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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: 1) by khallow on Wednesday October 23 2019, @12:46PM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday October 23 2019, @12:46PM (#910771) Journal

    why wasn't the hottest decade ever, the 1930s, full of monster El Ninos?

    It's called a "loaded question" [wikipedia.org]. You assert as part of your question that the 1930s were the hottest decade ever. That assertion may well be true (because current efforts may have biased the data from that time, unintentionally or not), but it's not based on current data which doesn't show a particularly strong warming from the 1930s and hence no reason for monster El Ninos to exist.

    I find it interesting that you refuse to acknowledge, much less support, that you made the assertion that the 1930s were the hottest decade ever (in recorded history). Why that oversight?