Warmer Summers, Cooler Winters

Scientists struggle to understand why warmer summers often lead to cooler winters.


Summary: Warmer summers in the far Northern Hemisphere are the cause for the more frequent severe winter weather in the U. S. and Europe, a team of scientists says.  Blizzards and extreme cold temperatures during the winters of 2009-2010 and 2010-2011 caused such widespread travel woes in the U. S. and Europe, some people were led to question the theory of global warming.


Judah Cohen, lead author of a study published in Environmental Research Letters, found a clear trend of strong Arctic warming during summer months, which should have resulted in a warmer winter as well. This was not always the case. The counter-intuitive discovery suggests the world’s climate system may be more complex than previously thought. The large-scale cooling trends seen in eastern North America and Northern Eurasia over the past two decades are likely not due to internal variability alone, according to the scientists.


Using temperature, rainfall, snow and ice data, the team found rising summer temperatures in the Arctic allowed the atmosphere to hold more moisture, leading to more autumn snow in high-latitude areas. The increased snow cover in Eurasia caused changes in the Arctic Oscillation (atmospheric pressure patterns that govern winter weather in the far Northern Hemisphere). 


When the oscillation is in a negative phase, high pressure cells over the Arctic push colder air towards mid-latitudes resulting in colder temperatures than normal and fierce snow storms. A positive phase tends to bring in milder winter weather, which is the case at present in the U. S. and Europe.


The winter cooling trends are complex and need more study. However, Cohen said their discovery could improve long-range forecasting if snow cover is included in a seasonal forecast. The team’s research is just one of several recent studies that highlight the complexity of the climate system. Scientists are still learning how much mankind and natural factors can influence long-term patterns. 


To read the entire article, click on YAHOO NEWS.


Comment: Today’s key word is “complex.” By relying on recent past data and analyzing present data, with the help of computers scientists who study the weather can come up with simulations to predict future weather trends. It is no secret that most simulations suggest that the globe is warming up.


However, this story indicates that the total picture may be more complex than some scientists are willing to admit. There appear to be a lot of factors which aren’t being considered and which need to be considered for scientists to be able to make more accurate forecasts of future weather trends. If scientists are struggling to understand something as relatively simple as present weather trends (compared to very complex things like living organisms), they must avoid being too dogmatic in making their predictions. 


The point is that if conditions in the present are so complex that it is difficult to completely understand them, how can those scientists who study the distant, murky past be so sure they understand what conditions were like way back then? In other words, are not paleontologists and anthropologists and all those other “ologists” who are so confidently telling us what the world and its living creatures were like “millions” and “billions” of years ago overstating their case?


The faith of countless number of believers has been threatened and even destroyed by the arrogant scientists who look at the past and tell us that they pretty much know what the earth was like long ago, that living organisms began with single-celled organisms and now have evolved into human beings, and that there is no need for a Creator or an Intelligent Designer.


However, the complexity of the world in which we are living and especially the complexity of the living creatures around us challenges the idea that the universe and its living organisms could possibly be the result of blind, random processes. Let us stick with the Bible, which gives us the true account of Earth’s history by the One who was there. He tells us how we got here and where we are going. If we have come to trust in the Son of God, Jesus Christ, for our salvation, where we are going is heaven, a place where “perfection” is a key word. “I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far” (Philippians 1:23).


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QUESTION OF THE DAY


How similar is the DNA of chimpanzees to that of humans, according to ICR research?


Numerous experiments by ICR (the Institute for Creation Research) involving the entire human genome has found human-chimp DNA similarity, conservatively speaking, of 86-89 percent. That is 10 to 12 percent less than what is commonly claimed.


Source: Acts and Facts (January, 2012)


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