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El Nino Has Finally Arrived, Far Weaker Than Predicted
An anonymous reader writes "The periodic warm weather pattern called El Niño has finally arrived in the mid-equatorial Pacific Ocean, more than a year late and far weaker than predicted by scientists. "The announcement comes a year after forecasters first predicted that a major El Niño could be in the works. At the time, NOAA predicted a 50% chance that an El Niño could develop in the latter half of 2014. The agency also said the wind patterns that were driving water east across the Pacific were similar to those that occurred in the months leading up to the epic El Niño of 1997, which caught scientists by surprise and contributed to flooding, droughts and fires across multiple continents.
In the end, last year's forecasts came up short, in part because the winds that were driving the system petered out. Researchers, who have been working to improve their forecasting models since 1997, are trying to figure out precisely what happened last year and why their models failed to capture it."
In the end, last year's forecasts came up short, in part because the winds that were driving the system petered out. Researchers, who have been working to improve their forecasting models since 1997, are trying to figure out precisely what happened last year and why their models failed to capture it."
Well, hell, why not? Just remember that it's Climate Change now though, not Global Warming. Among other amazing things, Climate Change is responsible for:
ISIS: Yup, somehow, Climate Change was one of the reasons we have ISIS.
Crime. Climate change is also responsible for more rape.
Prostitution. Yeah, see, climate change may increase prostitution too.
I know, I know, this comment is a little snarky, but even the people here on Slashdot that are hardcore global warming types can see that there's a whacko fringe in their camp that is beyond ridiculous.
Love sees no species.
Those are climate models, not weather models, aren't they? I'm not sure that long-term weather forecasts are any more reliable than they were a few decades ago.
Ezekiel 23:20
The real story is a lot more complicated that TFA indicates. The new el nino is just starting and it's six months out of phase with the usual timing. So instead of starting six months late, it could just as well be seen as starting 6 months early in the next cycle. And more importantly, it is now combined with a phase change in the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO). The two cycles combine to produce a much stronger warming effect. The negative PDO was responsible for the impression that warming had slowed. Now that it has reversed the warming will not just return to pre-1998 levels but will be much stronger. This could last for the next 10 to 15 years. Hopefully by then people with short attention spans will have realized that the planet is irrevocably getting hotter.
"He took a duck in the face at 250 knots." -- William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
The political problems in Syria are very much timed with huge crop losses causing food price issues that are very likely the fault of global warming.
So weather IS climate, just on a much shorter scale.
Just like the position and speed of an atom in a cloud of heating gas is thermodynamic data, only much more detailed. Just because you know the cloud is heating doesn't mean you can predict where that one atom will be at a given point in time. I'm not surprised that one el Nino gets mispredicted. It means very little.
Ezekiel 23:20
If you're so confident in your political score-pointing criticism, how would you like to make a bet? Let's say, you predict the average temperature and rainfall for each day the next seven days, and I predict the average temperature and rainfall for each year the next seven years. Whoever is off by the lowest percent wins. And I assume you'd be willing to give me odds of approximately 1:365 in my favor since clearly my task is that much harder.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Lets see a mole of any gas 6.02214x10^23 atoms
Fifteen years has has 5479 days (rounded to the nearest)
a century has 36525 days.
So lets take the other way. What are the odds that a random sample of 10^18 atoms in a gas would have a significantly different temperature than the overall the temperature ?
Virtually zero.
And yet temperatures continue to rise, ice continues to melt, sea level continues to rise and the oceans continue to acidify.
The difference between weather models and climate models it that weather models solve initial value problems, given the current conditions how do we expect weather to evolve over time. They're good for maybe 10 or so days usually. Climate models solve boundary value problems, given the forcings involved in climate and their interactions and feedbacks what are the boundaries we expect future weather to vary within. So far globally the weather has remained mostly within the boundaries projected by climate models so they're doing ok.
Of course, there are longer term patterns, but these aren't weather patterns. Glaciation cycles are caused by orbital patterns. On even longer time scales you have things like continental drift, and gradually increasing solar output. These patterns are interesting, and it's good to know they exist when you want to compare climates over similar time spans, but they aren't really relevant for the discussion about climate change.
I'm not preoccupied with US weather. That was just the map that the poster I replied to used.
Now, in response to yours, it shows that Antarctica is for the most part .5 to 2 degrees colder than the 1951-1980 average, yet the global warmists are saying that massive ice sheets are breaking off and melting because of (record?) high Antarctic temperatures.
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......