Posted on 09/14/2009 2:12:30 PM PDT by decimon
Research conducted at Texas A&M University casts doubts on the notion that El Niño has been getting stronger because of global warming and raises interesting questions about the relationship between El Niño and a severe flu pandemic 91 years ago. The findings are based on analysis of the 1918 El Niño, which the new research shows to be one of the strongest of the 20th century.
El Niño occurs when unusually warm surface waters form over vast stretches of the eastern Pacific Ocean and can affect weather systems worldwide. Using advanced computer models, Benjamin Giese, a professor of oceanography who specializes in ocean modeling, and his co-authors conducted a simulation of the global oceans for the first half of the 20th century and they find that, in contrast with prior descriptions, the 1918-19 El Niño was one of the strongest of the century.
Giese's work will be published in the current "Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society," and the research project was funded by NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) and the National Science Foundation.
Giese says there were few measurements of the tropical Pacific Ocean in 1918, the last year of World War I, and the few observations that are available from 1918 are mostly along the coast of South America. "But the model results show that the El Niño of 1918 was stronger in the central Pacific, with a weaker signature near the coast," Giese explains. "Thus the limited measurements likely missed detecting the 1918 El Niño."
Giese adds, "The most commonly used indicator of El Niño is the ocean temperature anomaly in the central Pacific Ocean. By that standard, the 1918-19 El Niño is as strong as the events in 1982-83 and 1997-98, considered to be two of the strongest events on record, causing some researchers to conclude that El Niño has been getting stronger because of global warming. Since the 1918-19 El Niño occurred before significant warming from greenhouse gasses, it makes it difficult to argue that El Niño s have been getting stronger."
The El Niño of 1918 coincided with one of the worst droughts in India, he adds. "It is well known that there is a connection between El Niño and the failure of the Indian monsoon, just as there is a well-established connection between El Niño and Atlantic hurricane intensity," Giese says. In addition to drought in India and Australia, 1918 was also a year in which there were few Atlantic hurricanes.
The research also raises questions about El Niño and mortality from the influenza pandemic of 1918. By mid-1918, a flu outbreak which we now know was the H1N1 strain that is of great concern today was sweeping the world, and the resulting fatalities were catastrophic: At least 25 million people died worldwide, with some estimates as high as 100 million deaths. India was particularly hard hit by the influenza.
"We know that there is a connection between El Niño and drought in India," Giese notes.
"It seems probable that mortality from influenza was high in India because of famine associated with drought, so it is likely that El Niño contributed to the high mortality from influenza in India."
The flu epidemic of 1918, commonly called the "Spanish Flu," is believed to be the greatest medical holocaust in history. It lasted from March of 1918 to June of 1920, and about 500 million people worldwide became infected, with the disease killing between 25 million to 100 million, most of them young adults. An estimated 17 million died in India, between 500,000 to 675,000 died in the U.S. and another 400,000 died in Japan.
Could the events of 1918 be a harbinger of what might occur in 2009?
Giese says there are some interesting parallels. The winter and spring in 1918 were unusually cold throughout North America, just at the time influenza started to spread in the central U.S. That was followed by a strengthening El Niño and subsequent drought in India. As the El Niño matured in the fall of 1918, the influenza became a pandemic.
With a moderate to strong El Niño now forming in the Pacific and the H1N1 flu strain apparently making a vigorous comeback, the concerns today are obvious, Giese adds.
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Contact: Benjamin Giese at (979) 845-2306 or b-giese@tamu.edu or Keith Randall at (979) 845-4644 or keith-randall@tamu.edu
About research at Texas A&M University: As one of the world's leading research institutions, Texas A&M is in the vanguard in making significant contributions to the storehouse of knowledge, including that of science and technology. Research conducted at Texas A&M represents an annual investment of more than $582 million, which ranks third nationally for universities without a medical school, and underwrites approximately 3,500 sponsored projects. That research creates new knowledge that provides basic, fundamental and applied contributions resulting in many cases in economic benefits to the state, nation and world.
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How so? For one thing, you presented some percentages without any absolute numbers. For another, 500 million infected is quite a number regardless of how many were injured to the point of death. For a third, that's a side issue to the main thesis.
Four years of war, all those people milling around as they’d never milled around in history before; not eating or sleeping too well either. But it’s the wind. In flew Enza! Riiight...
“The flu epidemic of 1918, commonly called the “Spanish Flu,” is believed to be the greatest medical holocaust in history.”
“Holocaust” implies death, not just infection. The mortality rate of the 1918 flu was bad but hardly in the league of the Black Plague or the introduction of Old World diseases to the New World.
You can only give percentage estimates of deaths caused by the Black Plague and the Old World diseases since there are no census numbers to work with.
I’m unclear whether you are agreeing or disagreeing with me.
It is of course true that we don’t have detailed census reports for ancient or medieval times. But there is plenty of evidence to justify the mortalities I estimated for epidemics during this period.
We have quite accurate figures for USA, 600k+ out of a population of 107M, or a death rate of about 0.6%. The 25M to 100M quoted in the article for the entire world is itself an estimate without a great deal more documentation than the mortality rate estimates for the Black Death.
It is true that a whole lot more people got sick with the flu and recovered than with plague. This would, IMO, lessen the impact of the disease, not increase it.
IMO, the impact on a society of an epidemic is much more accurately measured by percentage than by absolute numbers. The social, economic and cultural impact of the Black Death was indisputably much greater than that of the 1919 flu, despite the arguably greater total death toll of the modern epidemic.
My intent was to support you.
Well, thanks then!
“The presently most accepted theory is that the flu started in Haskell County, western KS, and went with a draftee to Ft. Riley in N. Kansas. From there it spread in all directions as soldiers were shipped out. Travel on super-crowded trains and troopships created conditions for transmission about as effective as modern airliners.
“
Yes.
http://www.amazon.com/Great-Influenza-deadliest-pandemic-history/dp/0143036491/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1252997240&sr=1-1
Ping me if you find one I've missed.
I read Barry’s book. Very interesting. Despite the fact that it wasn’t really the greatest epidemic in history, I sincerely hope we don’t have an equivalent.
We just are not ready for it. The death rate for “Spanish flu” would be much lower today with proper ICU treatment, but we certainly don’t have 20 to 60 million ICU beds!
Not to mention that medical personnel would likely get the disease at the same or even a higher rate.
My take is that pandemic is now the new way to get federal grant money, as Globull warming gets harder to justify.
Agree.
A lot of so-called scientific papers are written by guys or gals who have become fascinated with the wonders of linear or non-linear regression and tend to believe nonsensical results.
Wait a couple of months, someone will rebunk it. Or somethin’...
I didn’t know about the drought in India, but over a million Germans died of malnutrition due to the British Blockade, and 1917 was called the “hunger year” in the UK for the same reason.
And, of course, the climate changes (cooler) in the early 1330-1330 was one reason that the black death killed so many.
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