From the Jet Propulsion Lab:
NASA/NOAA Study Finds El Niños are Growing Stronger
A relatively new type of El Niño, which has its warmest waters in the central-equatorial Pacific Ocean, rather than in the eastern-equatorial Pacific, is becoming more common and progressively stronger, according to a new study by NASA and NOAA. The research may improve our understanding of the relationship between El Niños and climate change, and has potentially significant implications for long-term weather forecasting.
Lead author Tong Lee of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., and Michael McPhaden of NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, Seattle, measured changes in El Niño intensity since 1982. They analyzed NOAA satellite observations of sea surface temperature, checked against and blended with directly-measured ocean temperature data. The strength of each El Niño was gauged by how much its sea surface temperatures deviated from the average. They found the intensity of El Niños in the central Pacific has nearly doubled, with the most intense event occurring in 2009-10.
The scientists say the stronger El Niños help explain a steady rise in central Pacific sea surface temperatures observed over the past few decades in previous studies-a trend attributed by some to the effects of global warming. While Lee and McPhaden observed a rise in sea surface temperatures during El Niño years, no significant temperature increases were seen in years when ocean conditions were neutral, or when El Niño’s cool water counterpart, La Niña, was present.
“Our study concludes the long-term warming trend seen in the central Pacific is primarily due to more intense El Niños, rather than a general rise of background temperatures,” said Lee.
“These results suggest climate change may already be affecting El Niño by shifting the center of action from the eastern to the central Pacific,” said McPhaden. “El Niño’s impact on global weather patterns is different if ocean warming occurs primarily in the central Pacific, instead of the eastern Pacific.
“If the trend we observe continues,” McPhaden added, “it could throw a monkey wrench into long-range weather forecasting, which is largely based on our understanding of El Niños from the latter half of the 20th century.”
El Niño, Spanish for “the little boy,” is the oceanic component of a climate pattern called the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, which appears in the tropical Pacific Ocean on average every three to five years. The most dominant year-to-year fluctuating pattern in Earth’s climate system, El Niños have a powerful impact on the ocean and atmosphere, as well as important socioeconomic consequences. They can influence global weather patterns and the occurrence and frequency of hurricanes, droughts and floods; and can even raise or lower global temperatures by as much as 0.2 degrees Celsius (0.4 degrees Fahrenheit).
During a “classic” El Niño episode, the normally strong easterly trade winds in the tropical eastern Pacific weaken. That weakening suppresses the normal upward movement of cold subsurface waters and allows warm surface water from the central Pacific to shift toward the Americas. In these situations, unusually warm surface water occupies much of the tropical Pacific, with the maximum ocean warming remaining in the eastern-equatorial Pacific.
Since the early 1990s, however, scientists have noted a new type of El Niño that has been occurring with greater frequency. Known variously as “central-Pacific El Niño,” “warm-pool El Niño,” “dateline El Niño” or “El Niño Modoki” (Japanese for “similar but different”), the maximum ocean warming from such El Niños is found in the central-equatorial, rather than eastern, Pacific. Such central Pacific El Niño events were observed in 1991-92, 1994-95, 2002-03, 2004-05 and 2009-10. A recent study found many climate models predict such events will become much more frequent under projected global warming scenarios.
Lee said further research is needed to evaluate the impacts of these increasingly intense El Niños and determine why these changes are occurring. “It is important to know if the increasing intensity and frequency of these central Pacific El Niños are due to natural variations in climate or to climate change caused by human-produced greenhouse gas emissions,” he said.
Results of the study were published recently in Geophysical Research Letters.
Sponsored IT training links:
Guaranteed 642-374 preparation with help of latest 1Y0-A05 practice questions and 350-018 dump written by certified experts
These scientists have been measuring El Nino events since 1982 and have noted a trend since then–a 28-year period. Likely there is no way to reconstruct El Nino changes before 1982. Since temps have been rising for most of that period anyhow, it is possible that the El Nino changes reflect (or helped produce) that warming, and that in future years, as temps fall, the observed trend will change back; perhaps another natural oscillation. A bit early to tell, yes?
I though the whole PDO thing was only partially understood, and only recently at that.
In any case, an El Niño does not ‘warm’ anything, it is merely bringing warm water up, where it can happily release its heat and cool the world down. A nice negative feedback, if anything, not something to worry about, surely?
This ‘report’ (aka speculation) makes it sound really scary! I guess the “further research” needed may be the main cause, however….
Did I read that right?
The emergence of this new and more powerful El Niño is based on about 30 years of data.
This is like having a temperature series that runs from 12:01 AM to 4:00 PM and claiming that you’ve uncovered a new and more powerful form of daylight that didn’t exist before noon.
“It is important to know if the increasing intensity and frequency of these central Pacific El Niños are due to natural variations in climate or to climate change caused by human-produced greenhouse gas emissions”
Would that, by any chance, be the punch-line of submissions for research funding by taxpayers? Just curious.
That should be 20 cms
This article mentiones sea level rise as something that happens in conjunction with El Nino’s. If you download the sealevel data from the Colorado University website, then you can see that for the 1998 El Nino there was a clear sealevel rise in the Pacific in 1997, starting around the 2nd quarter with a peak somewhere in September. The amount of sea level rise, about 20 mm, suggests therefore that a large amount of heat has been introduced into the pacific before this particular El Nino. The atmospheric temperature rise follows El Nino’s, and this can therefore not have been causing the El Nino as well. A remixing of warm and cooler water does not cause a volume increase according to some simple sums I have made. Therefore, there must have been a large infusion of energy in the Pacific ocean before the El Nino occured.
The amount of energy involved and the time in which it must have been introduced -considering that thermal expansion is more or less instantaneous with a temperature rise- makes it virtually impossible that this energy was introduced via the ocean surface. For me it is obvious therefore that the source of this energy must have been geothermal.
If you look from this perspective to the historic sea level rise the question arises whether not all or most of this is caused by geothermal energy. This of course puts a different light on the global climate change issue.
I am very interested in your opinion.
Evert Jesse
What a load of BS. I don’t trust anything from NASA and NOAA these days.
The 1998 was supposed to have been a super El Nino. GISS had its peak anomaly at 0.80 C. Now the 2009-2010 was worse (GISS: 0.84 C) and our temperatures still did not blow 1998’s away over a decade later? Wow. — John M Reynolds
I have been frequently told El Nino (capitalized) refers to “The Christ Child” because of the rains it caused along the South American coast near Christmas… or is this new explaination just a move toward political correctness?
And, does this report go in the same catagory as the other “Worse-Than-We-Thought” reports… for that mater, what is worse than we thought?
My friend, who has 4,000 acres of dryland farm says yields on his wheat, corn, milo, and sunflowers, are up significantly, and the prices are “worse than we thought”!!
“Lead author Tong Lee of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., and Michael McPhaden of NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, Seattle, measured changes in El Niño intensity since 1982.”
Since 1982? There are lots of weasel words in the rest of the article which suggests that’s not a long enough time to say whether or not we are seeing something new.
“If the trend we observe continues,” McPhaden added, “it could throw a monkey wrench into long-range weather forecasting, which is largely based on our understanding of El Niños from the latter half of the 20th century.” (bold is mine)
I’m going to set my snooze alarm for 8:30 am, 2182 and see if their observations are just natural variability or if they’ve really spotted a new trend. Who knows? They don’t and I certainly don’t so we’ll just have to wait and see.
Since the early 1990s, however, scientists have noted a new type of El Niño that has been occurring with greater frequency.
We have known about El Nino Modoki for how long? Greater frequency than when?
Isn’t it amazing how when something is discovered and studied for the first time that it is different than how it was before it was ever known to exist? Astounding!
So this is absolute? 100% Accurate? To a T?
Ya right!!!
They haven’t got the message yet.
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/categories/C19
Is it just me , or do Lee and McFaden contradict themselves ? At one point they say that Pacific temps rise due to these intense “new” el ninos yet remain neutral at other times . They then claim that climate change could be causing these el ninos in the first place . Considering that the el nino phenomenon is a relatively recent discovery , how can they know that these intense el ninos are anything out of the ordinary ?
Seems to me that “Modoki” is a new Japanese word for modified, like “Gorofu” is for golf.
No consonant-ended words is the rule.
I seem to have missed the mechanism of how more global CO2 heats only the central Pacific. Those human emitted molecules must be really clever.
Dave Springer says:
August 28, 2010 at 2:47 am
@Anthony
It’s hardly surprising that Anthohy stopped responding to you. After such prattish remarks such as this so have I and everyone else here, I guess.
Again, this El Niño thing has been driving me mad. I have seen nothing in 50 years of study that has defined clearly and precisely the origins of the Niña/o familly. There is nothing here, either, that has explained the origines. I am also aware that NO GCM as yet been able to forecast a Niño more than 6 myhs before it’s arrival. So this is report has to be a sampler for gaining more money. You know the sort of thing by now, “I’m an AGW scientist therefore you can give me money to prove it”.
hmmmmm, I wonder if there is any relationship to the fact that we’ve had a warm PDO? I wonder if this trend’ll continue the next 30 years or so with a cold PDO, or if something else occurs
When the study is pre-hung on a warming meathook, it is only warming events that are considered.
No time spent discussing what changes in longitude that La Ninas are occurring.
Did the Ninas and Ninos swap places, or do they occur in the same longitudes?
30 years ago, I suppose it would have been considered mainstream to hang the study on a freezer meathook, rather than a smokehouse meathook.
I really do expect legitimate scientific inquiry to examine both sides of the coin.
“it could throw a monkey wrench into long-range weather forecasting”
—————–
Ahhhhhh…..really
Shocker here, massively complex non-linear systems are hard to predict….this is a huge break through. Give them more money.
Facetious rant over.
Vukcevic
Maybe you are on to something. All of your graphs that you present have always made some sense out of a lot of unknown weather and climate events. Keep up the good work.
A measured El Nino intensity of 28 years is twice as bad as the Mauna Loa CO2 measurement going on for the last 52 years. In geological terms both these measurement sets are anecdotal at best and useless at worse.
What scientist would avoid using millenial time frames of core drilled sediment data and prefer meaningless decade long data? What agenda is at hand? It ain’t the truth!
Who Discovered the El Niño-Southern Oscillation?
Gregory T. Cushman, Southwestern University, Georgetown, TX
Two giants of 20th-century meteorology, Gilbert Walker and Jacob Bjerknes, are usually given credit for discovering the El Niño-Southern Oscillation phenomenon. During the early 1920s, Walker empirically identified a periodic variation in atmospheric pressure over the Indo-Pacific which he christened the “Southern Oscillation.” During the 1960s, Bjerknes posited a physical mechanism to explain the atmospheric features of this phenomenon over the equatorial Pacific which he christened the “Walker Circulation.” Both men deserve recognition since they opened the way for our present understanding of the global climate system.
There is not that much data on this until reports like this just coming out in recent years.
If the researchers base it on a theory of man-made global warming, as stated in earlier comments, they may have interpreted it backwards.
If, over the past century, due to having the hottest sunspot cycles on record for the last 300 years, what we may be seeing is a global warming event.
Other events are:
> double the number of named storms
> One inch increase in US precipitation
> Continued melting of glaciers between given northern and southern latitudes and lower elevations
> Increased Accumulated Cylone Energy, a measurement of hurricanes and tropical storms
> A significant increase in Earth temperatures
> A slight shift north and south of the Equator of the Earth’s Topography
That should be changing now in the opposite direction of each point made as global cooling takes over.
Sincerely,
Paul