Me: Cruising the interwebs when suddenly . . .
Hmm, sounds interesting. Last time I checked, the current El Nino was anemic threatening to become average. Let's read more!
Last year at this time, I was harping about the "monster" El Niño that seemed to be brewing in the tropical Pacific Ocean. It didn’t pan out. But from the looks of the latest data, I was just one year too early.
OK, for any budding journalists out there, "Despite the appearance of failure, it turns out that I was right all along" is not a great theme for an article.
Ahem.
 |
| Eric Holthaus reflects (dramatic reenactment) |
Hmm, sounds interesting. Last time I checked, the current El Nino was anemic threatening to become average. Let's read more!
Ahem.
infoya sangat menarik...
ReplyDeletemantap...
so how does it look now? I'm seeing "monster" and "El Nino Emergency" from the usual scribblers
ReplyDeleteNow a medium to strong El Nino appears likely, based on modelling data.
DeleteBear in mind that as with La Nina, El Nino is a weather pattern. It doesn't warm the earth; it just moves heat around, specifically from the Pacific to the atmosphere.
The real emergency is anthropogenic climate change and, in particular, CO2 emissions. Nino is fun to watch and a good predictor of when (largely meaningless) temperature records are going to get smashed, but it's a sideshow. Global warming is the main event.
Actually, an El Nino event increases the surface temperature of the earth, so the people over-focused on the instantaneous temperature would say it does cause a temporary warming. On the other hand, warming the surface increases the outbound infrared, thereby reducing the radiative imbalance, and so essentially reducing the heat content relative to a non-El Nino scenario.
ReplyDelete"It just moves heat around" is not strictly right. In a stable climate El Nino warms the surface and releases heat from the ocean, while a La Nina cools the surface and absorbs heat into the ocean.
ReplyDelete"It just moves heat around" is not strictly right. In a stable climate El Nino warms the surface and releases heat from the ocean, while a La Nina cools the surface and absorbs heat into the ocean.
Respectfully, that is just what I said. "it just moves heat around, specifically from the Pacific to the atmosphere." The total heat energy is (mostly) conserved, except (as you point out) that warmer surface temperatures increase heat lost to space.