From the DOE/PACIFIC NORTHWEST NATIONAL LABORATORY
El Nino and global warming work together to bring more extreme weather
RICHLAND, Wash. – In the future, the Pacific Ocean’s temperature cycles could disrupt more than just December fishing. A study published in Nature Communications suggests that the weather patterns known as El Nino and La Nina could lead to at least a doubling of extreme droughts and floods in California later this century.
The study shows more frequent extreme events are likely to occur. Other research shows the Golden State’s average precipitation increasing gradually, but not enough to account for the occurrence of extreme events. A better understanding of what gives rise to El Nino and La Nina cycles — together known as El Nino-Southern Oscillation — might help California predict and prepare for more frequent droughts and floods in the coming century.
“Wet and dry years in California are linked to El Nino and La Nina. That relationship is getting stronger,” said atmospheric scientist Jin-Ho Yoon of the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. “Our study shows that ENSO will be exhibiting increasing control over California weather.”
Rain’s range
California is experiencing one of the most severe droughts in its history, but it’s not clear if a warmer world will make droughts worse, more frequent or perhaps even improve the situation. After all, warmer air can hold more water, and some research suggests global warming could increase California’s average rain and snowfall.
However, research also suggests future rain will come down more as light drizzles and heavy deluges and less as moderate rainfall. Yoon and colleagues from PNNL and Utah State University in Logan, Utah, wondered if droughts might follow a similar pattern.
To find out, the researchers looked at what happens to California in global climate models. They simulated two periods of time: 1920 to 2005 using historical measurements; and 2006 to 2080 using conditions in which very few efforts are made to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. They chose this future scenario to examine the most extreme case.
To understand how well the simulations worked, they used two tactics to show reproducibility: In one tactic, they used a compilation of 38 different models. In the other, they re-ran a single model 30 times. The more similar the results, the more sure the researchers were of the finding.
Weather pendulum
The models showed that in the future, assuming emissions continue to increase, California seasons will exhibit more excessively wet and excessively dry events. These results suggest that the frequency of droughts could double and floods could triple between the early 20th century and late 21st century.
“By 2100, we see more — and more extreme — events. Flooding and droughts will be more severe than they are currently,” said Yoon.
But why? Yoon suspected the El Nino-Southern Oscillation. Every two to seven years, El Nino comes in and warms up the tropical Pacific Ocean a few degrees, increasing winter rain and snowpack in California. On a similar schedule, La Nina cools things off. Both disrupt regular weather in many regions around the globe.
To explore El Nino’s connection to California precipitation, Yoon and colleagues ran a climate model with and without El Nino. In both simulations, they ramped up the concentration of carbon dioxide by 1 percent every year for 150 years. In just one of the runs, they removed El Nino’s cyclical contribution by programming the sea surface temperatures to reflect only steady warming.
Without El Nino and La Nina, the frequency of extreme precipitation in California stayed constant for the simulation’s century and a half. With ENSO, simulated California experienced wide swings in rainfall by the end of the period.
The results suggest that even though researchers expect rain and snowfall to increase as the climate warms, the manner in which the water hits California could be highly variable.
The El Nino-Southern Oscillation is still a bit of a mystery, said Yoon. Scientists only know El Nino and La Nina years, named for the Spanish terms for boy and girl, are coming by sea surface temperatures and other weather hints. Studies that investigate what controls the unruly children could help scientists predict unruly weather in the future.
###
This work was supported by the Department of Energy Office of Science.
Reference: Jin-Ho Yoon, S.-Y. Simon Wang, Robert R. Gillies, Ben Kravitz, Lawrence Hipps, and Philip J. Rasch. Increasing water cycle extremes in California and relation to ENSO cycle under global warming, Nature Communications, Oct. 21, 2015, DOI: 10.1038/ncomms9657.
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What about 2016?
These will of course be sand floods, in keeping with the drought conditions.
g
By Oct 22 2015 we will have flying cars and hoverboards.
Well actually:
http://www.cbc.ca/m/news/canada/montreal/montrealer-sets-world-record-for-farthest-flight-by-hoverboard-1.3085052
As for flying cars, they have been around for a very long time, just not the Jetson mobiles some folks think of.
Have a good day.
We will be able to afford them too !
I’m waiting.
Wayne, I’m more inclined towards the floating cars and surfboards.
http://dailydimmick.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/car-boat-1.jpg
Farsightedness or hypermetropia or hyperopia is a defect of vision in which closer objects appear to be blurred.
Whadya mean ” appear ” to be blurred pardner ??
They ARE blurred; as in out of focus.
So what the hey is presbyopia ??
g
A normal eye can adapt its lens profile to form sharp retinal images of objects at infinity, and also objects at a ‘near point’ typically 250 to 300 mm. And by inference, all points in between, but of course, not all at the same time.
So eye optical defects can cause either of those two extreme focusing situations, to either focus too close to the eye, or too far from the eye (never focus at all in the case of the infinity focus.).
Unaided, my eyes can’t form a focused image anywhere from zero to infinity. Some Asians, can’t sharply focus on anything beyond some shorter distance than infinity.
That leads to the DWA syndrome, because of the thick negative lenses they wear. It’s not their fault; they are born with it.
g
g
Great comment, Vukcevic. Or how about next week or the week after?
They can’t be bothered with 2016 because the “proof of their forecast” would be too soon upon them. But what I can’t figure out – considering the headline on this – HOW do you have more severe drought AND flooding in the same year? Is AGW going to divide CA into two parts, flooding only one half and giving no water at all to the other?
tom
Look at the first few paras: –
could … suggests … could
likely … might
“but it’s not clear if a warmer world will make droughts worse, more frequent or perhaps even improve the situation” [aka – we don’t have the faintest idea, but send grant money n o w !] … suggests … could
suggests … wondered
I mean – real hard, data backed double blind science.
[Mods – that is /SARC].
Auto, still toiling for a living.
Couldn’t the money spent by this research been spent better on almost any other science? I am sick of seeing these ridiculous studies that seem to be a major part of our science spending. It’s making me think scientists are idiots. Anybody can see how transparently stupid this is. Nobody would spend a dime on such a ridiculous study to look at what models say in 100 years which aren’t right now. I can’t believe these things are funded.
This global warming has given the press the ability to create stories that are pure speculation and apparently some people read them. I wonder if you asked 100 people if they think this article has any merit? I think many people aren’t smart enough to figure out exactly what is wrong with the article but they know that such articles are not worth spending 2 seconds thinking about. Others like myself are constantly astounded that the press has such an easy time putting out crap built on crap built on crap. Climate models built on assumptions built on incomplete information, on top of fudged data and inaccurate hand selected proxies of 1 tree someplace in Siberia. From all that you can conclude the history of the earths temperature and future history. They can say virtually anything because nobody seems to question the premise that the models are fallacious. So, every article is : The models say this will happen (which is purely impossible for them to be right except by sheer luck.) and we can deduce that since technology won’t change and people won’t respond till the danger is so great we will all die or whatever consequence they project they assume this will be hugely bad.
I guess the best example is the food prediction. The IPCC says in 2080 food production will decline. One reason is that people will not adjust to the new open growing regions and longer growing season fast enough so food production on existing land will decline and we will starve. This is NOT a climate issue. The basis of the conclusion people will die is based on the erroneous assumption people won’t adjust growing regions fast enough. In any case that is not a global warming problem it is a political or other problem. One that almost certainly won’t actually turn out to be true. It also assumes technology between now and 2080 for growing plants won’t change when every year we are learning more and getting better at productivity of plants. All these “consequence” have the same set of problems.
1) THe problem is projected based on fallacious models which means in fact the problem is not actually known if it will happen.
2) The impact of the problem is overstated because people will know about these problems far in advance and adjust
3) The technology is changing so rapidly that it is impossible to state if the problem will cost 2Cents to fix or a billion dollars or even benefit us if it is a problem.
For now while AGW still has not completely lost credibility the press can lean on the models and others can keep using them as a basis of incredible wild fancy. They can use them to generate money for fun interesting fantasy ideas. I sincerely look forward to the day when everyone admits the models were huge failures. It may take until 2099 for them to finally admit that in the last year before 2100 the temperature probably won’t climb two degrees in one year and the models were wrong. That means we have to wait another 84 years.
My Theory:
It will rain more.
It will rain less.
It will be hotter.
It will be colder.
It is irrefutable.
Hey, you forgot to ask for funding.
Exactly.
It’s more output from the Ouija board.
“To find out, the researchers looked at what happens to California in global climate models.” Never mind that climate models are inaccurate predictors of future climate. Count the “could” instances, what a load…
What sticks in my crawl is phrases like “Our study shows that…”
These “studies”, if it is even truthful to call them that, do not “show” anything.
They merely make very expensive speculations.
Yes – and the rest of us speculate for free – all the while being more accurate 😉
My studies show that drinking more beer in the evening makes one thirstier in the morning.
Then again, that’s based on actual observation, not prediction.
[1] – Regional climate model forcasts as stated in 2014 “Time series models perform strongly, and structural deficiencies in the AOGCM forecasts are identified using encompassing tests. Regional forecasts from various GCMs had even more deficiencies.
Validation and forecasting accuracy in models of climate change. Int J Forecast (PDF Download Available). Available from: http://www.researchgate.net/publication/227417764_Validation_and_forecasting_accuracy_in_models_of_climate_change._Int_J_Forecast [accessed Oct 22, 2015].
[2} – But Obama made a deal with China to limit CO2 growth. Are they saying that was a “Few Effort”?
[3] – All simulation. Who here lives in SimCity World?
{4} – Best get started on some technology to store some of the flood waters to use during the drought years. Maybe we can call it a Dam.
Yes, I didn’t think it would be long before the words ‘global climate models’ appeared. And there endeth the interest.
yes it is brilliant!!
There will be weather and it will all be worse than we thought!
“could”,Should Won’t”
Weasel words.
“Suggest” and “could ” , here we go.
So how did the model runs go for the 20th c. part of that experiment? Did they produce a reasonable replication of El Nino patterns.
No, of course they didn’t, since we have no idea what causes it. All the models do is insert some noise and pretend that it is “simulating” ENSO.
come back when you have a model that works for the last 100y ( especially the earlier half of 20th c. At such a time I may be interested in what your model runs do for the next few years.
If they get that right, you’ll probably get a Nobel prize. ( This time for a science subject, rather than politically correct ideas ).
There’s white noise, brown noise, pink noise – all kinds of noise colors. Among many problems, one problem with these weather models is that the designers of the models do not have appropriate knowledge of the types of statistical distributions required for modeling chaotic phenomena like the weather.
It wouldn’t surprise me if they use some simple expression involving a random uniform distribution. Does anyone know this “noisy” part of their modeling code?
I think the worst is green noise!
+100 auralay
Is brown nose [sic] the most common?
So the year 2100 will be like that NON man made 240 year long drought that started in the year 850?
Right, some “oscillation”. ie it seems totally random variation which we can not predict until it’s already started to develop but we’ll call it an “oscillation” and then we have already planted the expectation that it’s some kind of climate pendulum and it’s net effect is zero.
Thus without the need for any scientific messing around we can tidily dismiss it as cause of long term warming, which as we already decided before we started is due to AGW.
See how powerful semantics are. No need for messy peer (pal) review and tedious papers. Just call it an “oscillation” and it simply disappears in a puff of odourless, invisible, non toxic gas.
SEE, then all we need is some intern to write press release and introduce a paragraph entitled: “Weather pendulum” and even skeptical sites will reproduce it for us, helping with the propaganda effort of inserting this phenomenon as net zero effect on climate.
Neat , huh?
Oh my.
Good thing there’s another call for a DOJ RICO .
Bernie Sanders wants Exxon investigated.
Eeeek!
I weep. Could have used the money to buy ice cream. Not wasted that way.
Who’s going to confirm the accuracy of this prediction? Will anyone care? Will anyone remember? This is nothing more than a 4-year old saying, “Look at me! Look at me!”
However, research also suggests future rain will come down more as light drizzles and heavy deluges and less as moderate rainfall.
Do these fools even listen to themselves? They cannot predict if it will rain at all eight days from now but can not only predict but characterize the kind of rainfall eight decades hence.
They amy as well just sung; Oh Susanna.
More profit sees of the future.
Now I seem to remember some past studies pointing to some very long duration droughts in California, including one during the Spanish era.
This is science?
Or just good enough for government?
Wouldn’t more droughts and more floods cancel each other out?
Heh.
I keep expecting to see a study showing that days and nights cancel each other out but that they’ve spotted a very near annual trend in the data regarding variations in each and need more money to study it and see what it portends for the future…
Actually, this will be their reasoning if we don’t end up having more floods and droughts…they’ll just have happened at the same time, and cancelled each other out. They’ll have happened just as predicted…we just won’t be able to see it, because natural variation just accidentally lined things up. Perfectly. For a century.
Only if you build the infrastructure to capture the water and distribute it when its there.
Who’s stole California’s rain ????
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCLdjS4JfJw
“The El Nino-Southern Oscillation is still a bit of a mystery, said Yoon.”
Yet it is the crux of this “research”?
What a load of hogwash. If they are so clever as to being able to predict the climate in 2100, why aren’t they selling their services for lotto numbers or smashing the derivatives market instead of plundering taxpayers pockets.
could… suggests… could… likely…not clear… perhaps… suggests… wondered…MODELS… results suggest… reflect… mystery… unruly children…
and the money grub– “studies could help scientists predict…”
———————
These “studies” all sound alike, with the same weasel- word press releases.
Why doesn’t anybody believe them? The hurricane predictions were, well let’s say the insurance companies made out. And no more snow, but then global warming was shown to cause more snow. And who knows what will happen in 2200? And the Arctic is ice free, right, in 2013? And any day now the Antarctic ice sheets will melt and flood the world. What will happen in California? Rain?! This has never happened before. I wonder if there will be flooding and mud slides. Oh, the horrors of global warming. I’m sure government was never warned that there would be flooding. That’s why they haven’t prepared for it. Let’s build in flood prone areas, areas where it’s known to be a fire hazard, in areas where it’s 1 foot above sea level, on hills that are unstable when it rains, build in areas with no water resources, and the call it climate change when something happens.
(Sarc)
Thank goodness you ended with (sarc). I was becoming worried.
Climate predictions for 85 years from now are meaningless and unscientific Their only possible purpose are for political propaganda.
They re-ran the same model 30 times, and the more consistent the results were the more sure they were correct?
That works when you’re collecting actual data. When you’re running a computer model, it’s GIGO. Consistent garbage is still garbage.
Isn’t that the definition of insanity: Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results?
It’s precise, but that doesn’t prove that it is accurate.
A team of monkeys could do what they did, and come up with the same nonsense. Could have saved a boatload of cash, too.
A team of monkeys would actually produce better results as such that they would be unbiased. In order to get so many predictions wrong is beyond statistical probability or random chance. CAGW has an amazing ability to forget. Who is going to hold them accountable when their predictions fail? They are arguing for drastic changes in society based upon these predictions. Including changes in the way a democracy works, up to and including charging everybody on here that has critiqued CAGW with criminal charges.
The best any skeptic could have hoped for in 2004 was the hurricane season remained the same or somewhat lower. The best was that it somehow didn’t stop snowing or ships were not sailing the Arctic in January. Now they are pushing the time line out so far as to the odds of anything happening are 50/50. It could or it could not. Anything can happen in a wide enough circle of probabilities. I could hit the lotto by 2100, it could happen, but I’m not quitting my day job.
“To understand how well the simulations worked, they used two tactics to show reproducibility: In one tactic, they used a compilation of 38 different models. In the other, they re-ran a single model 30 times. The more similar the results, the more sure the researchers were of the finding.”
If these nitwits were running a computer program 30 times to produce a trial balance for their monthly accounts, I would trust their results from just 1 run. Similarly, if they ran a program to see if the bridge they have designed is safe in all conditions 30 times, I would trust their results. But when it comes to the predictions of a climate model, I would not trust the results from a million runs.
I never got to most of those “could.. would.. should…” weasel words. I stopped in the 7th paragraph, at the 2nd and 3rd uses of that ultimate weasel word “Model”.
“In one tactic, they used a compilation of 38 different models. In the other, they re-ran a single model 30 times. The more similar the results, the more sure the researchers were of the finding.” it says. So one model verifies the other. Why wait a century for data?
Right on Rich. Give them hell.
As we have seen in Climate research it is the models are facts and the data is theory. If the data shows them wrong it only means the data is wrong. Science on its head.
However, research also suggests future rain will come down more as light drizzles and heavy deluges and less as moderate rainfall……”
Is it just me, or are these “studies” getting funnier as the get more numerous? I think I’m getting a side ache.
Very few people nowadays understand what the word “average” really means.
Well what do you expect. NO physical system, responds to “average” including all of our senses.
So nobody ever experienced average, so how would they know anything about it.
Average is ALWAYS computed after the fact, so it is far too late to experience it, in real time. It’s like Monday morning quarterbacking. Easy to do; if you know how to do 4-H club arithmetic, but way to late to influence the outcome of the game.
g
That sentence is exactly where I had to stop reading.
All drizzle and deluges!
I am continually amazed that they keep figuring out news ways to continue to be amazingly stupid.
I’ve definitely thought that. I usually chuckle when I see these stupid articles. Then I think of the real science that could have been done with that money if this bozo hadn’t been paid to study this maybe some physicist or medical research could have been done that actually was science.