El Nino Is Coming--and the World Isn't Prepared

[NickB79]

Last edited Sat Dec 24, 2022, 09:58 PM - Edit history (1)

https://www.wired.com/story/climate-environment-hurricane/amp

In 2023, the relentless increase in global heating will continue, bringing ever more disruptive weather that is the signature calling card of accelerating climate breakdown.

According to NASA, 2022 was one of the hottest years ever recorded on Earth. This is extraordinary, because the recurrent climate pattern across the tropical Pacific—known as ENSO (El Niño Southern Oscillation)—was in its cool phase. During this phase, called La Niña, the waters of the equatorial Pacific are noticeably cooler than normal, which influences weather patterns around the world.

One consequence of La Niña is that it helps keep a lid on global temperatures. This means that—despite the recent widespread heat waves, wildfires and droughts—we have actually been spared the worst. The scary thing is that this La Niña will end and eventually transition into the better-known El Niño, which sees the waters of the equatorial Pacific becoming much warmer. When it does, the extreme weather that has rampaged across our planet in 2021 and 2022 will pale into insignificance.

I know that worrying about global warming might not be on the top of the list right now, given that it's December, but one cold front doesn't mean climate change isn't real.

[Zeitghost]

1. I hope so

El Niño years always bring heavy snow to the Sierras and rain here in California's Central Valley that has been in a serious drought for some time. The La Niña part of the cycle is always dry. We could use a few wet years to replenish aquifers and water the crops.

[NullTuples]

7. As I understand it, the fear is that this El Nio is expected to be warmer than in the past

So we may well get a 6'-8' snowstorm or two. But they will be followed by rain, melting the snow. Most of the water from the snowstorms will then stay on the surface and run down to the Delta & Central Valley. A slow melt over the course of a year is good for the depleted underground aquifer in The Valley. But if it happens all at once, most of it will flow out as unusually heavy runoff and by February there may be no or very little snow pack - and the valley aquifers barely get replenished.

[Xolodno]

2. There is and upside for some of the western states...

...it drops a ton of snow. And given a long drought, we could use it.

[NickB79]

4. Unless it flips too hard and replicates the 1862 megaflood

There's a real risk of this happening in the next 40 years.

https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2022-08-12/risk-of-catastrophic-megaflood-has-doubled-for-california

Even today, as California struggles with severe drought, global warming has doubled the likelihood that weather conditions will unleash a deluge as devastating as the Great Flood of 1862, according to a UCLA study released Friday.

In that inundation 160 years ago, 30 consecutive days of rain triggered monster flooding that roared across much of the state and changed the course of the Los Angeles River, relocating its mouth from Venice to Long Beach.

.If a similar storm were to happen today, the study says, up to 10 million people would be displaced, major interstate freeways such as Interstates 5 and 80 would be shut down for months, and population centers including Stockton, Fresno and parts of Los Angeles would be submerged — a $1-trillion disaster larger than any in world history.

It would also probably be “bigger in almost every respect” than what scientists have come to call the “ARKStorm scenario” of 1862, said climate scientist Daniel Swain, co-author of the study published Friday in the journal Science Advances./div]

[LeftInTX]

3. Errors in the article

La Nina contributes to hurricanes

[Kaleva]

5. Are there hurricanes in the Pacific?

[ironflange]

6. Yes

Hurricanes. typhoons, cyclones, different names for the same phenomenon.

[Kaleva]

9. But they don't impact CA I believe

[ironflange]

11. I think CA will get remnants once in a while

[LeftInTX]

22. The article specifically mentions that La Nina limits hurricanes in the Atlantic

Just the opposite is true: La Nina favors hurricanes in the Atlantic

There are hurricanes in the eastern pacific. El Nino kinda seems to favor them, but nothing concrete. The E Pac storms form off the coast of Mexico and head west. Sometimes they turn around and provide rain to the Southwest. Many times they dissipate at sea. (generally they do not benefit California because it is too far north. If they come ashore, it's usually in Mexico and they benefit AZ, NM, CO, TX even Louisiana etc)

California and the South benefits from warm winter waters off the California and E Pac coast and the lower latitude jet stream that El Nino provides. Seattle benefits from the poleward La Nina jet stream. During La Nina the jet stream is further north.

Too much is being made about El Nino in the article.

La Nina often brings hot weather. Just because the equatorial pacific is a few degrees cooler, it does not necessarily mean cool weather. We have had our worse heat and droughts during La Nina. La Nina is bad news for Texas. It's like clockwork. Always bad news for Texas.

Additionally, El Nino is not even in the forecast, so this article is full of errors.
https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/lanina/enso_evolution-status-fcsts-web.pdf

ENSO Alert System Status: La Niña Advisory
La Niña is present.

According to the dynamical model average (green thick line), La Nina is expected to
persist into the Northern
Hemisphere winter 2022-23 and
then transition to ENSO-neutral
in January-March 2023. For the
statistical model average (red
thick line), the transition to
ENSO-neutral is around
February-April 2023.

[orthoclad]

8. What a relief!

I read the title and thought "There's a monstrous new mutant climate pattern coming." But it's only a typo. Should be El Niño.

Sorry, but that was my honest reaction.

Good point, that we should expect even more extremes when ENSO flips.

We are entering chaotic and unpredictable circumstances. Our recent experience (and "recent" could mean the last 200 years) may not be a good predictor of the ocean-atmosphere system.

[markodochartaigh]

12. El Nino

frequently refers to Jesus. I read the title and thought that it was going to be a religious post on Christmas.

And of course there should be a tilde over the n, but it keeps deleting the letter when I try to write it correctly.

[Wounded Bear]

13. The site does not accept special characters in the title bar...nt

[orthoclad]

14. Yes, title lines are picky about special characters

I tried to use ^ meaning "to the power of" and it didn't work.

Heh, I only figured out diacritical marks on my keyboard a few years ago.

Apologies for snarkiness. It actually is a serious consideration.

[Hekate]

15. For God knows how many drought cycles El Nino has referred to the season in which a drought-buster

…might be expected to arrive here in California. Season: approximately Christmas, i.e. The Nino, Baby Jesus.

It’s not that we are all Spanish-speaking believers, but this is the origin story of the name of the sustained heavy rains phenomenon that I have heard again and again. Whether this is true or just folklore, you will have to consult a California meteorologist.

By the way, the only way I can get any tildes or other diacritical marks into my posts is by copy-pasting the whole word. I don’t always do it.

[DFW]

26. If you want the tilde

There are various easy ways

On a desktop or laptop, just go to character map. Select and copy whatever you want. Even Russian, Greek, Arabic or Hebrew.

On an iPhone, at least, you can add languages for free, or else just hold down the letter which is closest to what you are looking for. If you hold down “n,” you are offered the option of ñ for Spanish or ń for Polish. Holding down the “c” offers you the ç for French, Turkish or Romanian or the ć or č for some Slavic languages, etc.

[Hekate]

27. I did it!

Hold. Slide up. Voilà! Niño! Ü ! Well, I’m going to have fun now — this is something I never knew.

Merry Christmas to you.

[Igel]

24. Ding-ding-ding!

It refers to Jesus.

An el nino brings good fish harvests to areas of the west coast of south America. Around ... Xmas. A gift from El Nino.

The term "la nina" came later, for the opposite phenomenon. Flip the temperatures, flip the gender;

Ho Khristos "the anointed one" becomes "He krista."

[Warpy]

16. El Nino will help the parched southwest,...to a point

The last time we had a bad El Nino year after a few dry ones we got clobbered by an 18 inch snowfall here in NM. That doesn't sound like much to people in Buffalo or even Boston, but there are few snow plows here, just enough to clear the high passes on state highways and interstates, nothing in towns and cities. It was a hell of a mess. We also had torrential rains that year that exposed shady developers who'd filled in arroyos and built houses next to them, planting grass on top of the fill thinking no one would ever know.

So if it switches over to a strong El Nino, there will be blizzards and flooding galore and most people will miss the dry years, until they return. It will be an oscillation between fire and flood out here for the foreseeable future. It has happened before.

People got spoiled by a wetter than usual century and a half. That's happened before, too, and will likely happen again at some point and new generations will be fooled by it. There is no normal out here, just periodic change, something native people tried to tell us but men smelling money were in no mood to listen to.

[orthoclad]

17. These Arctic excursions

are influenced by global warming.

In recent years I've seen reports of warmer air moving North from the Bering Sea and displacing Arctic air. Records of sea ice show a lot of open water in that area. Arctic sea ice is disappearing rapidly. And there are other, more complex interactions I don't understand. But basically, warming is upsetting the stability that tends to trap a swirl of cold air over Arctic sea ice.

Last excursion, a maga snidely asked me where all the global warming is. I said "In the Arctic". She didn't expect that.

So yes, worry about global warming/climate change when we get ANY extreme of weather.

[certainot]

18. el nino la nina are energy banks/dissipaters and at some point they may not work anymore

they have or may soon lose value for predicting weather

[Martin68]

19. "one cold front doesn't mean climate change isn't real" If you are posting for people who still

don't understand that cold weather doesn't mean climate change isn't happening, you are kind of wasting our time. Nobody who is that clueless is reading posts on DU. I'd suggest posting articles like that elsewhere if you want to have a meaningful impact.

[ecstatic]

25. Lol! nt

[FlyingPiggy]

20. Aren't we overdue for a strong El Nino? I remember a few years back there was fear

That el nino is weakening and el nina is getting too strong due to climate change. And now we’re worried it’s back? This doesn’t make sense to me. I have to read up a little more on this.

[roamer65]

21. The world is about to get a whole lot more "interesting".

Also these people have the right idea.

http://stophavingkids.org

[Quixote1818]

23. It's coming eventually put not for at least a year.

We are supposed to be in La Nina conditions until around March then things will go neutral. Hopefully an El Nino by next Winter because the SW needs relief from the drought.

https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/lanina/enso_evolution-status-fcsts-web.pdf