tagged w/ La Nina
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April 2, 2012
Here is the good news. The La Niña is vanishing.
One of the major factors that shaped the autumn and winter of 2011/2012 was the La Niña in the Pacific. This pattern of wind and water in the Pacific helped to shape weather around the world.
Here in the US, it helped create the drought that eliminated so much of the snow in the Western mountains. It created a two-year drought in Texas and left large stretches of the South high and dry.
By the middle of March, 58% of the contiguous US was dry or in drought conditions.
The La Niña is a large pool of unusually cool water in the Central and Tropical Pacific. It cools the air above it, altering not only the air’s temperature but also its ability of hold moisture. The air pressure changes and that, in turn, alter wind patterns. When over a million square miles of tropical air changes pressure, it changes wind and weather patterns around the globe, particularly in the tropics and the Pacific Rim.
The impact of a La Niña can be magnified or reduced by other climate factors. In the Northern Hemisphere, the wintertime behavior of the Arctic Oscillation (AO) can overwhelm the impact of a wintertime tropical oscillation. Normally a La Niña creates cold weather in Canada and the northern states. This year a positive Arctic Oscillation trapped the cold polar air north, leaving temperatures in most of the US positively toasty.
This winter’s La Niña was weaker than the winter of 2010/2011, when the US froze and 49 of 50 states were covered with snow. It peaked in January and started to fade in February. At this point, most scientists expect La Niña to be gone by mid-to-late spring.
The good news is that to all intents and purposes, the La Niña is over. It is so weak that we are beginning to see a return to more normal winter. Rain has begun to return to the West and Texas. Storms lashed western states in late March, bringing near-normal snowpack to northern portions of the Pacific Northwest and welcome moisture, if not relief to central and southern portions of the West. Even parched Texas saw some relief, although 90% of the state remains in dry or drought conditions.
With La Niña fading, rains are returning to much of the drought-stricken USA. SOURCE: Wikipedia
Looking to the future, the majority of scientists expect the Pacific to be neutral this summer. Think of it – normal water and more normal weather.
Wouldn’t that be a nice change?
by Evelyn Browning Garriss, historical climatologist, blogger, writer for The Old Farmer's Almanac, and editor of The Browning Newsletter, adviser to farmers, businesses, and investors worldwide on upcoming climate events and their economic and social impact for the past 21 years.
http://www.almanac.com/blog/weather-blog/vanishing-la-ni%C3%B1April 2, 2012
Here is the good news. The La Niña is vanishing.
One of the... more
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Louis Black once said that the best job in the world would be the weatherman in San Diego, “How’s the weather today Bob?…Nice.” Now I don’t want to put down our local meteorologists [the new way to de-sexify weatherman], but our people who handle the weather have their work cut out for them and they should get paid more than the same people in San Diego where it’s nice.Louis Black once said that the best job in the world would be the weatherman in San... more
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A heat wave baking the central and southern United States was blamed on Wednesday for at least 22 deaths this week as forecasters warned that the abnormally hot weather could last into August as it moves east.
The National Weather Service said 141 million people in more than two dozen states were under a heat advisory or warning because of the soaring temperatures, the most recent in a series of heat waves that have scorched the country's midsection off and on since late May.
In Wichita, Kansas, where temperatures have reached 100 degrees or more on 24 days so far this year, forecasters warned that the mercury would hit at least 100 degrees each day through next Tuesday.
"It's just draining, physically draining," said Chris Vaccaro, a Weather Service spokesman.
AccuWeather.com predicted the effects of the current heat wave -- in terms of stress on the power grid, damage to roads and bridges, and lost lives -- could eclipse the effects of the deadly heat wave of the summer of 1995, which claimed hundreds of lives in Chicago alone.
"When all is said and done, with the number of days of extreme heat and humidity of the current heat wave, it may be more significant and impact a larger area," said AccuWeather's Jim Andrews.
Hospitals in Wichita treated 25 heat-related illnesses, according to the National Weather Service. In Des Moines, Iowa, 16 people have been hospitalized because of this week's high temperatures.
The high heat and humidity have been stressing U.S. crops, particularly corn, which is now in a key growth stage when heat and moisture can cut final yields.
Grain traders in Chicago and Kansas City also said the drought and heat in the Plains was beginning to cause concern about the fate of next year's output of hard red winter wheat crop, the primary bread wheat of the United States, which is grown in a parched swath from Texas to South Dakota.
Farmers plant that crop each autumn and harvest the following summer. But if rains did not come soon, farmers may not plant wheat because of the powdery dry soil.
The prolonged brutal heat was also endangering livestock. Up to 1,500 cattle have died in South Dakota because of the heat wave, according to the state's veterinarian, Dustin Oedekoven, and he expects that number to rise.
"The weather is certainly extraordinary," Oedekoven said, adding that high day-time heat and humidity with little relief at night has made it "a challenge to keep livestock comfortable."
In Wisconsin, dairy farmers like Dave Daniels, the owner of Mighty Grand Dairy farm in Kenosha County, were blaming the prolonged heat for a drop in his herd's milk production.
In Indianapolis, homeowners were being asked to stop watering their lawns through at least Sunday.
"We are asking our customers to curtail lawn-watering activities in order to maintain adequate water pressure for our customers and firefighting activities," said Matthew Klein, executive director of the Indianapolis Department of Waterworks, owner of Indianapolis Water.
More at the link.
http://minnesota.publicradio.org/collections/special/columns/updraft/assets_c/2011/07/1%201%201%201%20cpc-thumb-500x464.gifA heat wave baking the central and southern United States was blamed on Wednesday for... more
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In the novel One Hundred Years of Solitude, a five-year-long downpour imprisons people in their homes, washes away the banana plantation and reduces the town of Macondo to ruins. But the deluge dreamed up by Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez in his magical-realist masterpiece pales compared to the real-life flooding of his homeland now.
Amid 11 months of nearly nonstop rain, dykes have burst and rivers have topped their banks, inundating communities, cattle ranches, and croplands in 28 of Colombia's 32 departments. Waterlogged Andean mountainsides have collapsed, burying neighborhoods and blocking highways. More than 1,000 people have been killed, injured or gone missing. In the flooded town of Puerto Boyacá in central Colombia, coffins holding the dead are being floated to the cemetery on boats.
(Read a Q&A With Colombia's President Santos.)
All told, more than 3 million people — nearly 7% of Colombia's population - have been displaced or have suffered major water damage to their homes and livelihoods. President Juan Manuel Santos calls it the worst natural disaster in the country's history, one his government predicts will shave 2.5% from Colombia's 2011 GDP. Yet hardly anyone outside of Colombia has noticed because the tragedy, unlike an earthquake or hurricane, has unfolded in slow motion. "Drop by drop the rain causes more damage every day," Santos said recently. "It's like Chinese water torture."
Santos and other government officials blame La Niña, the weather phenomenon that causes unusually cold temperatures in the Pacific Ocean along the equator and provokes heavy rains. La Niña kicked in around the middle of 2010, dumping five to six times the average amount of precipitation on some parts of Colombia. And there's been no respite. Last year's wet weather continued through what is normally Colombia's dry season and merged with the current rainy season.
Complicating matters is extreme geography. Colombia is divided by three Andean ranges, and the rain-saturated mountain soil is crumbling away, causing daily landslides as well as sedimentation — which raises water tables in rivers. One of the hardest-hit cities is Cúcuta, located on the Venezuelan border. Cave-ins and landslides have blocked highways leading to Bogotá and the Caribbean coast, leaving residents largely cut-off from the rest of the country. Ironically, Cúcuta also lacks drinking water because so much rain has increased sediment in local rivers, overwhelming the city's water purification system.
Santos has toured some of the worst flooded areas, but the government's response has been marred by bottlenecks and graft. Due to the isolation of flooded villages, the inexperience of local officials and the presence of rebels and drug traffickers, just four of 753 public works projects to repair roads, bridges, homes and schools are underway. Four governors and 26 mayors are being investigated for allegedly mishandling flood assistance. Outraged victims have blocked highways in protest.
(See pictures of FARC, Colombia's notorious guerilla army.)
snip
The Universidad de la Sabana (University of the Savanna), one of the Colombia's elite academic institutions, sits next to the Bogotá River in the capital suburb of Chía. On April 25, the surging river punched a 60-ft.-long hole (18 m) in a nearby levee. Now, the university's library, amphitheatre and science laboratories sit five-feet deep (1.5 m) in putrid black water. As he climbed into an aluminum boat on a mission to salvage classroom desks and computers, volunteer relief worker Luis Gabriel Angel said: "Nobody imagined the flooding would be this bad."
Fortunately, the downpours won't last as long as they did in the fictional Macondo. Forecasters predict the rain will peter out by July. But thanks to global warming and climate change, Colombians should get used to extreme weather, says Ricardo Lozano, who heads the government's Institute of Hydrology, Meteorology and Environmental Studies. He points out that just before the floods, Colombia suffered through a lengthy drought. "It's wrong to think that climate change is a future threat because it is taking place right now," Lozano says. "The world should learn from what's happening in Colombia."
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2069653,00.html#ixzz1NImrU5muIn the novel One Hundred Years of Solitude, a five-year-long downpour imprisons people... more
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While much of the nation focuses on a spring marked by historic floods and deadly tornadoes, Texas and parts of several surrounding states are suffering through a searing drought that has created desert-like conditions.
Some parts of the Lone Star State have not seen any significant precipitation since August. Bayous, cattle ponds and farm fields are drying up, and residents are living under constant threat of wildfires, which have already burned across thousands of square miles.
Parts of Texas are bone dry, with scarcely any moisture to be found in the top layers of soil. In some places, grass is so dry it crunches underfoot. The nation's leading cattle-producing state just endured its driest seven-month span on record, and some ranchers are culling their herds to avoid paying supplemental feed costs.
May is typically the wettest month in Texas, and farmers planting on non-irrigated acres are clinging to hope that relief arrives in the next few weeks.
"It doesn't look bright right at the moment, but I haven't given up yet," said cotton producer Rickey Bearden, who grows about two-thirds of his 9,000 acres without irrigation in West Texas. "We'll have to have some help from Mother's Nature."
That the drought is looming over the Southwest while floodwaters rise in the Midwest and South reflects a classic signature of the La Nina weather oscillation, a cooling of the central Pacific Ocean.
This year's La Nina is the sixth-strongest in records dating back to 1949.
"It's a shift of the jet stream, providing all that moisture and shifting it away from the south, so you've seen a lot of drought in Texas," Mike Halpert, deputy director of the federal government's Climate Prediction Center in Silver Spring, Md.
He said the pattern is "kind of on its last legs," and he expects a neutral condition for much of the summer.
Victor Murphy of the National Weather Service in Fort Worth said the location for the wet weather and the drought "is textbook."
"You tend to get real strong demarcation, and this year the magnitude of the extremes is exaggerated," Murphy said.
Texas' state climatologist, John Nielsen-Gammon, said the state's average rainfall from October through April was 5.82 inches. The previous seven-month record came at the end of March 1918, when the statewide average was 5.85 inches.
For comparison, many parts of the Sahara desert in north Africa receive less than 5 inches of rain a year.
Houston has received only 1.5 inches in the last three months.
cont.While much of the nation focuses on a spring marked by historic floods and deadly... more
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I think it is time for Australia and other countries to give more attention to climate policy.I think it is time for Australia and other countries to give more attention to climate... more
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'''Scientists Cite "Atmospheric River" for Near Continuous Rain
It has happened before. Consider the winter of 1861-1862 -- it rained for 45 consecutive days
By PATRICK HEALY
Updated 10:55 AM PST, Tue, Dec 21, 2010
It's the rain that just won't stop -- day after day. It's almost as continuous as the flow of a river, tropical moisture funneled into California by what scientists have come to call an "atmospheric river."
The term was coined only within the last generation of satellite imaging that can actually show the band of moisture.
But there's nothing new about the phenomenon. What scientists now realize was an atmospheric river in 1861-62 brought California 45 straight days of rain and caused flooding of Biblical proportions, evocative of Noah and his ark.. It bankrupted the state.
"The atmospheric river brings in the moisture. How much rain gets dropped out of it has a distribution, just like earthquakes," said Lucy Jones of the U-S Geological Survey office in Pasadena.
Jones is best known for her earthquake expertise. But her team at the USGS Multi-Hazards Demonstration Project develops computer models for a variety of natural disasters, and has just finished a scenario for a modern day "Ark Storm," akin to the 1861-62 storm.
"We actually made a model of this type of storm, just like we made a model of a Southern San Andreas Earthquake," Jones explained. "We used the same techniques to try to assess what the damage would be. And our conclusion is that the storm would cost about four times as much as the shakeout earthquake."
Fortunately, such extreme storms are relatively rare, though lesser atmospheric rivers have also caused severe damage storms, notably in 1969 and 1986. Jones said more moderate atmospheric rivers occur on an annual basis. The one this December recurs perhaps once a decade--but that be premature, given that it's still going.
"This is like Texas Hold 'Em after the first four cards," quipped JPL scientist Bill Patzert. "We're still waiting for the final cards to be dealt."
Patzert is renowned for his research into the influence of oceanic conditions on weather. This season there is a "La Nina" condition of cooler than usual oceanic waters near the equator, which correlates with Southern California having a dryer than typical winter
Not this December.
Patzert said this current atmospheric river is more typical of the opposite "El Nino" condition. "Clearly there are other factors,' Patzert said. He also noted that sometimes the La Nina condition does not kick in and bring dry conditions before February.
Jones is struck by the coincidence that California's last major Ark Storm occurred so close in time to the last Southern San Andreas Big One in 1857. It appears both recur with a frequency of a few hundred years.
Which raises the question: Which one will we get next?'''Scientists Cite "Atmospheric River" for Near Continuous... more
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Hundreds have died in Colombian floods, as cooler sea temperatures affect regions around the Pacific; climate change seen as a possible cause.
The weather phenomenon known as La Niña is having wide-ranging impacts around the Pacific basin, as Colombia copes with record rains and New Zealand swelters through a heat wave.
The El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) climate pattern is a coupled ocean-atmosphere phenomenon consisting of El Niño and La Niña cycles. This year is being classified as a moderate-to-strong La Niña, following 2009’s especially intense El Niño year.
La Niña is characterized by colder than usual water currents along the Pacific coast of the Western Hemisphere, which lead to a severe rainy season from May through November in Mexico, Central America, and the northern part of South America.
According to the United Nations Environmental Programme, although ENSO is naturally occurring, a warming climate may contribute to an increase in the frequency and intensity of El Niño cycles.
La Niña cycles double the likelihood of intense weather, such as hurricanes and tropical storms, for much of the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico.
In November, rainfall in the Caribbean was five times the average of 2 inches and in the central highlands of Colombia, rainfall was more than double the average of 3.5 inches.
Colombia Floods Damage Homes, Roads, and Foods
In Colombia, this year’s rainy season—the worst in 42 years—has been exceedingly severe, with close to 300 deaths and more than 2 million people affected over the last two months, according to the BBC.
More than 20,000 homes have been damaged and nearly 2,000 completely destroyed, according to AccuWeather. Nearly a quarter of the nation’s paved roads have been damaged or destroyed and more than 41,000 cattle have been lost, reported the Associated Press.
The constant moisture has also led to a fungus outbreak infecting more than half of the nation’s coffee crop. Additionally, nearly five percent of the rice crop and 10 percent of the sugar crop have been lost. Banana production has also been interrupted, with neighboring Ecuador “filling the gaps” in international supply, according to Fresh Fruit Portal.
With close to 2.5 million acres of farmland and over 600 schools under water, the damage in Colombia is estimated at $5 billion. The United States, the European Union, North Korea, and Switzerland have pledged more than $20 million in aid. After visiting neighbor Venezuela, which has also had particularly severe flooding this winter, the Ecuadorian president visited Colombia and vowed to help, thus restoring diplomatic relations, which have been strained since Colombia’s 2008 military raid on a clandestine Colombian guerrilla camp just inside Ecuadorian territory.
Earlier this month, the Colombian president declared a state of emergency, which allows the government to employ emergency loans and taxes to raise disaster relief funds.
The floods are troubling the Colombian economy, as well, and could lead to inflation and escalated food prices—already, the price of bananas has tripled from $5.40 per box to $16.40. The peso, which has performed the worst among 25 emerging-market currencies tracked by Bloomberg, dropped 5.5 percent over the past three months.
Colombia typically has two rainy seasons, the first from April through June and the second from October through December, but officials fear that the La Niña boost will translate to the rains persisting through February.
continued.Hundreds have died in Colombian floods, as cooler sea temperatures affect regions... more
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The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced today that the Atlantic Basin is still on track for an very active and dangerous hurricane season, despite the relatively slow start.The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced today that the... more
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You just lived through hottest June in recorded history
Report: Warmest June on record globally
By Angela Fritz, CNN Meteorologist
July 18, 2010 5:10 p.m. EDT
Photo: New Yorkers in the Bronx seek refuge from the heat June 10.
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STORY HIGHLIGHTS
* Report says warmer-than-average conditions were present globally in June
* Australia continues to suffer from below-average rainfall
* Arctic sea ice reached a record low for the month of June
(CNN) -- Last month was the warmest June on record worldwide, according to a report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Warmer-than-average conditions were present across nearly all continents, including much of the United States, according to the organization's State of the Climate report, released Friday.
Although global sea surface temperatures ranked the fourth-warmest on record, the combination of land and sea anomalies pushed June 2010 past June 2005, previously the warmest June on record, the report said. June was also the fourth consecutive month in a row of record warmth worldwide.
Meanwhile, wetter-than-average conditions were present in southern India, southern China, southern Europe and the U.S. Midwest, the report said. In contrast, southwest Australia is experiencing record-setting rainfall deficiencies, with the lowest rainfall on record for the first half of the year, according to the Australian Bureau of Meteorology. The Bureau reported that all states and territories in Australia experienced drier-than-average conditions in June.
June also marked a record low in Arctic sea ice -- the 19th June in a row the sea ice has been below average.
"This is important, because sea ice reflects incoming solar radiation back to space," said CNN Meteorologist Taylor Ward. "Without the normal extent of sea ice in the Arctic, we can expect more radiation to be absorbed into the ocean, leading to more melting. It's what we call a 'positive feedback.'" The amount of sea ice in the Arctic has been steadily declining since 1990.
Warmer-than-average temperatures in the equatorial Pacific, also known as El Nino, have been contributing to the warmth. La Nina conditions -- cooler-than-average temperatures in the same region -- are beginning to set in, which could prevent more monthly records from being set. However, La Nina combined with record-setting warm Atlantic sea surface temperatures is expected to fuel an active Atlantic hurricane season.
The announcement of June's record-setting warmth comes during a period of extreme heat in the United States and Europe. Excessive heat warnings have been topping weather headlines in the United States for more than two weeks now, and Europe has been shattering temperature records as well, with a heat wave through the first half of July. Eastern Europe has seen the most significant temperatures, although much of the continent has experienced above-average heat.You just lived through hottest June in recorded history
Report: Warmest June on... more
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The 2010 Alantic Hurricane Season, which begins Tuesday is expected to be an extremely active season that could rank in the top 10 or even the top 5 most active on record since 1900!The 2010 Alantic Hurricane Season, which begins Tuesday is expected to be an extremely... more
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- Tipping points will be difficult to identify
Is the Earth’s climate approaching a critical transition, aka a “tipping point,” beyond which major and largely unpredictable climate changes are guaranteed to occur? At this point, scientists do not know the answer to that question. A study published in the journal Nature aims to explain the mathematics of critical transitions beyond just the Earth’s climate and in the process, determine if there are early-warning signals that indicate when a complex system is about to undergo a critical transition.
- U.S. Chamber of Commerce President complains about environmentalists
Over the last several weeks, three utilities, Nike, and now Apple have resigned from or otherwise reduced their participation in the United States Chamber of Commerce (USCOC), a business lobbying group that represents millions of U.S. businesses. As a result, the USCOC President and CEO, Tom Donohue, held an hour-long press conference to defend the USCOC’s decision to oppose EPA regulation of greenhouse gases (GHGs).
According to the Greenwire report on the event (linked above), Donahue claimed that an “orchestrated pressure campaign” by environmentalists was responsible for the recent defections.
- Barrels instead of bottles
According to the NYTimes Green Inc. blog, a number of wineries are foregoing bottles and are instead shipping their wine in barrels. As a result, the wineries are saving money on reduced packaging and are dramatically lowering their carbon footprint due to shipping and bottle manufacturing.
- Ocean acidification to turn parts of the Arctic Ocean corrosive by 2018
Scientists researching ocean acidification in the Svalbard Archipelago north of Norway have made a surprising and awful discovery – the Arctic ocean is acidifying so fast that 10% it will become corrosive within the next 10 years and the entire Arctic will become corrosive by 2100.
- El Niño and its relationship to ocean heat content
Back in October, 2008, I pointed out in comments to another Carboholic that La Niña years were cold because the ocean absorbed heat from the atmosphere and that El Niño years were hot because the ocean emitted stored heat back into the atmosphere. This comes from the physics of thermodynamics, specifically the fact that energy moves from hot areas to cold areas, and not the other way around.
I recently came across this same basic information presented in a different form by the Climate Prediction Center’s El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) Diagnostic Discussion page and the weekly ENSO updates contained therein.
More at the link.- Tipping points will be difficult to identify
Is the Earth’s climate... more
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This year appears set to be the coolest globally this century.
Data from the UK Met Office shows that temperatures in the first half of the year have been more than 0.1 Celsius cooler than any year since 2000.
The principal reason is La Nina, part of the natural cycle that also includes El Nino, which cools the globe.
Even so, 2008 is set to be about the 10th warmest year since 1850, and Met Office scientists say temperatures will rise again as La Nina conditions ease.This year appears set to be the coolest globally this century.
Data from the UK Met... more
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La Nina, which usually results in cooler than normal water in the Pacific, has moved the boundary between cold and warm water closer to the shore, and along with it, fish and their shark predators, George Burgess, director of the Florida Program for Shark Research told Reuters.La Nina, which usually results in cooler than normal water in the Pacific, has moved... more
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"Global temperatures this year will be lower than in 2007 due to the cooling effect of the La Nina current in the Pacific, UN meteorologists have said."
There's a feather in the cap of humanity!"Global temperatures this year will be lower than in 2007 due to the cooling... more
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