This Year’s El Nino officially climbed to the top of the record books (at least by one measure).
Weekly data published by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration shows that the region of the Pacific generally used to gauge El Niño’s strength has officially surpassed the 1997-98 super El Niño in terms of warmth.
The region in question, called the Nino 3.4 region, is now running an unheard of 5.4°F (3°C) above normal. That tops the previous weekly record of 5°F (2.8°C) set by the 1997-98 event. It remains to be seen if this is the peak and if so, how long it lasts.
Regardless, the impacts of El Niño are being felt in some part of the globe. Indonesia’s fires, heavy precipitation in the southern tier of the U.S., and record warmth around the globe are all telltale signs of how El Niño usually influences weather.
In the U.S., the winter outlook also further shows El Niño is likely to continue exerting its influence with the increased likelihood of cool, unsettled weather from the Southwest to the Southeast and warm conditions in the northern portion of the country.
While everybody loves a good record, it’s worth keeping any debate about the strongest El Niño on record in perspective. The Nino 3.4 region is an important one to monitor in terms of global impacts, but it’s only one of a handful of regions scientists monitor to assess El Niño’s strength and characteristics. Areas off the coast of Peru and the far eastern Pacific were warmer during the 1997-98 El Niño. It also remains to be seen if this year’s event will set an all-time monthly or seasonal record, which would bolster its case for strongest, biggest or whatever-ist on record.
The video below was made in 2014, when scientists first started anticipating a developing el nino – which took until this year to fully manifest – it features a good visual explainer.
WHOA! If I’ve got this right, the Nino 3.4 region is in the central Pacific and it is an overlap of the Nino 4 region in the far west (beginning at new Guinea) and the Nino 3 region in the far east (ending at the South American Coast). So it looks as if a huge blob of warmer-than-ever-before water is now moving eastward as expected.
Climate Central is doing the usual “let’s not be alarmists” routine with:
“It remains to be seen if this is the peak and if so, how long it lasts”, and “Areas off the coast of Peru and the far eastern Pacific were warmer during the 1997-98 El Niño” (areas that won’t see the slug of warm water arrive for a while yet).
Being a “graphics” kind of guy, I look at the opening graph in this post and swallow hard—-the rate of rise over the last few months is downright scary, and if it was a plot of new solar or wind power or EV sales, the bright-sided among us would be shouting “We’re saved!”. Unfortunately, in this case, it goes in the other direction—-towards “We’re F-ed”.
And everybody in Los Angeles paid their climate tax by running their air conditioners a few more months than normal this year. I got off easy; only paid an extra 12 bucks in electricity compared with the same period last year; my unit is energy star rated. But there are plenty of folks that keep their older units blaring at 72F day and night, who got stuck with a higher increase than mine.
I have to be honest, LA doesn’t seem hot enough to really need ac most of the time. Here where I live it gets hot, but the dry air means just closing your curtains in the morning is usually enough to keep the house cool enough to tolerate. Not always though. When it gets close to 100 that’s harder to resist the ac knob on.
What I really dislike is when I go to a restaurant, or some other place, and have to put on a jacket when it’s 95 degrees outside.
I usually use mine starting in late July or early August to keep the temp in here under 85F. I’m in the Valley. Sometimes when I’m in insomnia mode, I’ll crank it up at night to make the sleeping nice and cool. But if it’s cool out at night, I just open the windows downstairs, and one upstairs, then put a fan blowing outward into the latter to help push the hot air out.
I used to have a paper from UCLA’s climatologist on my computer that said the Valley was naturally going to heat up at a greater rate, as the climate gets hotter. The problem with the Valley, I’ve found, is you get this stagnant hot air at night, after the temps have been 100F for several days in the worst part of summer.
*at a greater rate with respect to the parts of LA that don’t have mountains in the way of the ocean breeze, that is.
Just look at the total heat energy, also the extent of warming, coast off Peru and far Eastern Pacific pale into insignificance, yet in conjunction with the Northern areas and the aberrant high Polar temperatures for an El Nino event highlights this ain’t no normal el Nino
Why am I uncomfortably reminded of a pot of rice left on the stove???
On a day when the U.S senate voted against the President Obama’s Clean Power Plan, when NOAA at Mauna Loa measured CO2 at over 400 ppm (Up over 3ppm from last year), and NASA announce global land-sea temperature for last month at over 1 degree Celsius over the 1950 – 1981 base period, it is hard to remain optimistic. It is ever harder to understand the mass indifference and even antagonistic denial that anything unusual is happening. I wonder what Godzilla has in store for us and will it change minds.
“Senators voted 52-46 to stop the carbon dioxide limits for existing power plants, which mandate a 32 percent cut in the power sector’s carbon by 2030. The to block the related carbon rule for newly built power plants pass by the same vote.”
Thank you for the veto.
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/260507-senate-votes-to-strike-down-obamas-climate-rules
Effect of CO2 underestimated, new research.
http://www.freepressjournal.in/co2-impact-on-global-warming-underestimated/
The study examined nahcolite crystals found in Green River Formation in Colorado, US. The crystals were formed 50 million years ago during a hothouse climate. They found that CO2 levels during this time may have been as low as 680 parts per million (ppm), nearly half the 1,125 ppm predicted by previous experiments.
“The significance of this is that CO2 50 million years ago may not have been as high as we once thought it was, but the climate back then was significantly warmer than it is today,” Lowenstein explained.
Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere today have reached 400 ppm. According to current projections, doubling the CO2 will result in a rise in the global average temperature of three degrees Centigrade.
This new research suggests that the effects of CO2 on global warming may be underestimated. “These are direct chemical measurements that are based on equilibrium thermodynamics,” Lowenstein said. “These are direct laboratory experiments, so I think they are really reliable,” he noted. The findings appeared in the journal Geology.
http://qz.com/552205/even-this-climate-skeptic-is-now-worried-about-the-potentially-devastating-impact-of-climate-change/
For who’m the bell Tol’s
This suggests many, predominantly rich countries are set to benefit from climate change up to a certain temperature, but productivity will likely fall once global temperatures pass this point. Tol had expected this to be “around 1.1˚C of warming relative to pre-industrial” temperatures.
The BBC presenter was quick to point out that we’re almost at this dangerous boundary—earlier this month the UK’s Met Office predicted global temperatures will rise more than 1˚C by the end of 2015. The record-breaking heat of the last 10 months suggests 2015 will be Earth’s warmest year in history.
Tol now suggests the idea that the world would likely benefit from anything up to 2˚C of warming as “a bit too optimistic.”
“Indonesia’s fires …”
I just watched the program (BBC Earth – about orangutans, their living environment, habitat) – there are burnt Indonesian rainforest for the cultivation of palm oil, mainly to obtain a biofuels … (…of course mainly for subsidies …).