What could cause a location's climate to change from Wet All Year to Summer Dry...or to Winter Dry?

Question

Thinking about the major causes for why our weather pattern is the way it is.

Thanks!

Answer 1

If you are indeed asking about climate, then you are thinking long term, over hundreds of years.

To go from wet to dry requires a cold ocean current  and prevailing onshore winds, a significant uplift of the area you are considering probably combined with a interior location in relation to a significant mountain range, or a change to colder set of temperatures combined with a dominant pattern of high pressure over your region.

Human and animal and insect activities could influence climate if vegetation was removed in favour of asphalt and cement, or if vegetation was removed  or disease devastated the ground cover.

Areas that experience cold temperatures and have undergone massive drainage projects to divert water to other areas can also exhibit characteristics that may lead to significant climate change, as do the areas receiving the water.

Those are a few possibilities that may shed some light on your climate question.

*(If you have confused climate and weather in your question, then a whole set of short term possibilities exist to answer changes in weather patterns, which occur on a schedule more within the memory of an individual, ..... ie: when I was growing up winters were longer, snowier, and summers tended to be a bit cooler than in the last 20 years here in Southern Ontario.)

Answer 2

It is unlikely that you would get a dry year especially if you lived close to coast line out west or a wet one year round in say, North Carolina.   I can't imagine a storm system staying put for an entire year.

Answer 3

I dunno where you live but where I live winter is wet.....very wet.

oh by the way I live in England

Answer 4

Many places on earth go through changes in climate. Many such changes are cyclic over periods that are short in geologic time but may last for several human generations. Western Africa, for example, shifted to a drier trend in the late nineteenth century which continues to this day. The central part of the United States was drier for several decades of the early twentieth century--the "Dust Bowl"--with devastating effects for agriculture.

These changes are often associated with shifts in ocean currents or wind patterns, which in turn seem to be part of cycles that last about thirty years, and may be casued by variations in solar ourput and subtle shifts in the Earth's orbit.

The El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is one example of a climate pattern that exhibits these long cycles. It's only in the past 30-40 years that weather satellites have given us the remote sensing tools to study the Earth with enough detail that we can begin to understand these cycles.