A firefighter pauses at the $2013 Rim Fire in Yosemite National Park, August-September 2013 (Calfire photo on facebook). President Obama released the federal budget for 2015 last week. Overall, it involves the lowest deficit ($514 billion) of his five-year tenure in office and restores some funding cut in last year’s sequester. Parts of the new
The World Meteorological Association (WMO) announced on Monday that the El Niño and La Niña climate patterns are unlikely to show themselves during the first half of 2013. Currently, neutral conditions continue in the tropical Pacific, and model forecasts and expert opinions currently predict the chance of El Niño and La Niña developing during the first half
In late 2010 residents of Australia would be able to tell you very clearly the impact a strong La Nina can have on the coast: rain. Lots and lots of rain! However, the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the University of Colorado Boulder will be able to tell you that the same La Nina had
The factors behind the devastating Queensland floods of December 2010 are threefold, according to a new study that found that not only did Cyclone Tasha and La Niña contribute to the inundation, but so did record-high sea-surface temperatures off northern Australia. Original estimates suggested that La Niña and the cyclone were enough to cause
A new study has revealed the effect that El Niño and La Niña are likely to have on the New Zealand climate in the coming decades with a continuation in the global climate change. “As the world continues to warm New Zealand is likely to experience the impacts of El Niño and La Niño events
If you follow climate science, you probably are well aware of the fact that even after you turn of the fossil fuel spicket, it takes awhile for the effects of the greenhouse gases to go away. All the more reason to act now, before things get completely out of control. Now, if you aren’t very aware of this issue above, this full post below by Meteorologist Dr. Jeff Masters of WunderBlog should bring the point home:
by Rob Painting of Skeptical Science As a recent SkS post by Dana Nuccitelli has pointed out global warming hasn’t stopped, despite a recent lull in global surface temperatures. The oceans, which are the main heat sink for global warming, have scarcely skipped a beat in soaking up heat. The hiatus in global surface temperatures appears to
On their science blog NASA has asked ‘What Happened To All The Snow?’ and it’s a good question, considering that the U.S. is currently experiencing a surprising lack of snow that, come spring time, may have serious consequences for communities reliant upon the snow runoff. “The Mammoth Mountain ski resort in the Sierras of California
La Niña conditions have re-emerged in the tropical Pacific Ocean since August 2011 but are weaker than the previous episode. However, this La Niña episode is expected to strengthen slightly over the coming year, and is likely to persist through to the end of this year and into early 2012, possibly reverting to a neutral
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s latest analysis of global temperatures, October 2011 was the 8th warmest October ever recorded since 1880. NOAA’s National Climatic Data Centre provide a series of reports as part of their services to the government, business and community leaders, which have been helping everybody keep a track of
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has released its yearly Winter Outlook which tells of a second winter in a row which will be affected by La Niña which will bring continued drier and warmer than average weather in the Southern Plains and colder and wetter conditions in the Pacific Northwest.
The tropical tourist paradise of Thailand is currently suffering through enormously costly floods, resulting from a “weak” La Niña monsoon season. Following September’s extremely heavy rains — five feet of rain for the month — the monsoon season continues virtually unabated into this month, where it also coincided, last weekend, with the highest tides of the month. It is estimated that 10 % of the nation’s rice crop has been destroyed, so far, costing nearly 4 billion USD, and growing. This will have certain impact on global food prices (driving them higher) and on food security for tens of millions of people.
August was a month of extremes across the whole of our planet, with tornadoes, droughts and La Niña conditions reemerging despite having only disappeared a few months earlier. For a picture of much of what happened across the planet this past August, browse the image below provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
As climate experts had already predicted, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has announced that La Niña – which was the cause behind so much of the extreme weather towards the end of 2010 and into 2011 – has re-emerged in the Pacific Ocean and is expected to gradually strengthen and continue into the Northern Hemisphere’s winter.
Despite recent scientific speculation to the contrary, clouds do not cause climate change, says Texas A&M atmospheric sciences professor Andrew Dessler. Rather, they act almost singularly as a feedback mechanism.
Many of the leading climate services are predicting that La Niña return this winter, after a brief hiatus.
Planet Earth suffered its seventh warmest July since record keeping began back in 1880, and July’s Arctic sea ice extent was the smallest on record since records began in 1979.
East Africa suffers regularly at the hands of faraway climatic events such as the warm El Niño or the cool La Niña phases of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO). Now, scientists know that the waxing and waning of floods and droughts in the region at the hands of ENSO has been a regular feature dating back 20,000 years.
Want an explanation for the record snowfalls, killer tornadoes and devastating floods running wild across America? NASA climatologist Bill Patzert believes that “La Nada” is the problem.
Dr. Jeff Masters, a world-leading meteorologist, just finished a compilation of what he considered 2010’s top 20 extreme weather events. All in all, he considers 2010 to be the most extreme year for weather since records began and, unfortunately, with a good understanding of climate change, he hints at what we could be in for if we don’t turn things around quickly.
I had a post on some of Dr. Jeff Masters’ recent comments on the ridiculous extreme weather we’ve been seeing this year just about one week ago, but he just published a new analysis on these issues that I thought was worth covering as well.
The key, general points are as follows…
A study released today by the United States Geological Survey notes that the decline in snowpack in the Rocky Mountains since the 1980s is unusual compared to the historical evidence gathered from the previous centuries.
Climate extremes similar to what was seen in 2010’s Pakistani flooding and 2011’s Australian flooding are likely to continue as the world gets warmer, say scientists behind a new report.
The World Meteorological Organisation, the weather agency of the United Nations, has announced that the current La Niña episode looks to be coming to an end.
An international team of climate scientists from the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa have found that tree ring data, specifically from the US Southwest, agree well with the 150-year instrumental sea surface temperature records in the tropical Pacific that we already have of El Niño events.
Weather Services International (WSI) have released revised predictions for the number and type of storms for the 2011 storm season emanating from the Atlantic Ocean.
WSI predicts 15 named storms, 8 hurricanes and 4 intense hurricanes rated at category 3 or greater.
Researchers led by members of the University of Pittsburgh have extracted a sediment core from the lakebed of Castor Lake in north central Washington which provides a six thousand year climate record of the region. What they have found is that the traditionally rain-soaked region of the American Pacific Northwest is not going to be
There was a sudden change from an El Niño phase to La Niña in July 2010 which led many forecasters to believe that there would be warm temperatures throughout the Southeast of America. However, the region has been experiencing an extremely cold winter, as a result of the interruption of the North Atlantic Oscillation. “There
It won’t come as a big surprise, but La Niña – or “the girl” in Spanish – is to blame for recent extreme weather events that have taken place in Africa and Australia. Scientists at the International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI), part of Columbia University’s Earth Institute, expect “moderate-to-strong” La Niña conditions
A report from the UN’s weather agency, the World Meteorological Organization, has reported that the current La Nina event will last through the first quarter of 2011, and possibly into the second quarter. However, the report noted that “the strength of the event is likely to decrease during the course of the coming 4 months.”
This detailed astronaut photograph illustrates flooding in suburbs of the Brisbane, Australia metropolitan region. The Brisbane area experienced catastrophic flooding following unusually heavy rainfall on January 10, 2011. With surficial soils already saturated from previous rainfall events, eastward-draining surface flow caused the Brisbane River to flood—inundating an estimated 20,000 homes in suburbs of the capital
My home is Australia, and I woke up this morning to hear that 8 people were dead and another 72 currently missing, with the death toll expected to rise, as floodwaters sweep through the north of our country. “There’s no doubt that we are now in a very different sort of disaster,” said Australian prime
The American National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has released their annual Winter Outlook, stating that a strong La Niña will strengthen and stay throughout the northern winter, playing the role of dominant climate factor. “La Niña is in place and will strengthen and persist through the winter months, giving us a better understanding of
