Magnetic pole and weather?

silverharp

Does the magnetic pole affect the weather? I read an article that predicted a terrible winter for the east coast of the US based on the fact that the Atlantic is warming up (decadal cycle/oscilation) I believe it's called. Anyhoo, warmest winter in years, the same person then explained that because the magnetic pole had shifted that Russia got the bad weather instead.

Is there anything to this explanation?

Supercell

I really cannot make the logical leap to why the magnetic north sifting would have any affect in the weather at all.
Not saying it doesn't, very interested to hear an explanation of it if it does..off to google I go ::)

Snowbie

Heard something myself about that before,The earth on its axis tilts of its angle degree which i think its 23 degree tilt and therefore puts the Earth more towards the sun in Winter and creates warmth, which can lead to a slight heating,so i read.
Does makes sense i suppose but in theory.

silverharp

Here is the transcript of where this comes from 14/01/06



JIM: Joining me in a new segment we’re starting on FSN this year, Other Voices, is Evelyn Garris. She’s editor of the Browning Newsletter that takes a look at weather forecasting. Evelyn, one thing that we’ve seen since 1995 is 9 of the last 11 hurricane seasons have been above normal and it has to do with something called the decadal oscillator. I wonder if we might start with that, and then I want to talk about Winter.

EVELYN GARRIS: Sounds like a good interesting subject. Especially if you’re sweating it out in New York City.

JIM: Why don’t you tell people what the decadal oscillator is, how it affects weather?

EVELYN: OK, people know of the Gulf Stream current, that brings warm water up from the tropics to the more Northern latitudes. And like a river, sometimes it flows fast, sometimes it flows slow, but unlike a river which can change from season to season in a year these are big things. It’s the size of 100 Mississippi Rivers, so it takes a long time to slow down and a long time to speed up. Currently it is flowing very fast, and it is bringing a lot of warm tropical waters up to the Northern latitudes to the point that we’re seeing glaciers melting in Northern Arctic waters. This started around 1995, and it will typically take about 30 years before it starts to slow down. So, what we’re seeing is the Atlantic extraordinarily warm, and this is a cycle that will probably last for another 15 to 20 years.

JIM: OK, now the result of that is while we see this warming trend which gives us more severe hurricane seasons, because we know heat is generating hurricanes, what happens during the Winter cycle of this?

EVELYN: Well, typically what happens is when storms leave the North American continent they go across to Europe and Europe has stormier weather as well. Ironically, these warmer waters create more stormy conditions along the East Coast and sometimes even as far west as the Midwest and the Great Lakes area, and also Europe experiences stormier weather. So warmer water ends up stormier, colder winter sometimes. [47:48]

JIM: Now, I know you were calling for a colder than normal Winter and it looked like in December, that’s the way things pretty much looked but then we got a warming trend. What’s happening with this weather cycle now and where are we?

EVELYN: Well, if the US weather was totally determined by the Atlantic it would be cold, because the conditions right now is the Arctic air is not being held in by Arctic winds and it’s ready to expand south. But what’s shaping our warm weather right now is an extraordinarily strong Pacific jet stream, and it is the Pacific and its impact on the jet stream that is keeping us warm. The Pacific jet stream is so strong it is blocking the southward movement of Arctic air. So, the Arctic air is not moving south into North America, instead when it surges south, it’s surging south into Asia. And we are seeing freezes as far south as New Delhi, India. If you can imagine tropical India, people freezing to death. [48:49]

JIM: That’s incredible.

EVELYN: It is incredible weather. This is weather like we’ve not seen in over 70 years.

JIM: So, does the US escape another problem because I know that our inventory levels of natural gas and oil are low, and it’s very weather dependent, whether we get into an energy crisis. Are we going to end up having a warmer Winter, or is this whole ballgame not over yet?

EVELYN: The whole ballgame is not over yet. Last time we had these conditions, it was very cold then it warmed up for a bit in the Midwinter, giving people a false sense of security, and then it got cold once again. The Pacific jet stream is quite variable when the Pacific is in this phase of its oscillation, and I would not bet my heating bill on this jet stream continuing to be this strong through another two to three months. We can probably expect sometime around, oh, normally something like this would last anywhere from 4 to 8 weeks more – average would be around 6 weeks. So, I would not be surprised to see the cold return in February. [49:59]

JIM: So, if we get the cold in February does it stay with us, do we get a colder March, or is only one month of cold weather and then it’s back to good weather

EVELYN: Again, think from 4 to 8 weeks.

JIM: 4 to 8 weeks.

EVELYN: Yeah, the weather tends to get extremely variable under these types of conditions and you get extremes of cold like we had in December, extremes of warmth like we’re having now, followed by extremes of cold, just like the Summer we saw extremes of heat. [50:27]

JIM: Can you give us some idea what it looked like in the past when we’ve had these kinds of temperatures? You and I were talking just before we went on the air about the year 1932.

EVELYN: Well, remember when people kept talking about the hurricane season and the last time we had anything close to this many hurricanes was 1933. Eerily enough, this year, it’s echoing some of the weather conditions of the early 30s. Now, fortunately for Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana their farming methods are so much better they’re not going to have a dust bowl, but they’re facing the same dry conditions that they had in those days and that’s one of the reasons they’re having all these terrible wildfires. We have had the largest wildfire season since we’ve been keeping records.

JIM: Evelyn, getting beyond Winter, so we’ve got a four to eight week period where we could see cold come back lasting 4 to 8 weeks or it may be just as short as 4.

EVELYN: Yes.

JIM: Let’s move on to the hurricane season because we’re in this decadal oscillator, where the ocean temperatures are heating, that means we start this next hurricane season before us, we will barely have our Gulf Stream production back on line for oil and natural gas, and they’re still going to be making some repairs. What do you expect to see, does this get worse as you get into this decadal oscillator? In other words, as the ocean temperature heats up, maybe it’s half a degree or one degree warmer this year. Does that mean we have a more severe hurricane season?

EVELYN: Not necessarily. When you consider the last decadal oscillation, how long it lasted. And yet 1933 was the strongest year which was very early. It doesn’t mean it gets worse and worse, but what it does mean is the conditions that we took for granted in the 70s, 80s, and 90s are past. We’re in for the type of weather that they had in the 40s, 50s, and 60s. And back then, living on the coast was an adventure sometimes. [52:27]

JIM: So, maybe it doesn’t get worse, but we should see a good share of storms this coming Summer.

EVELYN: Exactly. Exactly. There’s reasons why if you look historically at where, say, Native Americans settled, they did not settle permanently on some of those islands that people are paying high prices to live on now.

JIM: ha.

EVELYN: Yeah, why live in a storm magnet.

JIM: Yeah, it’s kind of like living below Mt. Vesuvius when you see smoke coming out of the top of the mountain.

EVELYN: Oh, years ago I had one of my clients complain because his home had 3 – in one year – 3 near strikes. And I said why do you think they called it Cape Fear. [53:09]

JIM: Evelyn, one other thing that you wrote about in your newsletter is the magnetic field is changing in the globe. Can you speak about that briefly?

EVELYN: Yes, people tend to think the North magnetic pole as a permanent fixture. And actually what it is is the interior of the earth is liquid, and as it spins it help generate this magnetic field. But it’s liquid so it sloshes around, and the North magnetic field moves in relationship to the surface of the Earth. Currently, it is moving faster than we have been accustomed to it moving, and so you got some sensationalist headlines saying, “oh the North and South magnetic poles are going to flip.” No, what typically happens is there tends to be an oscillation between Canada and Russia, and right now we’re sending the North magnetic pole to Siberia. [53:59]

JIM: And does that change the jet stream, and the weather patterns?

EVELYN: Yes it does. Typically the worst weather is due South of the North magnetic pole. Just ask the noble citizens of Winnipeg how wonderful their Winters are. They can show you sometime one of their intersections which they claim has the coldest weather in Canada. Well, now we’re sending the worst weather over to the Russians, and I hope they enjoy it. [54:23]

Snowbie

Good info.

lostexpectation

still doesn;t explain it, there was an interesting program on the jet stream on bbc2 the other night, I think they should include the jet stream in the weather forecast, I never knew the jet streams position was the determing factor in the bad flooding in europe a few yrs back