looks like a multiple year La Nina

Meteorological researchers and scientists around the world are now seized of the possibility of the ‘peaking' La Nina mutating into a multiple-year event.

The ‘super drencher' that evolved over the east-central Pacific during the last year and unleashed its fury over disparate continents may now be on the mend, according to top researchers.

AT ITS PEAK

But any ‘dramatic weakening' is ruled out, in any case, they aver. Dr Jing-Jia Luo, a leading Tokyo-based researcher informed Business Line that strong La Nina has reached its peak intensity and climb down intensity over the following months.

A Senior Scientist at the Climate Variation Predictability and Applicability Research Programme at the Research Institute for Global Change (RIGC), an affiliate of the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (Jamstec), he, however, maintained that the Pacific event would still be ‘long-lasting' and persist until early 2012.

This is what makes it a multiple-year event, agrees Prof Bin Wang, Professor of Meteorology, Department of Meteorology and International Pacific Research Centre at the School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology, University of Hawaii.

LIKELY CHANCE

“This looks like a multiple year La Nina. This seems very likely. Several previous strong La Nina events have tended to last longer than a year,” Prof Wang says.

Dr William Patzert, an oceanographer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of the US National Aeronautical and Space Administration, too, has taken exception to the La Nina event.

“In contrast with the more spectacular but shorter duration El Nino and La Niña events, this multiple-year trend may be part of a decade-long pattern known as the Pacific decadal oscillation,” Dr Patzert said. Closer home, India Meteorological Department (IMD) expected that there is a 50 per cent possibility of La Nina persisting around mid-year this year.

In its latest assessment, the Japanese RIGC said that associated with this strong La Nina event, global mean surface air temperature has decreased in last month and severe cold stormy weather unfolded in northern Eurasia and parts of North America. Surface air temperature in Eurasia, northern North America, Australia, Brazil, and Africa would continue to be below normal in following months.

More precipitation and flood events would occur in Australia, South Africa and Brazil during the first few months of 2011.

East China and Japan would have a hot summer in 2011 in association with the extended La Nina condition.