Science is Really Awesome or World Weather Systems; what was once the hand of God is now the domain of Men

I've spent my last evening before the big move awed into a stupor reading about the jet stream, the dust bowl, the fires in Russia and the floods in Pakistan. Last night, one of the most amazing Thunderstorms blew through my state, no threat of a cyclone but 60+ MPH winds, one gust actually shook my apartment building - or perhaps we were hit by lightning, either option seems a little unbelievable to me - needless to say I am really curious about the weather today. Especially since the weather is one of the few things that actually scares the excrement out of Maddy (fortunately not literally).

I started today's journey by looking into the weather forecast for the rest of the week and looking into the phrase "active jet stream" that somebody on the weather channel mentioned, but did not discuss while I was reading the severe weather warnings for my area last night. Apparently, the jet stream dipped in June and is now doing some kind of weird things to the weather in the American Midwest. So then, I thought to myself, well if the jet stream is doing weird things here - what is it doing elsewhere? And after what felt like a ridiculous amount of looking (as apparently the only jet stream that gets talked about, even on the world wide web, is the part of it that flows over these United States), I found this video.

In my initial research, I had stumbled across a NASA based, historical research into the effects of the jet stream on the "Dustbowl" of depression era fame (link here). To summarize the article, fluctuating temperatures and a weakened jet stream were responsible for the meteorological effects of what was to become known as the Dust bowl (the other part had to do with poor farming methods to the extent of, basically, abusing the land).

Now, as much as I find the idea of global weather/climate change(s) to be fascinating, I am not a meteorologist, and my knowledge of weather and patters and the jet stream is all pretty much just from a couple of science classes spread over about fifteen years, and what I've looked into today. What I find to be so interesting about all of this has more to do with wild conjecture on my part than basis in any sort of actual factuality.

It seems to me that these weather phenomena may have incredible lasting effects - and that this hasn't been mentioned much, to my knowledge in the US media's 24 hour news cycle (probably because it's all wild conjecture on the part of one person, me). However, that this could be a threat seems to be alluded to when the weather guy in the video says something about how the phenomena above Pakistan "shows no sign of budging right now."

Now, obviously, this isn't the same matter as the cause of our depression era dust bowl, this is a split jet stream (not a weakened one, though I can't find any data on whether or not a splitting can weaken either fork of a split jet stream) and although similar trends (a cooling tropical pacific - el nino; a warm Atlantic) may be taking place, this seems like it would be what we in the US would need, not so much what would affect weather abnormalities for North-Eastern Europe and the Indian subcontinent. So I did some looking into water temperatures, and found this map, which doesn't show fluctuations or really describe them much, but shows plenty of warm water in places it'd be expected (shallower ocean areas & the equator) - and then I found this, describing unusually warm waters in the Baltic sea - which seems to my untrained self, to a much lesser degree of course, to mimic fluctuating temperatures of the pre-dust bowl oceans (especially if you compare this map to the oceanic overview above).

Kind of knocked my socks off. Mostly, because it seems that either the weather never really was the "hand of God" as it was seen to be for so many millennia of our human existence, or we're just really, really capable of seeing all the factors that go in to this ancient weapon of God's wrath. Or, better yet some would suggest that this is all the action of HAARP, and by inference, these United States (positive rebuttal of all points here, here and - best for last - here).

Though I am no expert, and this is going to sound like a fortune teller's prediction - we (the world) are experiencing either a one time shift in weather patterns due to a fluke jet stream phenomenon, a new, dangerous, possibly stationary, trend, an old weather pattern finding new life with new effects in a new area, the greatest weapon man has ever wielded, or simply the effects of a changing environment. In any of these cases, I find it absolutely fascinating and wish there was more coverage of things like this, but I also find the loss of life staggering and horrifying and although I'm sure plenty of aid will occur in these areas, I wonder why we can't do more for each other instead of simply pursuing profits - taking advantage of crisis situations to, in the words of Rahm Emmanuel, "Never let a serious crisis go to waste. What I mean by that is it's an opportunity to do things you couldn't do before." (he was referring to the Economic downtown, and subsequent government action, but I feel it holds true for our track record; re: Katrina, 9/11, the economic downturn; shock doctrine)

additional reading:
http://factoidz.com/all-about-the-santa-ana-winds/
http://factoidz.com/chinook-winds-the-snow-eater/

sweet photojournalism/ Russian fires:
http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/07/30/russia.wildfires.heat/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-10891244

sweet photojournalism/ Pakistani flooding:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-10903426