Hasn't the Weather Been Lovely.

Seriously around me it's been quite pleasant. Apart from some rain it's been sunny without being hot enough to be uncomfortable. However I gather that most of the rest of the northern hemisphere has been having problems. Over the last few weeks we've seen severe flooding in China, Russia, India and the UK while in the eastern United States there's been a severe heatwave.

What appears to have happened is that for reasons only really known to itself the polar jet stream has moved slightly to the south while I think the easterly sub-tropical jet stream has moved slightly to the north. This means the easterly high pressure system that normally gives western Europe it's summer and the westerly low pressure system that helps helps cool the US have instead collided around 45-50N and the low pressure systems that normally occur in the Hadley cell have been forced up into the Feral cell. This westerly low pressure is clearly heavy with water vapour so when it collides with a high pressure system it causes lots of rain. The reason why there is so much water vapour in the system is because global warming has caused the ice caps to melt increasing the amount of free state water in the hydrosphere. However if global warming was only caused by fluctuations in the sun's energy the recent few years of decreased solar activity means you would expect the global climate to have sorted itself out by now.