Two Weather Makers for 2014 and Beyond

As "The World Set Free," that great episode of Cosmos said, climate is the general outline of weather and it is pretty predictable.  The day to day weather within it is still pretty unpredictable more than a day or so in advance.  But there are a couple of phenomena that do determine weather, and both are making news.

One is our old friend El Nino.  As this pretty thorough ABC article explains, it occurs when several small things happen at the right times, and then it takes on a life of its own. In a way, that's a relevant model for the climate crisis itself.  When El Nino gets established it can last for two years or so.  Right now the relevant scientists are 80% sure El Nino is developing.  It's likely to be felt in fall and winter.  As this article notes, the early effects are already being felt in India, where the monsoon season is dryer, and food prices are going up.

The general effects of El Nino are increased global heating and more extreme weather.  It moves the rain around so that some areas get a lot more than usual, and others a lot less, causing flooding and drought respectively.  Since El Nino releases heat from the oceans, there's speculation that this time it will be even hotter because the oceans may be holding much of the carbon-caused heating that's happened in the past few years.  Record-breaking global temps for the next year or two at least would then be likely.

How big an El Nino this one might be is still an open question. One reason is that there isn't enough good information, although there could have been more.  As the ABC article notes, real systematic study of the phenomenon only began after the El Nino of the early 1980s.  A system of buoys with measuring instruments was created--but in the US financial crisis of 2008, support for maintaining them was dropped.  So we're getting less information than we could be.

The question of whether this will be a "normal" or "super" El Nino is closely watched here in California, because it may be the difference between some rain and a lot of rain, maybe even enough to break the drought.  In any case, El Nino tends to push weather to the extremes, both in extent and duration.

Another major phenomena determining weather is the jet stream.  Last winter and this spring and summer have been characterized by unusually extreme weather hanging around for a long time.  There was also the "polar vortex" bringing Arctic cold south into the U.S.  Now a series of studies suggest that unusual "waves" in the jet stream that sort of move cold and hot air around in unfamiliar patterns, can and did cause such extremes.  Moreover, a cause of these waves may be global heating.

What nobody knows is the combined effect of these two phenomena happening together.  But we may well find out very soon.

Update: Because of these and other effects of global heating and the climate crisis, the UN today said that the "normal" baselines for predicting weather are no longer normal, and must be updated if forecasts are to be anywhere near accurate.