El Nino Raising Ocean Temperatures, Pacific Cyclones

Wall Street Journal:

HONG KONG—A strong El Niño has sent sea temperatures in parts of the Pacific Ocean to their highest level since the late 1990s, Australia’s government weather watchdog said Tuesday.

The water in some areas is now within 0.9 degree Fahrenheit (0.5 degree Celsius) of the level seen during the El Niño of 1997-8, Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology said, with temperatures expected to peak later this year. El Niños occur when winds in the equatorial Pacific slow or reverse direction, causing the water to warm over a vast area, which in turn can upend weather patterns around the world.

The El Niño of the late ’90s brought severe drought to parts of Southeast Asia and heavy flooding to North America. This year’s hasn’t yet had such dramatic effects, and experts say the likely impact is still hard to predict.

“From now until December we need to expect dry conditions [in Australia and Asia] but we can’t be sure of the severity,” said Agus Santoso, a senior research associate at the Climate Change Research Center at the University of New South Wales. “The deviation from normal is strong but the impact on rainfall is hard to predict.…Farmers need to be prepared emotionally and financially.”

Sydney Morning Herald:

The powerful El Nino continues to intensify in the Pacific and is now the strongest since the record-breaking 1997-98 event, the Bureau of Meteorology said.

Weekly surface readings in a closely watched Pacific equatorial zone known as Nino3.4 exceeded 2 degrees at the end of August for the first time since 1997-98, the bureau said in its fortnightly update.

“You’re looking at a significant event in anyone’s books,” Andrew Watkins, the bureau’s manager of climate predictions, said.

The atmosphere and the ocean “are fully coupled”, reinforcing each other to strengthen the event, the bureau said.

The current record-setting trio of category 4 strength hurricanes in the Pacific are helping to reverse the easterly trade winds that typically blow along the equator, allowing more heat to build up in the east, Dr Watkins said.

National Geographic:

Double and even triple hurricanes may not be so unusual in the future. Atmospheric computer models, including ones used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, tend to predict a shift towards permanent El Niño-like conditions, Kossin explains. So more active hurricane seasons seem likely for the central and eastern Pacific ocean.