Posted on 08/28/2010 10:42:19 AM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
From the Jet Propulsion Lab:
NASA/NOAA Study Finds El Niños are Growing Stronger
Deviations from normal sea surface temperatures (left) and sea surface heights (right) at the peak of the 2009-2010 central Pacific El Niño, as measured by NOAA polar orbiting satellites and NASA's Jason-1 spacecraft, respectively. The warmest temperatures and highest sea levels were located in the central equatorial Pacific. Image credit: NASA/JPL-NOAA - Click for a larger image
A relatively new type of El Niño, which has its warmest waters in the central-equatorial Pacific Ocean, rather than in the eastern-equatorial Pacific, is becoming more common and progressively stronger, according to a new study by NASA and NOAA. The research may improve our understanding of the relationship between El Niños and climate change, and has potentially significant implications for long-term weather forecasting.
Lead author Tong Lee of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., and Michael McPhaden of NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, Seattle, measured changes in El Niño intensity since 1982. They analyzed NOAA satellite observations of sea surface temperature, checked against and blended with directly-measured ocean temperature data. The strength of each El Niño was gauged by how much its sea surface temperatures deviated from the average. They found the intensity of El Niños in the central Pacific has nearly doubled, with the most intense event occurring in 2009-10.
The scientists say the stronger El Niños help explain a steady rise in central Pacific sea surface temperatures observed over the past few decades in previous studies-a trend attributed by some to the effects of global warming. While Lee and McPhaden observed a rise in sea surface temperatures during El Niño years, no significant temperature increases were seen in years when ocean conditions were neutral, or when El Niño’s cool water counterpart, La Niña, was present.
“Our study concludes the long-term warming trend seen in the central Pacific is primarily due to more intense El Niños, rather than a general rise of background temperatures,” said Lee.
“These results suggest climate change may already be affecting El Niño by shifting the center of action from the eastern to the central Pacific,” said McPhaden. “El Niño’s impact on global weather patterns is different if ocean warming occurs primarily in the central Pacific, instead of the eastern Pacific.
“If the trend we observe continues,” McPhaden added, “it could throw a monkey wrench into long-range weather forecasting, which is largely based on our understanding of El Niños from the latter half of the 20th century.”
El Niño, Spanish for “the little boy,” is the oceanic component of a climate pattern called the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, which appears in the tropical Pacific Ocean on average every three to five years. The most dominant year-to-year fluctuating pattern in Earth’s climate system, El Niños have a powerful impact on the ocean and atmosphere, as well as important socioeconomic consequences. They can influence global weather patterns and the occurrence and frequency of hurricanes, droughts and floods; and can even raise or lower global temperatures by as much as 0.2 degrees Celsius (0.4 degrees Fahrenheit).
During a “classic” El Niño episode, the normally strong easterly trade winds in the tropical eastern Pacific weaken. That weakening suppresses the normal upward movement of cold subsurface waters and allows warm surface water from the central Pacific to shift toward the Americas. In these situations, unusually warm surface water occupies much of the tropical Pacific, with the maximum ocean warming remaining in the eastern-equatorial Pacific.
Since the early 1990s, however, scientists have noted a new type of El Niño that has been occurring with greater frequency. Known variously as “central-Pacific El Niño,” “warm-pool El Niño,” “dateline El Niño” or “El Niño Modoki” (Japanese for “similar but different”), the maximum ocean warming from such El Niños is found in the central-equatorial, rather than eastern, Pacific. Such central Pacific El Niño events were observed in 1991-92, 1994-95, 2002-03, 2004-05 and 2009-10. A recent study found many climate models predict such events will become much more frequent under projected global warming scenarios.
Lee said further research is needed to evaluate the impacts of these increasingly intense El Niños and determine why these changes are occurring. “It is important to know if the increasing intensity and frequency of these central Pacific El Niños are due to natural variations in climate or to climate change caused by human-produced greenhouse gas emissions,” he said.
Results of the study were published recently in Geophysical Research Letters.
Is the cold weather coming?-El Nino/La Nina effect (SOI) predicts global cooling by the end of 2010
We're all doomed
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This one is broader...FR Thread:
Global Sea Surface Temps still headed down ( measured by NASA’s Aqua satellite )
We had two days of summer this week. Very hot, but very nice. Kind of short summer though.
My veggies look SO confused.....
In abbreviated form - “Send more grant money”...:^)
EARTH OBSERVATION Satellite images suggest La Nina formation
And this study is also from JPL...Pasadena...Huh?
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Posted on Wed 23 Jun 2010 01:17:55 PM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach
NASA says new images from its Jason-2 oceanography satellite shows the tropical Pacific has switched from El Nino warm conditions to La Nina cool conditions.
"The central equatorial Pacific Ocean could stay colder than normal into summer and beyond," said oceanographer and climatologist Bill Patzert at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "That's because sea level is already about 4 inches below normal, creating a significant deficit of the heat stored in the upper ocean. The next few months will reveal if the current cooling trend will eventually evolve into a long-lasting La Nina situation."
That gigantic volcano in Iceland could have some long-term effects on weather patterns. Guess we don’t hear about that ‘cause thy haven’t found a way to regulate/tax it. Yet.
Yep...see #7.
George Bush’s fault and certainly caused by global warming not to mention Glen Beck’s rally in Washington which is disturbing the earths vibrations. (sarcasm)
“And this study is also from JPL...Pasadena...Huh?”
Double dipping on the grant money ...
If it is bad news, I blame Hussein.
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Robert says:
A recent study found many climate models predict such events will become much more frequent under projected global warming scenarios.
Lee said further research is needed to evaluate the impacts of these increasingly intense El Niños and determine why these changes are occurring.
Keywords: projected global warming scenarios, more frequent, further research is needed, increasingly intense El Niños.
Panic now? Or simply another case of “We haven’t a clue but blame it on Global Warming anyway, where are the grants?”
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Dagfinn says:
Andy Revkin has asked these researchers a couple of intelligent questions. (http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/27/pacific-hot-spells-shifting-as-predicted-in-human-heated-world/) Quoting from the replies:
“If all we had was data the interpretation would be ambiguous as to what causes what. However, we also have climate change computer models which are valuable guides to how the climate system will respond to greenhouse gas forcing.”
“We can’t be 100% certain that this interpretation is correct because the data are limited and the models are imperfect. But it provides us a plausible working hypothesis for further investigation into the nature and impacts of a changing face to El Niño.”
If it’s just a plausible working hypothesis, it’s hardly worth arguing about.
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My comment:
Thanks for the ping EatB! Heading over to Watt now, because the comments there are always enlightening.
Bogie
The Pacific has a lot of blue....seems to me.
Too hot bad.
Too cold bad.
Too wet bad.
Too dry bad.
Sky is falling, bad.
Sky is not falling, bad.
Chicken little very idiotic.
Chicken little very wise.
Hey, I’ve got a pimple. Let’s all obsess over it.
I’m thinking the folks at NASA are going to be inhabitants of various psych wards by 12/22/12.
Let’s see how many people they can take with them.
Trying to make sense out of El Nino and El Nina as if the earth that has survived them since land masses came to be what they are today, can’t survive them any longer, bores me to tears.
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The deep oceans drive the atmosphere
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Ever wondered how the whole planet could suddenly “get warmer” during an El Nino, and then suddenly cool again? William Kininmonth has the answer. As I read his words I’m picturing a major pool of stored “coldness” (bear with me, I know cold is just a lack of heat) which is periodically unleashed on the surface temperatures. The vast deep ocean abyss is filled with salty and near freezing water. In years where this colder pool is kept in place we have El Ninos, and on years when the colder water rises and mixes up near the surface we have La Ninas. The satellites recording temperatures at the surface of the ocean are picking up the warmth (or lack of) on this top-most layer. That’s why it can be bitterly cold for land thermometers but at the same time the satellites are recording a higher world average temperature, due to the massive area of the Pacific.
In other words, just as you’d expect, the actual temperature of the whole planetary mass is not rising and falling within months, instead, at times the oceans swallow the heat on the surface and give up some “coldness”. At other times, the cold stays buried deep down and the heat can collect and loll about on the surface.
William Kininmonth was chief of Australia’s National Climate Centre at the Bureau of Meteorology from 1986 to 1998. Below, he describes how a vast pool of cold water filled the deep ocean abyss over 30 million years, and why this water and the currents that shift it have a major impact our climate. The so-called Bottom Layer is not just pockets or pools, it forms around Antarctica, then sinks and flows along the bottom all the way across the equator and into the Northern Hemisphere. Bear in mind the average depth of the ocean is around 4 kilometers, and yet almost all the water below a depth of 1000 m is around 4°C or colder. The Antarctic Bottom Water itself is close to 0°C. The equivalent heat energy of the entire atmosphere is stored in just the top few meters of water. It gives us all some perspective on the relative importance of different factors affecting the climate. His thoughts are in response to the latest debate essay from Dr Andrew Glikson, so the figures 1 and 2 come from that article.
Kininmonth points out that small changes in the rate of the Thermohaline Circulation (also known as the Ocean’s Conveyor Belt) makes a huge difference to all corners of the globe, and that the climate models make large assumptions about the flow of energy. Since the cold bottom layer was created by a kind of “Antarctic Refridgerator” (set into play by the circumpolar current) this colossal cold pool of water will presumably hang around until the continents shift. That’s quite a few election cycles.
Jo
Guest post by William Kininmonth
The deep ocean abyss forms as cold salty water sinks from Antarctica
Of particular interest to me was the second panel of his Figure 1(see below). It shows that the temperature of the deep ocean fell from 12°C to 0°C , but without explanation. Bob Foster has spoken of this regularly – the opening of Drake Passage and the isolation of the Antarctic continent from the warmer tropical surface temperatures by the Antarctic Circumpolar Current. This means that winter sea ice forms around the Antarctic coastline, and expels salt into the surrounding sea water which increases the salinity and density of the near freezing water under the sea ice. There is only one way for that cold saline water to go and that is down to form Bottom Water.
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See :
See #19....now I do believe that!
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