Weather Whys; Long Range Forecasting

This is weather-wise. Development of a reliable way to make long-range weather forecast is one of the primary goals of some meteorologists. All sorts of phenomena have been investigated from ocean warming to sunspots to see if they might reveal any keys to better understanding weather trends. In the early 1980s, researchers in China found what they suggested was an interesting correlation between the weather on Earth and the positions of the other planets in the solar system. Most scientists are reluctant to accept the theory, but proponents of the idea say it has nothing to do with astrology, just the laws of physics. They searched through a thousand years of Chinese weather records and found that a particular arrangement of the planets, called a synod, seemed to coincide with unusually cold periods on Earth. A synod is when all the planets accept Earth are clustered together in their respective orbits on one side of the sun and the Earth is alone on the other side. The researchers say that with so much mass on one side, the Earth is forced slightly further

away from the sun to balance things out. That would supposedly cause the Earth to be cooler because it would receive less energy from the sun. Now most scientists completely discount the synod theory, but it's an interesting example of one of the biggest problems of physical science. That theories can often sound very plausible, but then may turn out to be wrong. It seems as though the more scientists learn about the way things work, the more they realize how complex a puzzle they're tackling. We'd like to know what you think of Weatherwise. Please write us at Weatherwise, K-G-O-U radio, the University of Oklahoma, Norman, 73019-0250. Weatherwise is made possible by a grant from the National Science Foundation. For Weatherwise, I'm Drew Barra.