Could Polo’s Massive Moisture Plume be Large Enough to Impact Sea Level?

Rare event related to the El Niño cycle and global hydrology is happening again.

In 2011, rains fell so intensely across Australia and South America that ocean levels actually fell temporarily, as massive amounts of water moved from ocean onto land.

Science Daily November 19, 2012:

In August 2011, scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., and the University of Colorado in Boulder reported that global sea level rise had hit a speed bump.

The researchers found that between early 2010 and summer 2011, global sea level fell sharply, by about a quarter of an inch, or half a centimeter. Using data from the NASA/German Aerospace Center’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) spacecraft, they showed that the drop was caused by the very strong La Niña that began in late 2010. This periodic Pacific Ocean climate phenomenon changed rainfall patterns all over our planet, moving huge amounts of Earth’s water from the ocean to the continents, primarily to Australia, northern South America and Southeast Asia.

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It might be happening again.

Meteorologist Ryan Hall flagged this on his YouTube channel.

Be aware.

Sea level data sets are traditionally noisy, and climate deniers frequently have used that noise to fog or confuse what is a consistent story of physics.