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Tim Palmer, a climate scientist and professor at the University of Oxford in the U.K., has published a somewhat controversial Perspective piece in the journal Science. In it, he theorizes that heavy thunderstorms in the western tropical Pacific (due to global warming) this past winter caused changes to the flow pattern of the jet stream, which resulted in the "polar vortex" that chilled the northern part of North America for the first four months of 2014. The winter of 2014 was cold in the U.S., of that there was no doubt. Subzero temperatures became the norm and heating bills skyrocketed. At the time, very few who experienced it were blaming it on global warming, but that may very well have been the cause anyway, Palmer suggests--despite the fact that global temperatures haven't been rising lately.
The abstract (and link to paywalled journal article) can be found at: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/344/6186/803
(Score: 3, Interesting) by dry on Sunday May 25 2014, @06:54PM
The configuration of the continents is a major driver of climate on geological time scales. As the above poster mentions, the closing of the isthmus of Panama majorly changed ocean currents, same with when S. America and Antarctica separated allowing the Southern Oceans currents to circle the Earth along with the accompanying winds which isolated Antarctica.
Besides ocean currents, continents can be in configurations that encourage or discourage rainfall with rainfall causing weathering which removes CO2 from the atmosphere and turns it into limestone. Even the depth of the oceans varies over geological time scales which I'd guess could also have a large influence on climate.
Long term climate is complex with orbital forcing being only a part of it. The thing that all these climate forcers have in common is gradual change. Continents move a couple of inches a year and orbits change gradually.