Latest El Niño-Southern Oscillation Stories
On Tuesday, weather experts said that El Nino has peaked and would probably disappear by mid-year. "The most likely outcome by mid-year 2010 is for the El Nino event to have decayed and near-neutral conditions to be re-established across the tropical Pacific," World Meteorological Organization expert Rupa Koumar Kolli told the AFP news agency.El Nino is a weather anomaly that wrecks havoc around the Pacific and east Africa. It is an occasional seasonal warming of the central and...
Despite nearly two-thirds of the United States experiencing colder-than-normal seasonal temperatures, the 2009-2010 winter season was the fifth warmest on record worldwide. While a large part of the country was colder than usual this past winter, parts of the U.S. did have warmer-than-usual temperatures. Both New England and the Pacific Northwest joined in the global winter warmth. In addition, Maine had its third warmest winter on record, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric...
Climate models project that the global average temperature will rise about 1°C by the middle of the century, if we continue with business as usual and emit greenhouse gases as we have been. The global average, though, does not tell us anything about what will happen to regional climates, for example rainfall in the western United States or in paradisical islands like Hawai'i.Analyzing global model warming projections in models used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a team...
Researchers are tracking Indian Ocean climate patterns with the possibility that they will improve early-warning systems for the El Nino phenomenon, which could save countless lives and billions of dollars lost each year to the severe weather it causes. Researchers from Japan and France said their new forecast model may predict an El Nino up to 14 months ahead of time, several months earlier than with current models. A paper on the project was published in the journal Nature Geoscience. "It...
2009 One Of The Warmest YearsA new analysis of global surface temperatures by NASA scientists finds the past year was tied for the second warmest since 1880. In the Southern Hemisphere, 2009 was the warmest year on record.Although 2008 was the coolest year of the decade because of a strong La Nina that cooled the tropical Pacific Ocean, 2009 saw a return to a near-record global temperatures as the La Nina diminished, according to the new analysis by NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies...
IntroductionLarge-scale weather patterns which occur in various locations around the Earth, from the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) in the tropics to the high latitude Arctic Oscillation (AO) play a significant part in controlling the weather on a seasonal time scale. Knowing the condition of these atmospheric oscillations in advance would greatly improve long-range weather predictions. Scientists search for clues in the earth's surface conditions such as tropical sea surface...
This year's fierce winter in much of the Northern Hemisphere is only the beginning of a global trend towards cooler weather that is likely to last decades, say some of the world's most renowned climate scientists.  However, other experts say the cold spell does not contradict an overall trend of global warming. A report on Sunday by the British newspaper The Mail cited forecasts by eminent climate scientists that are a direct challenge to some of the most deeply held beliefs among...
Scientists say that unusually warm and cold periods in the history of Earth's pre-industrial climate are connected to how temperature changes affect the oceans. The research primarily centered around time periods known as the "little ice age" and "medieval warm period". These climate "anomalies" were likely caused by changes to El Nino and the North Atlantic Oscillation, they wrote in the journal Science.The researchers say that way of studying the past could...
The Southeastern United States will have a colder, wetter winter season this year, while warmer conditions will prevail in the Midwest and Northern U.S., according to the 2009 Winter Outlook released Thursday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)."El Niño in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean is expected to be a dominant climate factor that will influence the December through February winter weather in the United States," said the agency.An El Niño...
A high-speed chase across the Panama Canal in a Boston Whaler may sound like the beginning of another James Bond film"”but the protagonist of this story brandishes a butterfly net and studies the effects of climate change on insect migrations at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute."Our long-term study shows that El Niño, a global climate pattern, drives Sulfur butterfly migrations," said Robert Srygley, former Smithsonian post doctoral fellow who is now a research...
Latest El Niño-Southern Oscillation Reference Libraries
If you live in or around Billings, Montana the above graph shows you what you can roughly expect when it comes to heating and cooling your house during the ENSO Phases. In Billings during a normal phase of the ENSO your heating degree days pass 900HDD. However, when El-Nino phase is present the monthly average dropped to around 650.5HDD, which is a pretty significant amount especially when you are talking about paying that heating bill. When the La-Nina phase sets up the heating degree...
ENSO has an impact on the severe weather across the United States. As we look at the above graph we see that the area of Baltimore is impacted by ENSO and its tornado count. The stats are for the described years to the left of each bar. During a La-Nina the tornado count picks up for the region; within 50 miles of the city up to 9 tornadoes occurred during the 2000 event. The 2010 EL-Nino set into the region and the tornado count dropped to around 4 tornadoes within 50 miles of the...
If you live in or around Bismarck North Dakota the graph shows you what you can roughly expect when it comes to heating and cooling your house during the ENSO Phases. Bismarck North Dakota, with its northern latitude, does have an impact on what type of heating and cooling it sees. During an Normal Phase the HDD for the region hits about 1348 on average. When the region enters into an El-Nino they can expect the amount of HDD’s to decrease to around 970 which really helps cut down on the...
The above graph highlights how the ENSO has an impact on water temps. Northern Gulf of Mexico during EL-Nino: The first part of March during this EL-Nino cycle saw water temps in the 56-60F range, while the 8-14th saw water temps warm to the 60-64F range. By the third week of March temps had maintained 60-64F. The last week of March the temps dropped back to around 56-60F. Northern Gulf of Mexico during LA-Nina: The first week of March saw water temps approach the 70-72F range, by the...
When it comes to wind, more and more people are turning to it as alternative option for electricity. One has to wonder what kind of impacts would be created by the different cycles of ENSO. The above graph has been done for Boston MA. The month of choice was to run it for March of all three cycles. Normal Cycle: (When we are in between EL-Nino and La-Nina) winds averaged around 0-5mph 9% of the month of March. While 6-10mph average winds occurred more often with 35%. And then winds in the...
