Like The Recent Rain? Thank El Nino

[Nbadan]

NEW YORK (Reuters)- El Nino, an extreme warming of equatorial waters in the Pacific Ocean that wreaks havoc with world weather conditions, has formed and will last into 2007, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said on Wednesday.

The El Nino has already helped make the Atlantic hurricane season milder than expected, said a forecaster for the NOAA.

"The weak El Nino is helping to explain why the hurricane season is less than we expected. El Ninos tend to suppress hurricane activity in the Atlantic," said Gerry Bell, a hurricane forecaster for NOAA.

The NOAA's Climate Prediction Center (CPC) said the El Nino probably will spur warmer-than-average temperatures this winter over western and central Canada and the western and northern United States.

It said El Nino also will cause wetter-than-average conditions in the U.S. Gulf Coast and Florida, and spark dry conditions in the Ohio valley, the Pacific Northwest and most U.S. islands in the tropical Pacific.

Reuters (http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=2006-09-13T160639Z_01_N13416906_RTRUKOC_0_US-WEATHER-NINO.xml&archived=False)

By this winter everything will be green in SA again and this 2 year drought will be largely a memory, but strangely, or not, there will still be water restrictions. Eh, that's government for ya!

[MannyIsGod]

:lol

You're so off base its not even funny. The El Nino is just kicking in, and it had nothing to do with the recent rains. On average, winters are wetter, but that doesn't mean the drought is over. Not by a long shot.

You're counting chickens before the eggs are even laid.

[scott]

Thank our fearless yet God-fearing leader, George W. Bush.

[RuffnReadyOzStyle]

Bloody El Nino. For you it means rain, for Oz it means drought. There is usually a wet La Nina between El Ninos, but Australia has been in drought for nearly 7 years now, and we're going into another El Nino! Poor farmers.

As for water restrictions, the experience here shows that people quickly get used to them and that, given the growing urban poputions, and dams at 30-50% capacity, they are probably around for good. Queensland has just brought in a rebate scheme for water tanks and grey water recycling schemes. It should be a requirment that all new houses incorporate water tanks and water recycling. It may add $5000 to the price of a new house, but it gives you surety over your water supply and the community more flexibility in what it does with river, dam and ground water.

[Nbadan]

Like the relationship between rain in SA and El Nino, our world ecology is a delicate balancing act that doesn't take big numbers to tip one way or the other. One of the reasons for this is the 'feedback effect' that acts like a expotential effect to even little changes...

The heat is on: how global warming could suddenly tip over and ignite calamity
by Fiona Harvey
Financial Times
September 20, 2006


Scientists at Nasa, instead of staring into the skies, have been using satellites to look down at the world and track how it is changing. Within a year, the US space agency disclosed this week, an area of sea ice "the size of Texas" had been lost from the Arctic.

Data pieced together by Nasa showed that Arctic perennial sea ice, which normally survives the summer melting season, abruptly shrank by 14 per cent between
2004 and 2005. The report found: "Perennial ice can be 10 or more feet thick. It was replaced by new, seasonal ice only one to seven feet thick that is more vulnerable to summer melt."

<snip>

But will that be soon enough? A growing body of scientific opinion suggests the world may be about to experience not a gradual rise in temperatures over several decades but a wild careering into climate chaos.


That is because some of the changes triggered by warming temperatures create a "feedback" effect of their own. These feedbacks can cause the warming trend to accelerate further or bring serious disruption to regions of the world (see box).

ZMag (http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=56&ItemID=11008)

So even though El Nino may just be starting, it has clearly moved the precipatation line back to South Texas. Just like that.