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.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 29 2015, @01:21PM
They observed that on El Nino years, the monsoon tends to fail in South Asia, but I don't think it's anything close to certainty.
(Score: 2) by MrGuy on Wednesday July 29 2015, @02:32PM
Right. That's why India is included in the list of El Nino's biggest losers.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Immerman on Wednesday July 29 2015, @01:24PM
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.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 29 2015, @02:37PM
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
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
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
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
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.
(Score: 2) by CoolHand on Wednesday July 29 2015, @01:50PM
Good for the U.S.! w00t! USA USA USA USA!!!
Too bad 3rd world countries - Peru, Indonesia, India, Australia!! Suck it!!!
</sarcasm>
Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job-Douglas Adams
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 29 2015, @02:54PM
Since when is Australia considered to be third world?
(Score: 1, Troll) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday July 29 2015, @05:22PM
Since when is Australia considered to be third world?
To everyone other than Australians? Always.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 30 2015, @02:14AM
Calm down Aussies. It's a joke.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Tork on Wednesday July 29 2015, @07:10PM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 29 2015, @02:21PM
Special Report! Monster El Nino! Millions to suffer! Danger, Will Robinson! We're all gonna die!
A golden marketing opportunity if ever there was one.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday July 29 2015, @11:34PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 29 2015, @02:27PM
For we, the residents of the Gulf Coast, it has been hot as hell this summer thanks to the Nino.
But the upside is that El Nino's are typically associated with quiet Atlantic hurricane seasons.
Source:
http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/Landsea/elnino/ [noaa.gov]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 29 2015, @10:29PM
If it's windy with lots of hot air it's probably "The Donald".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 29 2015, @02:36PM
Here in San Diego, we've already had record breaking rainfall amounts for the month of July, with more due today. Although our localized rain will not help the drought in the rest of the state, our lawns are getting green and my rain barrels are full. Drivers are still stupid when it rains, lots of accidents.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 29 2015, @02:40PM
And the last time we had an El Nino this strong, there was major flooding with road washouts. It was said somewhere that this El Nino may be even stronger than those in the past.
(Score: 1) by angst_ridden_hipster on Wednesday July 29 2015, @08:36PM
yeah, the El Nino in ... '02? thereabouts? flooded my Mar Vista back yard during one short downpour.
I should probably get myself some sandbags in advance of this winter.
Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachtani?
www.fogbound.net
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 30 2015, @08:20PM
No, It was around 1982-83 I believe.
(Score: 2) by AndyTheAbsurd on Wednesday July 29 2015, @03:14PM
Drivers are stupid when it rains everywhere. I've lived in Florida - where it rains virtually every day in the summer - for a dozen years, and - although it hardly seems possible when you see how they drive in the sunshine - drivers do get stupider as soon as the rain starts falling here, too.
Please note my username before responding. You may have been trolled.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday July 29 2015, @03:56PM
The L.A. area has seen its all-time July rain records shattered when they got almost twice the old record in one 2-day storm.
But the new record is still less than one inch, and the hills are still grey-brown.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Wednesday July 29 2015, @09:25PM
We had like 1 1/2 days of rain in July here in San Diego, the weekend before last. So if you're talking "record breaking" for "last July," yeah, I guess you're right.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by purpleland on Wednesday July 29 2015, @04:12PM
While humans seem great at adapting to change in the macro long term scale we seem pretty awful at individual events. Look at how we make fun of bad drivers in rain or a little snow. Or how an entire city like Atlanta grinds to a halt with 3 inches of snow in 2014.
There's an interesting theory that what spurred a lot of our technological development and evolution in our primitive ancestors was learning to survive highly variable environments. E.g. what you have to do in the other seasons in order to survive winter. I believe there's good evidence to support this hypothesis as well. See http://humanorigins.si.edu/research/climate-research/effects/ [si.edu]
By that same argument, you could speculate that whatever climate changes our planet will undergo over the next century or two will have a profound effect on our technological advancement.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday July 29 2015, @05:21PM
While humans seem great at adapting to change in the macro long term scale we seem pretty awful at individual events .... Or how an entire city like Atlanta grinds to a halt with 3 inches of snow in 2014.
Get used to it and it doesn't matter. That three inches doesn't even rise to "storm" status where I grew up. Until unplowed snow gets higher than the bumper its just "eh business as usual". We got about ten snowfalls like that per winter, figure one per week average although it varies a bit.
That's the critical part about the El nino. The main human impact is first derivative of the weather, not the actual weather at all. The change in the weather. After a week of rain or heat or WTF its no longer a story, its just how it is. With the obvious exception of the 1% of the population who farm or own substantial solar panel arrays or whatever.
(Score: 2) by M. Baranczak on Wednesday July 29 2015, @08:35PM
After a week of rain or heat or WTF its no longer a story, its just how it is. With the obvious exception of the 1% of the population who farm
And the 99.9% of the population who eat food from those farms.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 29 2015, @09:57PM
Technically 100%, unless farmers somehow don't need to eat.