Nature's Verdict

Is the Earth a ringed planet?

G. Jones was the first to suggest the Earth might have a ring of its own (1856), and J. O'Keefe was the first to suggest that an Earth ring system could influence weather (1980).  

Neither got much traction, but they should have.  A fading ring system would account for global warming of the 20th century such as it was, and for its many statistical peculiarities - more warming in winters than summers, more warming of daily temperature minima than maxima, and so on.  

And conversely, if the ring explanation is the right one, then our weather will never be well predicted far in advance unless we learn about the ring system.   The cyclic effects of a ring system might be noticed, but because our ring system must be fragile and young and change quickly (because it would be very unstable), the magnitude of the cycles would vary quickly also.   That would be absolutely confusing.  

To explore the notion that a ring system is helping drive our climate, the purpose of this website is to present a set of weather predictions for events that reasonably correspond to the expected effects of a simple ring system, and are not otherwise specifically expected, and to compare those predictions to the weather that actually occurs.  

The 2012 set of predictions is here.

The 2013 predictions now in preparation.