The Science, the Who, the Why

     

     

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Improtance to Knowing all Cycles that influence Climate: Understanding cycles is most important to understanding climate changes. The only way to know what is normal and what is not normal is to have a complete understanding of what normal is and its possibilities and potentials.

Basics of a cycle: A definition of a cycle is a series of events that are regularly repeated in the same order. In the end of a cycle is the beginning of that cycle, one can say we have been here before; we can predict what is next. The best way to explain some simple cycles of climate is to look at what causes day and night and what causes summer and winter.

Day and Night: The Earth rotates on its polar axis over a period (cycle) of 24 hours exposing 1/2 to sunlight and the other half to darkness. This rotation causes the sunlight to add energy to the exposed side in what we recognize as higher temperature and visibility. The Earth is tilted along the polar axis that results in one hemisphere (north or south) receiving more overhead sunlight and placing the polar region in 24 hour sunlight, known as summer, while the opposite receive less sun and the polar region is 24 hours without sunlight, known as winter.

Summer and Winter: As the Earth rotates around the sun, the Earth remains tilted the same direction causing a hemisphere to pass from summer to fall to winter to spring. This is from what is called Simple Harmonic Motion (SHM). These are predictable climate patterns. Often the effect of a cycle is delayed such as mid-afternoon is usually the warmest not noon and mid July is the warmest rather than June 21 for summer in the northern hemisphere. That is the cycle versus the affect.

Many more Cycles and much more Complex: There are many, many cycles that affect each other resulting in unpredictability even in the simplest of cycles as weather patterns can make one summer day 10F cooler than just the previous day. A weather event is not climate. A climate change would affect long periods of weather and often weather is claimed incorrectly as climate change.