El what...

[Suff]

Last year I pointed out that the pacific was setting itself up for a super El Nino. It did not come to fruition as the trade winds stayed strong and suppressed it.

This year it is a very different situation.

I did mention that the number of strong cyclones in the pacific was quite high recently. Apparently this is explained by the kelvin wave currently running across the pacific.

This is one to watch as it develops. Although the Californio's may welcome it come the end of the year. Well if they don't get flooded out or washed away our buried in landslides....

All things in moderation as they say. Sadly this is far away from moderation.

[Workingman]

I was reading about this earlier today. It is a warning by Australia's Bureau of Meteorology that El Nino had arrived and was likely to be "substantial". This counters the US NOAA announcement in April that it was "weak".

Suff, we both noticed the Typhoons earlier on and did wonder.... What surprised me was the reaction in comments made by readers to this news. It all got bogged down in the climate change and Global warming debate when it is nothing of the sort.

It is a perfectly reasonable far-ahead warning that if it continues to grow in intensity, as is predicted, those nations and their populations at most risk from its effects, should start making steps to mitigate those effects.

The British Isles could be in for a few harsh winters because of it. How much could it hurt, or cost us, to build up stocks of rock salt and de-icer in the interim - just in case?

[Suff]

Not only harsh winters WM, but also autumn storms and near tropical storms dropping huge volumes of water.

We've already seen a small taste of what is to come with the south west being flooded out. If the climate continues it's slow but steady change, then the implications to the UK are quite severe, well in terms of the status quo.

So simple to look at the probable outcomes and make small, year on year, adjustments. So easy to ignore until you are so deep in the brown sticky stuff that you can't get out.

All of these little things are small indications of the changes to come. Like the expansion of the mountain before the volcano or the tiny tremors which precede an earthquake. All we really need to do is open our minds and make preparations.

Ah well, Perhaps a warm summer. Or perhaps the tropical storms will "turn right" over the south west. Or maybe we'll see another Cat1 hurricane make it almost all the way to Greenland. I found it interesting to hear one scientist describe hurricanes as massive heat transport events even if it was just large amounts of rain which fell on glaciers and washed cold water into the sea, cooling and desalinating it.

So much unsaid in all of this. Birds and sea lions are dying because the fish are not there. Because the krill are not there for the fish to feed on. If the fish are not there that means prices go up in North America.. But it also means 10's of millions in South America starve because their base diet of fish is not there and they can't afford to import expensive protein from somewhere else.

It is events like these which drive a chain. Cost of food in North Africa, which drive the Arab Spring, which causes war, which leads to refugees, which leads to less infrastructure, more hardship and more poverty, which leads to hundreds of people dying in the med trying to get to Europe, which leads to the EU trying to pass a directive to force the UK to take 60,000 or more of them every single year.

If a butterfly flaps it's wings in Peking.... It's all one planet.

Now what is truly going to fry the brain is the simple fact that these pacific kelvin waves are caused by the deep ocean heat cycle. This is a 30 year cycle in which the bulk of the heat sequestered in the atmosphere (circa 90%), goes into the Oceans and is cycled around for 30 years before it resurfaces.

So, in short, this "potential" super El Nino is being driven by excess heat absorbed into the oceans around 1985 or so.

Been a lot of heat absorbed by the Oceans since 1985 and that heat continues to climb, every single year.

LOT of heat..... Just wait till we get the heat back from 97/98....

[Suff]

Here we go...

2010. El Nino, massive winters. But, wait, we had those winters in 2009 too and 2011.

So what's the difference?



Could it be that we were just emerging from the lowest solar minimum for 100 years???

Surely not!



I mean, just look at all that solar output.....

What concerns me more is that the 2010's will be the hottest decade on record come 2020.... Food for thought. But, trust the DM to jump on another cold winter. After all the last two predicted didn't exactly pan out did they???

[TheOstrich]

But, trust the DM to jump on another cold winter.

Well that was entirely predictable, wasn't it?