That is pure conspiracy nonsense. You’re experiencing more clear skies than you admit, and it is normally expected to have more upper cloud or cirrus formation in the current decades due to the lower amount of sunspot activity. Add to those factors some recent volcanic activity in the Northern Hemisphere, heavy Chinese smog production, and high altitude contrail production; any already existing tendencies to form cirrus, haze, and overall water vapor and sulfur compounds can be expected to emphasize such hazy conditions to an even greater degree.
I've been an airplane buff since I was two weeks old. I never got a license, but I was at the controls a little as a kid, doing straight and level and a few banking turns - dad had to do the rudder because my feet could not reach the pedals. We went to the Sussex airshow just about every year.
I NOTICE the weather EVERY day.
I flew on passenger jets in the late 90s every day for years. I used to like United because you could hear the cockpit on channel 9 on the headphones. I would sit with that on in my headphones - ALL ACROSS THE COUNTRY on a 5-HOUR flight. I like it. I like flying. I love airplanes and flying. I'm always interested when navigation, safety and weather issues come up. I am HUGE into knowing what the weather is; I don't write it down every day, but I certainly have a memory.
So far this year we have barely gotten over 70, about 3 or 4 days so far. It's been very cool, 50s/60s. I'm up all night working and go out for walks. It's only recently got up out of the 30s at night. I take note of the skies at night; clouds, stars, weather.
I learned from flying a small plane trying to hold it straight and level that haze at altitude is more challenging than a clear sky - because you can't see the horizon clearly. When you try to keep the plane level, you look at your wingtips and you see the horizon - so you can see if both of them look the same, wingtip relative to horizon. When it's hazy - you can't see that demarcation as easily, so you have to be more careful in making sure you actually are flying straight and level like you think you are.
A few years ago I began to notice high-alt haze in northern NJ skies. The past 3 years it has been, for the most part, a daily situation.
Smog does not rise to 30k feet and drift halfway around the world and still remain thick enough to create a clearly visible thin cloud cover.
Volcanic activity would only create high level haze when it happens, not on a daily basis for 3 years (and probably longer).
Mt St Helens erupted in 1980. I was in HS. We did not have months of haze in New Jersey after that. Here is the ash cloud distribution from that:
Sunspot activity would not create haze for 3 years daily.
Sunspot activity would be even over the whole earth since the sun is 93 billion miles away from earth. Differences in ozone layer, etc., shift from time to time - the earth's atmosphere is gaseous and in motion - over all the earth. The only possible explanation of 3 years of haze is cloud seeding of some sort, at 30k feet, upwind of the area in question.
“I NOTICE the weather EVERY day”
As an Air Force meteorologist I reported the surface, upper air, rawindsonde, and more observations and forecasts throughout a day. Evidently you failed to accurately identify and “NOTICE” what you thought you were observing.
“I certainly have a memory.”
A false memory of something you erroneously perceived and jumped to a wrong conclusion is still just a false memory.
“So far this year we have barely gotten over 70, about 3 or 4 days so far. “
Yeah, that’s called weather and climate. Weather and climate is in constant cyclical change, and you have many kinds of cycles with periods measured in years, decades, centuries, and much much longer. Generally speaking, we should see colder and cloudier trends in the Northern Hemisphere for another one or two more decades like the Dalton Minimum, assuming we are not entering into something more like the centuries long Maunder Minimum is sunspot cycles.
“A few years ago I began to notice high-alt haze in northern NJ skies. The past 3 years it has been, for the most part, a daily situation.”
Yes, decades long cycles in the weather patterns will do that. We’ve been seeing some warmer weather patterns in the Arctic Circle due to the shifting of the high latitude high pressure and low pressure systems shifting the wind patterns and the warm and cold air masses out of the positions seen since the 1970s and the early 1940s. That’s also why you also haven’t been seeing those Nor’easters in the New Jersey, New York, New England region in your lifetime as in centuries past.
“A few years ago I began to notice high-alt haze in northern NJ skies. The past 3 years it has been, for the most part, a daily situation.”
Looking at the GOES East - CONUS imagery shows exaggeration on your part, increased cloud cover due to the long-term changes in weather patterns, and the contribution of those long-term changes in the weather patterns towards making the air pollution problem worse in the region from New Jersey to Massachusetts. See the synoptic satellite imagery at:
GOES East - CONUS
http://weather.msfc.nasa.gov/GOES/
“Smog does not rise to 30k feet and drift halfway around the world and still remain thick enough to create a clearly visible thin cloud cover.”
On the contrary, smog and many other forms of air pollution routinely have the capability of circulating up to a lower inversion layer or the Inversion layer at the Planetary Boundary layer (PBL), which depending on the latitude and season can be around 55,000, 60,000 or more feet in altitude. Photochemical smog can also form at high altitudes when a volcano, forest fires, Cumulonimbus, and/or other strong convective winds systems transport chemicals such as Sulfur dioxide to high altitudes and interact with sunlight.
There was an earlier story some years ago where it was being claimed that the industrial nations of the Northern Hemisphere was supposed to be responsible for increased air pollution, especially particulate pollution from smoke emissions. I refuted the claim using satellite photographs and scientific studies which demonstrated how the smoke was being produced by wood fires and grass fires in Sub-Saharan Africa and was then transported at high altitudes across the south Atlantic ocean to circulate over the South and Central Americas. The smoke in the atmosphere was plainly visible from the satellites, the Space Shuttle, and the International Space Station (ISS).
“Volcanic activity would only create high level haze when it happens, not on a daily basis for 3 years (and probably longer).”
The visible ash and particulates tend to settle out of the atmosphere rather quickly, but the Sulfur dioxide and certain other photo-reactive chemistries tend to be projected through the PBL and into the Stratosphere and even higher. Once these lighter gases get above the PBL, they can circulate around the planet for long periods of time and react to create and destroy Ozone in addition to producing a haze. So, you cannot discount the ability of the volcanic eruptions to exacerbate conditions predominantly created by changes in weather and climate.
“Sunspot activity would not create haze for 3 years daily.”
On the contrary, recent experiments appear to confirm that decreases in Sunspot activity allows more Cosmic rays to penetrate the Troposphere and create more water droplets to produce more water vapor haze at high altitudes.
“Sunspot activity would be even over the whole earth since the sun is 93 billion miles away from earth. Differences in ozone layer, etc., shift from time to time - the earth’s atmosphere is gaseous and in motion - over all the earth. The only possible explanation of 3 years of haze is cloud seeding of some sort, at 30k feet, upwind of the area in question.”
That is a false analysis and a false conclusion. There has to be water vapor available for the exposure to Cosmic rays to form the water droplets of the haze. As the eather and climate patterns alter the circulation of the air masses, they also move around the amount of water vapor content in those air masses. Increased Cosmic rays with water vapor at the right temperature range produces water droplets and perhaps high altitude haze; whereas the lack of one or more of those factors reduces the opportunities for such haze to form.