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posted by martyb on Tuesday October 22 2019, @04:06PM   Printer-friendly
from the more-worse dept.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

El Niño events cause serious shifts in weather patterns across the globe, and an important question that scientists have sought to answer is: how will climate change affect the generation of strong El Niño events? A new study, published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science by a team of international climate researchers led by Bin Wang of the University of Hawaii's International Pacific Research Center (IPRC), has an answer to that question. Results show that since the late 1970's, climate change effects have shifted the El Niño onset location from the eastern Pacific to the western Pacific and caused more frequent extreme El Niño events. Continued warming over the western Pacific warm pool promises conditions that will trigger more extreme events in the future.

The team examined details of 33 El Niño events from 1901 to 2017, evaluating for each event the onset location of the warming, its evolution, and its ultimate strength. By grouping the common developmental features of the events, the team was able to identify four types of El Niño, each with distinct onset and strengthening patterns. Looking across time, they found a decided shift in behavior since the late 1970's: all events beginning in the eastern Pacific occurred prior to that time, while all events originating in the western-central Pacific happened since then. They also found that four of five identified extreme El Niño events formed after 1970.

[...] "Simulations with global climate models suggest that if the observed background changes continue under future anthropogenic forcing, more frequent extreme El Niño events will induce profound socioeconomic consequences," reports Wang.

Journal Reference:
Bin Wang, Xiao Luo, Young-Min Yang, Weiyi Sun, Mark A. Cane, Wenju Cai, Sang-Wook Yeh, and Jian Liu. Historical change of El Niño properties sheds light on future changes of extreme El Niño. PNAS, 2019 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1911130116

-- submitted from IRC


Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 22 2019, @06:59PM (11 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 22 2019, @06:59PM (#910490)

    All you need is one historical datapoint to get the overall average.

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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by ikanreed on Tuesday October 22 2019, @07:02PM (9 children)

    by ikanreed (3164) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday October 22 2019, @07:02PM (#910493) Journal

    No, they pretty clearly collected thousands of them and the majority were in the 0-0.1 millimeter per year range, not anywhere near today's 3.3 per year? Like you can click the link and scroll down to the bar graph, it's right there in the article.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 22 2019, @07:04PM (8 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 22 2019, @07:04PM (#910494)

      To get the overall average all you need is to know the sea level 20k years ago and today. It is algebra 101.

      • (Score: 2) by ikanreed on Tuesday October 22 2019, @07:09PM (7 children)

        by ikanreed (3164) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday October 22 2019, @07:09PM (#910497) Journal

        durr a half millimeter per year, which is a fraction of today's 3.3 per year, which I stress is a tenth of what it will be in the uncontrolled emission scenario. Do you have any point to make or just that you didn't do that math?

        • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 22 2019, @07:11PM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 22 2019, @07:11PM (#910499)

          125 m x 1e3 mm/m / 20e3 years = 6.25 mm per year on average

          Now watch this basic fact get downvoted by idiots.

          • (Score: 3, Informative) by ikanreed on Tuesday October 22 2019, @07:25PM

            by ikanreed (3164) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday October 22 2019, @07:25PM (#910507) Journal

            You know what, my math was wrong.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 22 2019, @07:31PM (4 children)

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 22 2019, @07:31PM (#910509)

          Onset of deglaciation at ∼21–20 ka BP with a short-lived global sea-level rise of ∼10–15 m before 18 ka.
          [...]
          A major phase of deglaciation from ∼16.5–7 ka BP. The total esl change in this interval is ∼120 m
          [...]
          A rise of ∼25 m from ∼16.5–15 ka BP
          [...]
          A high rate of sea-level rise starting at ∼14.5 ka BP of ∼500 y duration... the globally averaged rise in sea level of ∼20 m occurs at a rate of ∼40 mm⋅y−1 or greater.
          [...]
          A period of sea-level rise from ∼14 to ∼12.5 ka BP of ∼20 m in 1,500 y.

          https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4217469/ [nih.gov]

          So we have:
          3.33 mm/yr for thousand years
          12.6 mm/yr for 9.5 thousand years
          40.0 mm/yr for 500 years
          13.0 mm/yr for 1.5 thousand years

          A ~10x increase in rate from ~3 mm/yr would not surprise me. About 2.5% of the time since the LGM was spent in such a state.

          • (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday October 23 2019, @03:34AM (3 children)

            by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday October 23 2019, @03:34AM (#910658) Journal

            A ~10x increase in rate from ~3 mm/yr would not surprise me.

            But we're not even close at the present. This is particularly frivolous since much of the present day rise in sea level is still due to the end of the last glacial period. We'll need significantly more than 10x increase in rate from global warming to get ~30 mm/year.

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 23 2019, @06:32AM (2 children)

              by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 23 2019, @06:32AM (#910683)

              It is still worth planning for. Double or quadruple it and plan for that i say... because even if that disastrous situation does not manifest our planning will still help for many other difficult scenarios.

              • (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday October 23 2019, @12:28PM (1 child)

                by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday October 23 2019, @12:28PM (#910767) Journal
                There's a whole bunch of stuff to plan for. Climate change is not the only problem in the world when you have over 7 billion people.
                • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 25 2019, @12:28AM

                  by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 25 2019, @12:28AM (#911439)

                  Then the right thing to do is assess all the threats and the cost of dealing with them and do a cost-benefit analysis. I am pretty sure that doing basic stuff known since biblical times like stockpiling resources and tools for hard times will be the best solution.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 22 2019, @11:46PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 22 2019, @11:46PM (#910603)

    Better get a bulk rate on your wedding cake, then, you'll have four dozen husbands.
    'cause. like, everyone knows earth has access to unlimited supply of frozen water, thus in another 2 million years or so, Earth will be an ocean planet.