Geez – a ‘Super’ El Niño???
It’s a bad enough that seasoned meteorologists have to struggle each year even
to predict the emergence an El Niño with great certainity. But here are crackpots actually prepared to wager bets
on its intensity and worse still, even more cranks in the world including the gullible
sections of the media willing to swallow their hype without question!!
Historically, the odds are
stacked heavily against a ‘Super’ El Niño developing this year. The last two events
were in 1997/1998, and 1982. Both these events occurred during the positive or warm
phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO). During the cool or negative phase
of the PDO (which we are currently in), overall the El Niño events are less
frequent and of lower magnitude.
The
strongest El Niño in a previous cool phase of the PDO was in 1972/1973, at the
fag stage of the last cool PDO cycle. Of these three, the 1997/98 event is widely
considered having the greatest intensity on global temperatures with the
1972/73 the least impact. The real intensity of
the 1982 event on global temperatures has not been fully established being offset by some measure by the global
cooling triggered from El Chichon volcanic eruption.
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