El Nino Revs Up in Pacific

July 7, Slate:

El Niño means the tropical Pacific is warmer than normal, which improves the chances that typhoons will form. This week, a series of typhoons on both sides of the equator are helping to reinforce a big burst of westerly winds along the equator. These westerly wind bursts are a hallmark of El Niño, and help push subsurface warm water toward the coast of South America. If enough warm water butts up against Peru, the normal cold water ocean current there can get shut off, exacerbating the pattern.

Exactly how this all gets kicked off is an area of active research, but it’s clear that big El Niños need deviant trade winds to maintain the feedback loop. During especially strong El Niños, like this year’s promises to be, the trade winds can sometimes reverse direction—and this week’s off-the-charts wind surge is at record-strength for so early in an El Niño event. Since all this takes place in the tropical Pacific Ocean—the planet’s biggest bathtub—a fully mature El Niño has the power to shift rainfall odds worldwide and boost global temperatures. That’s exactly what’s happening this year.

As proof: An area of the central Pacific, straddling the equator, is now the warmest on record for this time of year, crushing the previous record. So far, the 2015 El Niño is strengthening at a rate equal to, if not slightly greater than some of the strongest El Niños since comprehensive ocean recordkeeping began in 1870.

July 20, Washington Post:

The present El Niño event, on the cusp of attaining “strong” intensity, has a chance to become the most powerful on record.

The event — defined by the expanding, deepening pool of warmer-than-normal ocean water in the tropical Pacific — has steadily grown stronger since the spring.

The presence of a strong El Niño almost ensures that 2015 will become the warmest on record for Earth and will have ripple effects on weather patterns all over the world.

A strong El Niño event would likely lead to enhanced rainfall in California this fall and winter, a quieter than normal Atlantic hurricane season, a warmer than normal winter over large parts of the U.S., and a very active hurricane and typhoon season in the Pacific.

Some of these El Niño-related effects have already manifested themselves and, over the U.S., will become particularly apparent by the fall and winter.

Frequent and persistent bursts of wind from the west, counter to the prevailing easterly direction, have helped this year’s El Niño sustain itself and grow. Warm water from the western Pacific has sloshed eastward, piling up in the central and eastern part of the basin.

UPDATE: Los Angeles Times:

A swath of eastern California offered a dramatic view in recent days of the powerful climate forces buffeting the state.

On Friday, an out-of-control brush fire — fueled by four years of drought — destroyed 20 vehicles on Interstate 15 in the Cajon Pass. Hours later, the area was pounded by historic rainstorms that eventually washed out Interstate 10 here.

The heavy rain is the most concrete evidence yet of powerful El Niño conditions that scientists are becoming increasingly convinced will lead to a wet winter for Southern California.
–

These all appear to be preludes of what could come in winter — for better and worse.

“It’s a sweet promising start,” said Bill Patzert, climatologist for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge, but then added: “Except for all the damage it does…. Be careful for what you wish for. Great droughts usually end in great floods.”
–
“Look at all the damage a couple of inches of rain caused in Southern California in the last couple of days. Can you imagine 30 inches?” Patzert asked.