reduce a temperature curve by 3-7 C degrees for a week to ten days, and 500-mb heights by a much smaller relative amount of 2-3 dm.

I suppose you could point to last February and early March as a case where snow cover failed to materialize on a large scale and a potentially quite cold pattern lost some of its bite because as I recall the 510 dm thickness contour made a close pass with the southeast and temps fell to -9 C over some local snow cover but it probably never fell below -2 C wherever snow had failed to accumulate.

In a climate like southern Ontario you can get long periods where the ground freezes without any real snow cover and the upper level flow is just so well established that this feedback fails to dislodge a cold pattern. I'm not sure if this is possible in the more delicate radiation balance over the British Isles. Perhaps you can think of a case where the ground froze and temperatures managed to reach low values for a period without snow cover. I don't know of any but that's not surprising, I just know of the more celebrated cases of snow and cold.

[woody_woodson]

Just wandering through and this point about snow cover -- I think the general flow pattern might develop regardless of the snow cover, but the surface layers would remain colder then deposit more snow if snow remained on the ground from a previous event. Then I think this could eventually prolong and deepen any given cold pattern within limits that would be defined by some definite future condition, if you "catch my drift." Something like a second-order variation that might reduce a temperature curve by 3-7 C degrees for a week to ten days, and 500-mb heights by a much smaller relative amount of 2-3 dm.

I suppose you could point to last February and early March as a case where snow cover failed to materialize on a large scale and a potentially quite cold pattern lost some of its bite because as I recall the 510 dm thickness contour made a close pass with the southeast and temps fell to -9 C over some local snow cover but it probably never fell below -2 C wherever snow had failed to accumulate.

In a climate like southern Ontario you can get long periods where the ground freezes without any real snow cover and the upper level flow is just so well established that this feedback fails to dislodge a cold pattern. I'm not sure if this is possible in the more delicate radiation balance over the British Isles. Perhaps you can think of a case where the ground froze and temperatures managed to reach low values for a period without snow cover. I don't know of any but that's not surprising, I just know of the more celebrated cases of snow and cold.

The problem here, or shall I say the fact here is that a prolonged spell nearly always follows a wet spell, whereas in Canada you can potentially have a warmer dry spell and then a cold spell with less moisture. In such that it takes less energy to freeze all the soil moisture tht is present. I cant help but feel here that the larger amounts of moisture in our generally porous soils results in a much greater volume of water to freeze and an increased release of latent heat to combat the maybe -4 celcius temperatures that we reach in extreme cases is southern england. So whereas the top surface A0 horizon may freeze, the b's and the c's will remain liquid for a long time before freezing. Then you have to consider that the long time before freezing is less likely, because a new depression or front will track across the country before the lack of radiation heat from the ground, begins to cool the air.

The biggest spell of frozen ground I can remember is the winer of 1998. had some snow and frozen ground foe about a week

[parmenides3]

The basic theory states that the earth's atmosphere functions as an extension of the magnetic field, which itself is a reflection of changing conditions in the solar system's magnetic field. The earth's Moon creates an interference pattern in this structure which, to simplify considerably, involves the creation of nine recognizable waves in the mid-latitude westerlies (in both hemispheres). The source of these waves appears to be gravitational interference when the Moon moves between the earth and one of several significant objects such as the Sun, large planets, galactic equator, or massive stars near the ecliptic plane.

Roger, I have read some papers which hypothesise a link between the magnetosphere and the atmosphere, but these tend to talk in terms of phenomena such as aurorae, rather than weather. Is there something I have missed? If you can point me to even an elementary explanation of the interaction between the troposphere and the Magnetosphere I would be grateful.

I see no problem with imagining an interference to the magnetosphere from the position of the Moon, or even the inner planets, but I don't get the bit about the magnetic fields 'left behind' by planets in their orbits; surely, Venus' (for example) magnetic field hangs around Venus?

Perhaps a diagram would help. I am old, you know.

:)P

[Barbmac]

Have just read through your first post Roger and this is all very interesting stuff, even if most of it is still quite sketchily described to begin with. I am no climate/meteorology guru by any means, but have always believed that all systems must interconnect on this planet and outwards to others beyond. We are not in a bubble but affected by our satellite the Moon, the Sun and even the other planets in the solar system. What you're describing sounds like a more 'holistic' view of meteorology. I will certainly be following any future posts you make in order to better understand what your system entails.