Pebbles wrote:Ok... this is a hypothyosis in progress so as I am learning different aspects some of my thought patterns may change a bit here.. bear with me LOL.
Keep in mind I am not saying I think the earthquake made the current hurricane season. But I am not ruling it out 100 percent that it may have had some EFFECT on it. It's just a topic for some thought.And an interesting debate as well!
Here is what I think the earthquake has done which could effect the weather to some degree minor or major....
1. The tsunami moved the ocean... thought pattern off there.. how about the tsunami caused a very large amount water on land along the Indian ocean and along the African coast (more along the Indian ocean.)
A. May of caused a large amount of sea water evaporation which effected the weather.
B. May have caused some changes to the ocean floor near the sea shore along the Indian ocean/African coast from waves causing very minor disturbances to ocean flow pattern.
2. The earthquake
A. Made minor changes to the shape/rotation of the earth, and may of minorly effected weather.
B. Lifted up the ocean floor (causing the tsunami) and may of minorly impacting the ocean flow pattern.
C. May of effected volcano's, which in turn may effect ocean temperatures, which minorly impacts sst's and weather.
Ok.. so none of these thing had any major impact.. in fact all are relatively very very minor. I agree there. BUT... what if some or all came together just right. Chaos theory/butterfly effect just doesn't let me rule it out. Keep in mind with Chaos theory the starting mechanism isn't very large at all... but over time it's like an avalanche gaining momentum and strength over time, so thus a small event/s may grow to have significant impacts.
P.S. No more google.. i don't like googling LOL
Unfortunately, chaos theory has become rather misconstrued and abused, not just among the public, but also amongst many scientists. Soon after it was first formulated, there were predictions by some that it would become a new paradigm in science for understanding the natural world. However, that simply hasn't panned out. Instead, it's been increasingly recognized that it's more or less a restraint on what we can know or predict, rather than a wonderful tool for discovering scientific truths. What I mean is, that all chaos theory says is that some physical systems, the weather being one of them, are very sensitive to initial conditions, such that given enough time, even small differences, in say, temperature in a given region, could eventually lead to large differences in the outcome. However, the outcome is still restrained by the parameters of the system, so, you may get a different pattern of ridges and troughs in 2 weeks, for example, but you won't see an ice age vs. the oceans boiling off. Also, there is a lot of diffusion going on in the atmosphere, in that small scale fluctuations are continually being smoothed out. If that weren't the case, our NWP models would be utterly useless. So, I think the misunderstanding here is that chaos theory somehow allows for a small perturbation to grow into some fantastical unusual outcome, which is really not what happens at all. In the original formulation of chaos theory, a very simple model was used, and it was shown that while 2 initially very close trajectories always ended up diverging over time, both trajectories remained within the restraints of the system, continually rotating around one of two "strange attractors" and never departing significantly from them. Thus, while undoubtedly the initial state of the atmosphere was perturbed in minute amounts by the Sumatra earthquake, as previously stated, such that the state of the atmosphere may be somewhat different now than it would be if that earthquake hadn't happened, it wouldn't have caused anything near along the lines of the difference between a very active hurricane season, and a normal one.
Sorry for the long-winded post, but I hope it helps to clear some things up.