Today’s interesting fact has to do with earthquakes.

Earthquakes are caused when tectonic plates slip past, under or over other tectonic plates.

You wouldn’t think that changes in sea level, or changes in the atmosphere could cause earthquakes, but recent studies of the frequency of earthquakes along fault lines and comparing sea levels and atmospheric changes have shown some surprising results.

When El Nino, a weather phenomenon occurs, it moves water from one side of the Pacific Ocean to the other. 

This can cause variations of more than 20 cm in the sea level in some areas.

They found that during the lowest levels, earthquakes can increase from the yearly average of 2 a year, to 8 a year.

Similar studies have suggested that earthquakes are more likely during atmospheric low pressure, than high pressure.

It seems that less pressure on faults allows them to move easier.

Which when you think of it, makes a lot of sense.

I’m posting yesterdays interesting fact today, as yesterday was a bit hectic. It has to do with the weather and climate.

Weather is what happens from day to day. Climate is what happens globally. For what ever reason, the world’s overall temperature is rising, even if in parts of the world, it is getting colder.

In England has experienced a lot of swings in the weather patterns over the past 50 years or so and seems to come and go. This has been shown to be because of changes in the jet stream, a river of wind that runs around the world.

Models suggest that as the overall temperature of the world increases, the jet stream will meander more. This seems to be happening, which has been causing the swings in weather, such as the droughts and subsequent forest fires in Russia, the cold winters in some parts of the world, as well as the warm winters in other parts.

This is because as the jet stream kinks, cold air from the north is dragged south, bringing cold and snow, and then warm air is dragged north, bringing the warm weather.

You can see this in a pot of water on a stove or cooker. When the water simmers, hot water rises, and cold water settles down to the bottom to warm and rise again. The more heat applied to the bottom of the pan, the faster this rising and falling occurs, until eventually you get a rolling boil. This is basically what is happening to the air.

As the tropics get warmer air rises and goes north, where it settles and then moves south. Because the earth is spinning, this causes the various trade winds. The hotter the tropics get, the further north the warm air goes, the more violent it moves and the faster cold air from the north, along with the snow and freezing rain, goes south.