Solar Irradiance

“The chart indicates the amount of solar energy that Earth receives has followed the Sun’s natural 11-year cycle of small ups and downs with no net increase since the 1950s. Over the same period, global temperature has risen markedly. It is therefore extremely unlikely that the Sun has caused the observed global temperature warming trend over the past half-century. “

(Source: chart from NASA/JPL and published in an article called Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet on climate.nasa.gov.)

Why am I bringing this to your attention? This summer we drove from Texas across New Mexico, Arizona to the California coast. Then from Lake Tahoe region, across Nevada to visit friends outside of Salt Lake. Then we drove down through Utah, Colorado, and back home to the Houston area.

We saw consistent signs of very low water in nearly every one of the reservoirs we passed no matter where we went outside of southeastern Texas. The drought and increasing heat has seemingly dried out everything, making our climate seem unpredictable. Examples this summer were areas in Oregon had temperatures over 110 degrees, we experienced heavy smoke from fires all the way from Lake Tahoe to the Nevada border with Utah, almost 500 miles, and way to many trees in distress in our National Forests.

Lastly this note from the EPA in an article researched and published in January 2017:

“Climate extremes, such as droughts, floods and extreme temperatures, can lead to crop losses and threaten the livelihoods of agricultural producers and the food security of communities worldwide. Depending on the crop and ecosystem, weeds, pests, and fungi can also thrive under warmer temperatures, wetter climates, and increased CO2 levels, and climate change will likely increase weeds and pests.” U.S. Environmental Protection Agency: "Climate Impacts on Agriculture and Food Supply"

Finally the articles I mentioned are easy to read, stacked with data not politics, so you can see for yourself what these changes mean and the impacts on our lives we can expect. I’ll start to focus more on what we can do about it in future blogs. Thanks for reading.