[rant]

[Big Al]

Digges, Flamsteed, Adams, Baily, Halley, Bradley, Bliss, Maskelyne, Pond, Airy, etc, etc. The list of British astronomers goes on and on. All scientists who made significant discoveries and contributed hugely to mankind's understanding of how the Universe works.

 

What I want to know is.....

 

How the f*** did they manage to get anything done with the sh***y weather we have in this country???!!!   

 

[\rant]

[glider]

No light pollution?

 

Didn't Messier do a lot of his work from the middle of Paris, you can't do that now!

[T A WOW]

Lol!

[BAZ]

The position of the Jet Stream has a lot to do with what we can expect to get, At the moment it is moving northwards, and three weeks ago was down over Spain. That's when we had all the snow and cold weather. If it continues to move to it's normal summer spot, above Scotland we should have some better weather.

 

Here's a site where you can see what it's up to.

 

http://www.netweather.tv/index.cgi?action=jetstream;sess=

[Guest Tweedledum]

Baz has this one to rights!.

 

When the jetstream is north of scotland it allows the blocking highs to develop  over Denmark giving us a great summer, see 1976, conversely the winters around 76 (75 & 77)  were pants but dry, in North Wales anyway.

 

When the jetstream moves south as it has done regularly over the last couple of years, this allows the blocking high to develop over greenland and we get  snowbal Britain and our 'bbq summer' NOT!.

[cosmic dave]

Is there any connection between the the jet stream on the suns cycle ? What im trying to point out is the weather on mars is at its worst when its closest to the sun

[Guest Tweedledum]

Hi Dave,

 

The increasing energy put in to the Martian atmosphere near perihelion is about 40% from memory (I have grey hairs), and with the earth it is less than 5%.

 

Also if you map sunspot cycles in the 11 year, it would not explain the summers in mid to late 70's when at sunspot minimum. There was a chap called Eddy,  who put forward the 'Maunder Minimum' cycle of 30 years. The little ice age, coincided with large volanic eruptions and the fact that there was less greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, and a solar minimum.

 

Cheers

Damian

 

Ps.

Below shamelessly taken from the Potsdam Institute Of Climatic Impact Research!

The result is unequivocal. In the model’s calculations, the estimates from the study concluding that solar radiation in the Little Ice Age was extremely low result in temperatures which are significantly below observed temperatures in periods of low solar activity. The estimates of the other study which did not show big differences between radiation intensity during the Maunder Minimum and the recent solar minimum yield realistic temperatures. So the climatic data from natural archives support the second study. “To understand climate history, we certainly have to take into account all possibly relevant factors,†Feulner says. “However, the impact of solar activity on the climate is comparatively small. That is what the new study confirms.â€

Now what do these findings mean for our century in case the sun enters a quiet period comparable to the Maunder minimum as some experts suggest? “This would bring a cooling effect of at most 0.3 degrees,†Feulner says. This could decrease anthropogenic global warming by roughly 10 percent or less. “Regrettably, this is too little to considerably slow down anthropogenic climate change.â€
 

[Guest]

Last point first: I'm using the <expletive> tag to denote the use of naughty words in written communication and they allow the reader's imagination to substitute a word that is appropriate to them and their culture.

 

Now on the weather, I manage to perform some sort of observation about half of the days most years, even if it is just to check the Sun for sunspots through my (filtered of course) binoculars. Having travelled to many other countries, mostly on business, we are by no means the worst country to observe from. If you look at my blog entries for this year (http://sungazer127mak.blogspot.fr/) you'll see that my observations are down from previous years, although much of that is due to factors other than the weather.

 

I often miss some of the best viewing this time of year because I go to bed before it gets properly dark. As I'm mot that young any more, I find it just about impossible to work without a proper night's sleep and I need to be up at 6.30 at the moment.

 

The predictions seem to suggest that the jetstream will continue to be south, which not only ruins the weather from the UK but also most of the places like France, Holland and Germany that I will be visiting on business this year.

 

One lesson I've learned the hard way is to find something to view and photograph under poor conditions and that it is possible to photograph the Moon when not a single star or planet is visible. "White light" solar viewing is possible under quite poor conditions but narrowband filtering is not.

 

If you like photography, take as many shots as you can when you can. There's plenty of cloudy days and nights to process them and I often revisit older shots when clouded out for a long time.