Rainy September

There were just too much rains this month in the Philippines.

From September 1 to 13, Sunday, mostly cloudy days; it rained almost everyday except for 2 days.

Last Monday it was half-cloudy, half sunny.
Last Tuesday, it was sunny the whole day, at times zero clouds.
Yesterday, the clouds and rains were back, there were street flooding again.
Today, Thursday, sunny in the morning. Thin clouds appeared in early afternoon. Now as I write this, there is a heavy downpour, though it does not seem to last long.

It seemed that the sky would be sunny only for sunlight to get evaporation, to accummulate thick rain clouds again. Then dump the rains anytime, anyday.

I remember last August 2003. While a severe heatwave killed more than 35,000 in Europe, we had 7 days and 7 nights straight of almost non-stop rains in the Philippines. Several dozen people died because of landslides, drowning from bloating rivers, and diseases. Some because of hunger perhaps. There is nothing to eat when almost everything is flooded. I remember that month very well because I was preparing to go to Sweden for a 7-weeks seminar on "Sustainable agriculture in an environmental perspective" from September to mid-October that year.

I visited our farm last Saturday. I learned that many rice farmers have already harvested their farms for the first crop, they were happy with the early onset of the rains. But too much rains can be a problem for the farmers too. After harvesting, they cannot dry their rice as most of rice farmers in the Philippines depend on solar drying. If the harvested rice don't get dried for long, it blackens and the quality and taste is adversely affected.

Meanwhile, I believe in the Sun-climate link theory. Deep solar minimum, very little or zero sunspots, meaning weak solar magnetic field, allow the entry of plenty of galactic cosmic rays that reach the Earth as the solar wind is weak to drive them away. These cosmic rays help form the aerosols that become the seeds in cloud formation. More clouds, less sunlight to reach the Earth surface, more rains, there is global cooling.