Ice Caps, Ice Packs, What Do They Mean?

A major component to the future weather of the Earth is what is happening with all the ice. Whether we're referring to the winds that drive El Niño or the ocean conveyors, what the ice packs do and how they do it will affect life here for years to come.

The first safe assumption is that there is going to be a lot of water. Whatever causes global climate change (probably an excessive human production of greenhouse gasses), there's going to be a lot of melting in at least the Arctic region before things begin to cool down, again . . . if they do.

That is to say, we already know that Greenland is getting warmer than freezing in the Summer, and it may not be unreasonable to assume that this melting trend will continue. Also, the Arctic Ocean has less ice cover every year. Based on these two observations, let's assume that the northern ice cover of Earth will continue to melt towards zero ice cover.

In contrast to the center of the Greenland Ice Sheet, the highest temperatures measured toward the center of the Antarctic Ice Sheet do not come close to crossing the freezing mark, with the record high (9.9 degrees Fahrenheit at South Pole Station) well below freezing.

There are two extremes that we can consider as possibilities as the northern latitudes melt: the (1) positive feedback loop and the (2) negative feedback loop. Under assumption one, things continue to get hotter. Under assumption two, things get colder.

(1) Everything melts. In fact, the north gets so hot that it starts to raise global temperatures, which in turn melts the south pole. This is exactly the trend we're seeing now. The north continues to melt just a little faster than expected. Under this positive feedback loop, eventually the north pole will not even have ice in the winter, creating higher pressure in the northern latitudes (from the ocean heating the air in the winter). This will then force more hot air south from the equator in the southern summer, allowing the south pole temperatures to climb above freezing and melt the southern ice.

(2) Everything stops. The northern ice melts so quickly that the cold water interrupts ocean conveyors, specifically the North Atlantic's Gulf Stream. So instead of everything melting, we are again plunged into another ice age.

Chances are that the reality will fall somewhere between these two extremes, rather than one or the other coming to fruition. However, the same old status quo, which is in between, is somewhat unlikely given the rapid changes that are occurring in the world environment. We can probably expect slightly more turbulent weather on the world scale for some amount of time to come.

Back to the question: Where are we in the Universe?

About 2.3 Percent of the Universe

Two posts ago, I went on a rant about the difference between the progression of the zodiac and the Sun's orbit around the center of the Milky Way, which is different by a factor of 10,000 (give or take). Yesterday, I learned that our movement in the Universe is even more complicated than that. Apparently,  the Milky Way, itself, is moving away from the center of something called the "Local Void" and toward something called the "Great Attractor" in the Centaurus Cluster of Galaxies. Here's a great website with a video better (and correctly) explaining it.

This pretty well explains it!

Probably took me a little too long to find this video on YouTube, but I think it provides a pretty satisfactory explanation of El Niño.

What's a Factor of 10,000 Mix Up Mean Anyway?

Ok, so if you grew up in the 80s (after there were desktop computers but before the Internet) there was a game called Number Munchers, which they used to teach kids factors, multiples and a bunch of other good stuff.

Number Munchers

Going back to Number Munchers, an error of 10,000 is huge, especially since the video game didn't use anything over 2 digits for the most part. So, how did I miss something by a factor of 10,000?

Well apparently, I missed the memo that the progression of the Zodiac/Equinox or the Great/Plutonian Year (25,800 years) was different than the time the sun takes to go around the galaxy, a Cosmic Year (225 million years). Given that the Solar system has a diameter of 100,000 light years or something, I guess that these two "years" are different isn't really too much of a surprise. So just because the description sounds like the stars go in a circle doesn't mean those stars or our solar system actually do go in a circle relative to each other. After all, all the stars should be going in about the same direction. Our planet (and perhaps everything else) just jiggles a little. 

NBC News.com

Above we can see our 225 million year path around the center of the galaxy. Apparently, we also go up and down like a roller coaster (every about 63 million years, based on the biodiversity record) due to an uneven distribution of gravity between the solar system and the rest of the galaxy. And below is a graphic showing the little jiggle that causes the progression of the stars, as explained by Sir Isaac Newton and noted in  Voltaire's Letter XVII.

Random Image of the Progression of the Equinox

So what are all the other stars doing while we are going up, down and wobbling all over the place? We don't know. We suspect they're going away from us in an ever expanding universe (?) except for the ones that aren't, which are just the stars that are close by. 

Is what those nearby stars do is of any relevance? What is really happening with the motions of our local star group? Do those motions remain the same? I've got a lot of questions to figure out.

So ultimately, that small misunderstanding of what a Cosmic Year really is (that whole approximate factor of 10,000 thing) lead me to a whole lot more questions. My hope was to find some sort of predictable movement outside the solar system. But instead, it appears the galaxy is a half leavened cake  that is destined to collapse under its own weight before it cools. 

We're left with a cosmic orbit that somehow resembles two squarish coasters stacked one on top another and then twisted so the corners do not match. The orbit is then some sort of elliptical curve that connects the corners of the coasters in directional (assuming two-dimensional top down view) order. The top and bottom coasters then rotate (either together or at different, possibly opposing speeds, IDK) such that the corners of the top coaster are reached three to four times a complete orbit. 

That is to say mass extinctions occur approximately every 63 million year, which we associate with going above (I guess north of) the galactic disk, and we travel around the disk about every 225 million (maybe 250 million, not sure) years. And, on a totally (or at least somewhat) unrelated note, the Earth is a top that has developed a bit of a wobble and is going through its own 25,800 year cycle. And, the classic understanding of "center of gravity" is a little off. That is to say: these very weird things (orbits, years, wobbles, whatever) happen solely because of slight imperfections in the distribution of mass.

So, that's what I learned, today. 

Back to Thinking of Big Data

So, back to the premise that there is a lot of data that we can't get through to figure out what is exactly causing El Niño. The video above shows a good overview of what "Big Data" is (or the problems inherent). Basically, the (typical) problem with big data is that relevant information is usually destroyed before it becomes of any use. The difficultly in deriving meaning from data, means it is disposed of to create more space for newer data, which will also be disposed of due to lack of processing ability.

If we go back a few weeks ago, I created a list of data sets that might be attainable for researching El Niño's causes. Even if I were to obtain that information, there is a very real risk of the data just dropping through the analysis without being caught in whatever fish net (a.k.a., analysis) we're using to sort the information.

So, the temptation with Big Data is to story the analysis and dump the data. For example, let's say we are using a storage unit. Every time we fill the storage unit, we create an inventory list of everything in the unit. However, when we empty the storage unit, we destroy that inventory list. Instead, we just have a record that the storage unit was filled and did contain something. Then the storage unit is refilled and a new inventory list is created. We have no way of knowing if what was in the storage unit the first time was in anyway related to what was in the storage unit the second time. We no longer have that first inventory list.

In a way this makes a lot of sense, because there seems to be a terminal point at which data is of use. For instance, I was taking a marketing class. We were using SPSS to analyze some number set. There were a number of different variables. There were so many variables that the way we were measuring the fit of our model (R^2) just kept improving, even though the fit of the model to the variable was NOT improving. There was simply no use for the 20 data sets we had access to because we could do better modeling with three of those data sets.

However, this becomes similar to taking the derivative in calculus. Yes, we get new useful data, but we can no longer see the big picture. If we keep analyzing the analysis, we go from a complex series of curves to a straight line.

WyzAnt Tutoring Graphic Showing an Example of Position, Velocity and Acceleration of a Particle

The equivalent in the  El Niño case would be analyzing the results of many analyses together, perhaps not unlike one would take a derivative of a derivative in calculus. For example, we could analyze how an ocean temperature study compares to an air temperature study and then compare the results of that study to the lunar orbit. Does the data matter? I suppose that remains an unknown for the time being. My guess would be "yes."