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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


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  • (Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Tuesday October 22 2019, @07:14PM (4 children)

    by PartTimeZombie (4827) on Tuesday October 22 2019, @07:14PM (#910501)

    I copied the phrase "hottest decade ever" into a search engine and received answers like:

    Across the globe, the past five years have been the hottest five years...

    and

    Temperatures on our planet Earth have been recorded since the year 1880. And believe it or not, since that time, the hottest decade ever was the last one we have lived in.

    I am unsure why the 1930's seem to be the decade people use when they pretend climate change is not real, but it is wrong, and seems to be provably so. We measure temperatures across the planet more accurately than ever.

    I expect it is another Fox News talking point.

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  • (Score: 2) by ikanreed on Tuesday October 22 2019, @07:32PM (1 child)

    by ikanreed (3164) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday October 22 2019, @07:32PM (#910513) Journal

    The main thing is the US experienced a relative heatwave compared to the world in the 1930s, quite possibly in connection to the dust bowl, but I don't know that that cause is settled.

    But it was far from the hottest decade here, and very far from the hottest decade in global temperature average.

    • (Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Tuesday October 22 2019, @08:43PM

      by PartTimeZombie (4827) on Tuesday October 22 2019, @08:43PM (#910537)

      Based on a quick reading of the Wikipedia article about the Dust Bowl, the cause seems to be a combination of poor farming techniques and drought in an already arid region

      There is no mention of unusually high temperatures, but it is possible I suppose.

      Anyway, your point is still valid.

  • (Score: 2, Funny) by fustakrakich on Tuesday October 22 2019, @08:42PM (1 child)

    by fustakrakich (6150) on Tuesday October 22 2019, @08:42PM (#910536) Journal

    across the planet...

    So! It is flat!

    --
    La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 22 2019, @09:25PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 22 2019, @09:25PM (#910555)

      Flat, and yet quite bumpy in places. Go figure.