It is interesting. If the wobble affects the weather, and vice versa, it would seem difficult to determine which came first, the chicken or the egg. See here.

This is exactly what I mean. Same thing with a pail full of water. Put a tiny pebble under it and the swirling water inside will cause the pail to wobble. Being that precession is decreasing these effects can and are being felt more strongly around the globe. Witness the extreme floods not only in Australia but in Brazil and Indonesia as well. The Pacific coast of the United States is being hit will stronger than usual storms and the frequency has increased. The blizzards in the midwest, a huge dense high pressure system just sitting midway between the Great Lakes and New England. The list goes on and on. Then there's the Solar Maximum, which we'll reach sometime next year. This coming decade is going to be one for the record books I think. A side note. 2010 has gone down in the books as the hottest year on record.

BTW ... good one Doc.

this is very interesting....   thanks for a great read

This is the second installment. Now climate change is the culprit. Read on.

Scientists see climate change link to Australian

floods


SINGAPORE (Reuters) – Climate change has likely

intensified the monsoon rains that have triggered

record floods in Australia's Queensland state,

scientists said on Wednesday, with several months of

heavy rain and storms still to come.

But while scientists say a warmer world is predicted

to lead to more intense droughts and floods, it

wasn't yet possible to say if climate change would

trigger stronger La Nina and El Nino weather

patterns that can cause weather chaos across the

globe.

"I think people will end up concluding that at least

some of the intensity of the monsoon in Queensland

can be attributed to climate change," said Matthew

England of the Climate Change Research Center at the

University of New South Wales in Sydney.

"The waters off Australia are the warmest ever

measured and those waters provide moisture to the

atmosphere for the Queensland and northern Australia

monsoon," he told Reuters.

The Queensland floods have killed 16 people since

the downpour started last month, inundating towns,

crippling coal mining and are now swamping the

state's main city of Brisbane.

The rains have been blamed on one of the strongest

La Nina patterns ever recorded. La Nina is a cooling

of ocean temperatures in the east and central

Pacific, which usually leads to more rain over much

of Australia, Indonesia and other parts of Southeast

Asia.

Click image to see photos of the flooding in

Australia


Reuters/Tim Wimborne

This is because the phenomena leads to stronger

easterly winds in the tropics that pile up warm

water in the western Pacific and around Australia.

Indonesia said on Wednesday it expected prolonged

rains until June.

WEATHER SWITCH

The Pacific has historically switched between La

Nina phases and El Ninos, which have the opposite

impact by triggering droughts in Australia and

Southeast Asia.

"We've always had El Ninos and we've had natural

variability but the background which is now

operating is different," said David Jones, head of

climate monitoring and prediction at the Australia

Bureau of Meteorology in Melbourne.

"The first thing we can say with La Nina and El Nino

is it is now happening in a hotter world," he told

Reuters, adding that meant more evaporation from

land and oceans, more moisture in the atmosphere and

stronger weather patterns.

"So the El Nino droughts would be expected to be

exacerbated and also La Nina floods because rainfall

would be exacerbated," he said, though adding it

would be some years before any climate change impact

on both phenomena might become clear.

He said the current La Nina was different because of

the warmest ocean temperatures on record around

Australia and record humidity in eastern Australia

over the past 12 months.

Prominent U.S. climate scientist Kevin Trenberth

said the floods and the intense La Nina were a

combination of factors.

He pointed to high ocean temperatures in the Indian

Ocean near Indonesia early last year as well as the

rapid onset of La Nina after the last El Nino ended

in May.

"The rapid onset of La Nina meant the Asian monsoon

was enhanced and the over 1 degree Celsius anomalies

in sea surface temperatures led to the flooding in

India and China in July and Pakistan in August," he

told Reuters in an email.

He said a portion, about 0.5C, of the ocean

temperatures around northern Australia, which are

more than 1.5C above pre-1970 levels, could be

attributed to global warming.

"The extra water vapor fuels the monsoon and thus

alters the winds and the monsoon itself and so this

likely increases the rainfall further," said

Trenberth, head of the Climate Analysis Section at

the National Center for Atmospheric Research in

Boulder, Colorado.

"So it is easy to argue that 1 degree Celsius sea

surface temperature anomalies gives 10 to 15 percent

increase in rainfall," he added.

Some scientists said it was still too soon to draw a

definite climate change link to the floods.

"It's a natural phenomena. We have no strong reason

at the moment for saying this La Nina is any

stronger than it would be even without humans," said

Neville Nicholls of Monash University in Melbourne

and president of the Australian Meteorological and

Oceanographic Society.

But he said global atmospheric warming of about

0.75C over the past half century had to be having

some impact.

"It has to be affecting the climate, regionally and

globally. It has to be affecting things like La

Nina. But can you find a credible argument which

says it's made it worse? I can't at the moment."

There is not much we can do about, it's just one of those things.

People will just have to adapt and put systems in place for more extreme weather events.

Why do I get this picture of people scurrying east to west and back again then north to south and vice versa in an effort to balance the spin of the earth?

I could just see that happening. Talk about a Great Migration. 6+ billion people all running at once. Scary.  

Bah, just when I think this is going to be a thread about those dedicated ladies who jog braless,....

Oh well, when you're out of luck you're out of luck.

Seriously, this is an interesting subject that my mother has been researching for years, with regard the the Earth's movement, time, the seasons and weather patterns, etc..   I sent a link to this article to her and she rang me this evening from the UK to say: 'See, I told you so... about 20 years ago!"

Yeah, she did, and now others are saying the same thing... like me muvver's a real cluey ol' bird in't she.

yup she sure is, and some people didn't believe her back then either

luv it

You are off the wall Doc. LMAO

And while we're on the subject of La Nina... I thought she was a Mexican bandit who doubles as a dancer.

,,,, while El Nino is her hapless husband, who went to rob a bank, forgot what he was there for, so made a deposit instead.

While one may be cold the other is just the opposite, hot. The severe drought Australia experienced was a result of El Nino. Now the opposite extreme is true. When we reach solar max in less than a year it will be communications that will suffer. Fortunately there are safeguards in place to minimize the effect. Many changes have occurred.