Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by cmn32480 on Wednesday July 29 2015, @01:04PM   Printer-friendly
from the just-a-little-storm-that-will-blow-over dept.

The current El Nino continues to strengthen and will probably end next Spring.

"All international climate models surveyed by the Bureau of Meteorology indicate El Nino is likely to strengthen, and is expected to persist into early 2016," the bureau said. Those models project the event could last until next April.

A overview of what this means for the world can be found here.

Economic winners include the U.S., China, Mexico and Europe, while India, Australia and Peru are among El Nino's biggest losers.

California does have one potential remaining issue that could cause the drought to continue: The Blob.

It was a tangled feedback process between hot, dry soil, the strong ridge, and the blob — all working together to enhance the ridge itself, leading to more hot, dry weather. The wintertime pattern has been so domineering that West Coast meteorologists dubbed it the "ridiculously resilient ridge."

As a California resident with limited oceanic-atmospheric knowledge I wonder if anyone out there can add insight to the last article. It seems that this El Nino is really strong and the most The Blob can hope to do is to weaken it. All that energy needs to go somewhere.


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Immerman on Wednesday July 29 2015, @01:24PM

    by Immerman (3985) on Wednesday July 29 2015, @01:24PM (#215438)

    Not being well-versed in climate science, all I can say is *of course* that energy needs to go somewhere, and nothing is interfering with it doing so. All large-scale weather patterns do is *steer* it. Throw an extra eddy into the air currents over here, and the main current carries the rainclouds north or south. Twist the the current itself into a hairpin and clouds pileup in one place to cause flooding, while the state to the east gets droughts since the moisture never reaches them.

    It's a closed system, nothing ever disappears, but the emergent behavior can get very complex.

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +2  
       Insightful=2, Total=2
    Extra 'Insightful' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   4  
  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 29 2015, @02:37PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 29 2015, @02:37PM (#215469)

    It's not a closed system. Energy is constantly added by the sunlight, and constantly radiated away as heat radiation.

    • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday July 30 2015, @12:38AM

      by Immerman (3985) on Thursday July 30 2015, @12:38AM (#215672)

      Point. But it is in quasi-equilibrium, and I doubt the mechanical energy of wind is going to convert to sufficient heat to appreciably shift the radiation rate.

      • (Score: 1) by AnonymousCowardNoMore on Thursday July 30 2015, @08:21AM

        by AnonymousCowardNoMore (5416) on Thursday July 30 2015, @08:21AM (#215798)

        Radiated power is proportional to the fourth power of temperature (Stefan-Boltzmann law). Which means that convection currents between hot and cold places should have a large effect on the overall radiated power.

        • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday July 30 2015, @01:56PM

          by Immerman (3985) on Thursday July 30 2015, @01:56PM (#215873)

          True. And the net effect would be simple: the cooling of warm areas would cause a larger reduction in radiated power than the the corresponding increase in the cooler areas, causing a net reduction in radiation and, once a new equilibrium is reached, a net increase in average temperature.

          • (Score: 1) by AnonymousCowardNoMore on Thursday July 30 2015, @03:24PM

            by AnonymousCowardNoMore (5416) on Thursday July 30 2015, @03:24PM (#215907)

            Then we agree. It is after all one component of the greenhouse effect which makes planets with thick atmospheres warmer than those without (all other things being equal). I merely wished to point out that wind does appreciably influence radiation rate, contrary to what your post above appeared to say.