Climate Change

Record hot and dry weather on the west coast of the US has everyone again worried about global warming. Suddenly, we're not merely talking weather, its the climate. However, record cold temperatures in the southern hemisphere is not getting much media attention, nor the cool weather we're having here in Portugal and Spain.

Global temperatures this year is on track to be about average for this decade, so there's nothing about the average temperature that supports the global warming hypothesis. However, there's nevertheless something noteworthy going on. Drought and high temperatures on the west coast of north America is a recurring phenomenon, normally coinciding with cool weather in Europe and other places. The fact that we're in the fourth or fifth year of drought on the west coast while at the same time in a noticeable cooling trend with less sun and more rain in Portugal and Spain may indicate the beginning of a prolonged period of this new weather pattern.

The root cause of this appears to be a shift in the path of the jet-stream, which in turn is connected to solar cycles. Low solar activity, which we have been having for several years now, tend to coincide with a more unruly jet-stream . Instead of going in a relatively straight west to east direction, it dips down over the pacific, goes up along the west coast of north America, and then down again over the east coast and Greenland. South western Europe is thus hit with cool air from the north Atlantic. On average, the jet-stream moves farther south, bringing colder air down from the Arctic, especially in central Eurasia.

Every time this happens, we get great upheavals and wars. Extreme weather forces people out of central Eurasia towards more temperate regions such as China and the Mediterranean. These upheavals are never entirely peaceful. Many an empire and dynasty have ended during such times, and it may well be that we're headed towards similarly unruly times.

Sun

By DracoLumina17 - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link