by neufer » Mon Feb 01, 2016 6:42 pm
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2010/10/folklore-confirmed-moons-phase-affects-rainfall wrote:
Folklore Confirmed: The Moon's Phase Affects Rainfall
By Kristen Minogue, Science Mag., Oct. 6, 2010
<<Zuni Indians thought a red moon brought water. 17th-century English farmers believed in a "dripping moon," which supplied rain depending on whether its crescent was tilted up or down. Now scientists have found evidence for another adage: Rain follows the full and new phases of the moon.
Most studies on the weather and moon phases appeared in the 1960s and seemed to lend credence to lunar folklore. Researchers detected more peaks in rainfall in the days after the full and new moons, for example. Recently, three researchers decided to revive the issue when they stumbled across a link between moon phases and stream runoff while working on another project. They will soon publish in Geophysical Research Letters one of the most comprehensive studies yet, with more than a century of data from across the continental United States.
The researchers, a team comprised of geographers and climatologists from Arizona State University (ASU), Tempe, and the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) in Asheville, North Carolina, ...turned to the U.S. Historical Climatology Network, a database with daily precipitation information for more than 1200 stations from as early as 1895.
True to farmers' wisdom, precipitation tended to rise a few days before the quarter moon. It's not a strong link. .. But they do seem to account for 1% to 2% of the total changes in rainfall or stream runoff. "It's a real effect, but it's a real small effect," Thorne says.
The researchers still aren't sure how the moon exerts this effect. Most guesses also come from the 1960s and '70s. Back then, some scientists suggested that the moon's orbit could distort the magnetosphere, a region of ionized particles surrounding Earth's protective magnetic field. This might allow more particles from space into the atmosphere, where they could trigger rain when they collide with clouds. Others speculated that the moon's orbit could increase the amount of meteoric dust reaching Earth, which could also trigger rain when it hit clouds, or that the moon could create a pressure bulge that would affect storm systems—a hypothesis floated by the study's lead author, Randall Cerveny of ASU Tempe.>>
http://www.washington.edu/news/2016/01/29/phases-of-the-moon-affect-amount-of-rainfall/ wrote:
Moon’s tidal forces affect amount of rainfall on Earth
Hannah Hickey, UWE News and Information: January 29, 2016
<<When the moon is high in the sky, it creates bulges in the planet’s atmosphere that creates imperceptible changes in the amount of rain that falls below.
New University of Washington research to be published in Geophysical Research Letters shows that the lunar forces affect the amount of rain – though very slightly. “As far as I know, this is the first study to convincingly connect the tidal force of the moon with rainfall,” said corresponding author Tsubasa Kohyama, a UW doctoral student in atmospheric sciences.
Kohyama was studying atmospheric waves when he noticed a slight oscillation in the air pressure. He and co-author John (Michael) Wallace, a UW professor of atmospheric sciences, spent two years tracking down the phenomenon. Air pressure changes linked to the position of the moon was first detected in 1847, and temperature in 1932, in ground-based observations. An earlier paper by the UW researchers used a global grid of data to confirm that air pressure on the surface definitely varies with the position of the moon. “When the moon is overhead or underfoot, the air pressure is higher,” Kohyama said.
Their new paper is the first to show that the moon’s gravitational tug also puts a slight damper on the rain. When the moon is overhead, its gravity causes Earth’s atmosphere to bulge toward it, so the pressure or weight of the atmosphere on that side of the planet goes up. Higher pressure increases the temperature of air parcels below. Since warmer air can hold more moisture, the same air parcels are now farther from their moisture capacity. “It’s like the container becomes larger at higher pressure,” Kohyama said. The relative humidity affects rain, he said, because “lower humidity is less favorable for precipitation.”
Kohyama and Wallace used 15 years of data collected by NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission satellite from 1998 to 2012 to show that the rain is indeed slightly lighter when the moon is high. The change is only about 1 percent of the total rainfall variation, though, so not enough to affect other aspects of the weather or for people to notice the difference.>>
[quote=" http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2010/10/folklore-confirmed-moons-phase-affects-rainfall"]
Folklore Confirmed: The Moon's Phase Affects Rainfall
By Kristen Minogue, Science Mag., Oct. 6, 2010
<<Zuni Indians thought a red moon brought water. 17th-century English farmers believed in a "dripping moon," which supplied rain depending on whether its crescent was tilted up or down. Now scientists have found evidence for another adage: Rain follows the full and new phases of the moon.
Most studies on the weather and moon phases appeared in the 1960s and seemed to lend credence to lunar folklore. Researchers detected more peaks in rainfall in the days after the full and new moons, for example. Recently, three researchers decided to revive the issue when they stumbled across a link between moon phases and stream runoff while working on another project. They will soon publish in Geophysical Research Letters one of the most comprehensive studies yet, with more than a century of data from across the continental United States.
The researchers, a team comprised of geographers and climatologists from Arizona State University (ASU), Tempe, and the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) in Asheville, North Carolina, ...turned to the U.S. Historical Climatology Network, a database with daily precipitation information for more than 1200 stations from as early as 1895. [b][color=#0000FF]True to farmers' wisdom, precipitation tended to rise a few days before the quarter moon. It's not a strong link. .. But they do seem to account for 1% to 2% of the total changes in rainfall or stream runoff. "It's a real effect, but it's a real small effect," Thorne says.[/color][/b]
The researchers still aren't sure how the moon exerts this effect. Most guesses also come from the 1960s and '70s. Back then, some scientists suggested that the moon's orbit could distort the magnetosphere, a region of ionized particles surrounding Earth's protective magnetic field. This might allow more particles from space into the atmosphere, where they could trigger rain when they collide with clouds. Others speculated that the moon's orbit could increase the amount of meteoric dust reaching Earth, which could also trigger rain when it hit clouds, or that the moon could create a pressure bulge that would affect storm systems—a hypothesis floated by the study's lead author, Randall Cerveny of ASU Tempe.>>[/quote][quote=" http://www.washington.edu/news/2016/01/29/phases-of-the-moon-affect-amount-of-rainfall/"]
Moon’s tidal forces affect amount of rainfall on Earth
Hannah Hickey, UWE News and Information: January 29, 2016
[float=right][img3="[b][color=#0000FF]
Satellite data over the tropics, between 10 degrees S & 10 degrees N, shows
a slight dip in rainfall when the moon is directly overhead or underfoot.
The top panel shows the air pressure, the middle the rate of change in pressure, and the bottom the rainfall anomaly. The change is 0.78 micrometers per hour.[/color] University of Washington[/b]"]http://www.washington.edu/news/files/2016/01/TidalRainFig3a.jpg[/img3][/float]<<When the moon is high in the sky, it creates bulges in the planet’s atmosphere that creates imperceptible changes in the amount of rain that falls below.
New University of Washington research to be published in Geophysical Research Letters shows that the lunar forces affect the amount of rain – though very slightly. “As far as I know, this is the first study to convincingly connect the tidal force of the moon with rainfall,” said corresponding author Tsubasa Kohyama, a UW doctoral student in atmospheric sciences.
Kohyama was studying atmospheric waves when he noticed a slight oscillation in the air pressure. He and co-author John (Michael) Wallace, a UW professor of atmospheric sciences, spent two years tracking down the phenomenon. Air pressure changes linked to the position of the moon was first detected in 1847, and temperature in 1932, in ground-based observations. An earlier paper by the UW researchers used a global grid of data to confirm that air pressure on the surface definitely varies with the position of the moon. “When the moon is overhead or underfoot, the air pressure is higher,” Kohyama said.
Their new paper is the first to show that the moon’s gravitational tug also puts a slight damper on the rain. When the moon is overhead, its gravity causes Earth’s atmosphere to bulge toward it, so the pressure or weight of the atmosphere on that side of the planet goes up. Higher pressure increases the temperature of air parcels below. Since warmer air can hold more moisture, the same air parcels are now farther from their moisture capacity. “It’s like the container becomes larger at higher pressure,” Kohyama said. The relative humidity affects rain, he said, because “lower humidity is less favorable for precipitation.”
Kohyama and Wallace used 15 years of data collected by NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission satellite from 1998 to 2012 to show that the rain is indeed slightly lighter when the moon is high. The change is only about 1 percent of the total rainfall variation, though, so not enough to affect other aspects of the weather or for people to notice the difference.>>[/quote]