You Thought The Weather's Gone Crazy? Now It's gone MAD!

[Hervé]

Winds Interrupted — El Nino is Tearing a Hole Through the Trades

Trade winds. The east-to-west flow of airs across more than ten thousand miles of Pacific waters. Starting just off the coast of Ecuador, these winds typically blow in the range of 15 to 25 miles-per-hour uninterrupted across the vast Pacific before terminating in the South China Sea. The winds are a normal condition in the Equatorial Pacific. So constant that sailors relied on them as a kind of ocean conveyor during the days when sailing ships still ruled the waves. Year in, year out, the trade winds blow. Usually only subject to minor insults and brief interruptions from the massive and powerful weather phenomena that is El Nino.

But, starting yesterday, something rather odd began to happen. A six thousand mile stretch of the trades simply went dead.

(Pacific Ocean wind pattern as of 1 PM EST, June 4. The brighter the green, the higher the intensity, the deeper the blue, the weaker the winds. Direction of flow indicated by tapering lines. Note the large dead zone in the Pacific equatorial wind belt. Image source: Earth Nullschool. Data source: NOAA, GFS, MMAB, EMC, NCEP, OSCAR, UCAR.)


Draw a line due south of Kauai to the equator and there you will find a cyclone hovering just to its north.

Cyclones here usually have their wind fields dilated by the ongoing pressure of the east-to-west trade winds. As such, typical circular wind flow around a normal cyclone near the Pacific equator is distorted, turning instead into a kind of wind hump where the trades slow at the base and speed up at the top. West winds generally never completely wrap around these small storms.

But our cyclone is a bit unusual. For not only is it featuring a west wind flow of about 10 mph over about a 500 mile stretch of water, it also pushes ahead of it a trade wind killing frontal boundary. A sinking and rolling in the atmosphere that is acting like a kind of wall to the trades — keeping them from further progress.

The storm is the tip of a spear aimed at the heart of the trades and around it they bisect, shifting above the 10 degree North Latitude line in the north and below the 10 degree South Latitude line in the south. This wide gap features only weak and confused airflows. North-to-south they meander with the occasional weak east wind and numerous anomalous west winds filling in this rift. A broad, nearly 1,000 mile wide hole, that continues on west past the Solomons, past New Guinea, and on all the way to the Philippines.

To the East, a second 2,000 mile stretch of west winds running from south of California and on to the South American coast crowds out the trades. Together with the great wind gap to the west, these two patterns combine to cut off the trades from much of the Equator. What is left is only about 3,000 miles of uninterrupted flow. A mere 30% of the pattern’s typical range.

The El Nino Feedback
So why all the drama? What’s so important about trade winds anyway? Well, from the point of view of the developing monster weather event that is El Nino — almost everything.

For El Nino to grow and progress, in essence, for the massive pile of warm water that has accumulated in the Western Pacific to keep flowing east, the trade winds have to fail. They do this either through strong west wind events that open the gates to warm surface water flow eastward. Or they do it through a kind of trade wind collapse.

(Equatorial Pacific Ocean temperatures warmed to near +0.70 this week as global sea surface temperatures remained in an extraordinarily hot range near +1 C above the already hotter than normal 1979 to 2000 average. A rising El Nino combined with global warming pushed April of 2014 to its hottest temperatures on record and likely had the same effect on May. Any further intensification of El Nino is likely to push this dire trend into even more extreme territory. Image source: University of Maine. Data Source: GFS.)


It is this kind of event that climate experts call an El Nino feedback — an atmospheric condition that sets in place the features that allow Pacific Ocean surface warming to intensify along a strengthening El Nino path. As of yesterday, and continuing on through today, that feedback is readily visible in what appears to be a mass trade wind die-off. A great hole punched through the heart of equatorial air flow.

Such a condition, according to past weather observations, should give what is already a strengthening El Nino a boost. So it appears the potential for a monster El Nino today again ramped higher.


PS: To check the winds flow pattern for different altitudes:

North Atlantic
http://earth.nullschool.net/#current...2.22,50.69,368

Pacific
http://earth.nullschool.net/#current...56.35,0.81,368

[Hervé]

Mega El Nino Developing, Already Stronger Than 1997 At This Time Of The Year


May 20, 2014 Posted by admin

(PublicWeatherService.com) – A mega El Nino is developing at the current time. The left image shows May 2, 1997 and the right image shows the current year at the same time. The El Nino developing now is already stronger than 1997 at this time of year.

The El Nino signature is stronger than the 1997 El Nino, perhaps even reaching further westward and thicker south and northward. The coverage of the 2014 El Nino right now is more than 3 or 4 times that of the 1997 El Nino. What does it mean?

This means that this Summer will have strong monsoonal moisture surges, likely July, August, September and lasting awhile with a prolonged monsoon period. The summer will also likely be hotter than normal. Though in the past, hotter than normal summers resulted in drier winters … but there have been hot summers and wet winters. Correlation has not been consistent to factor that in.

The hottest place in the USA will be the Southern Plains, including Missouri and Arkansas with a ridge further east.

The Fall, Winter, and Spring of 2014 to 2015 would bring California out of the drought, especially Southern California. Numerous, severe, even tornadic storms would hit during a strong El Nino year.

Nor’easters will be very common come this next Winter Season across the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast … as most El Ninos have that.

[Hervé]

The gender difference:

[Sidney]

For an entire week, the weather in the midwest traveled east to west. FINALLY we have west to east movement again. It has to be related.

[Ellisa]

While Cailfornia has floods in an El Nino we in Australia have dreadful drought. The last drought lasted 10 years! It finished only recently, and for another episode to start up again so soon is awful. After the last summer with many days over 40c I am not looking forward to it being in drought as well this year.

[InnoSent]

Thank you for your input. This subject, as you all must know, has been the subject of much scrutiny by both proponents (such as Al Gore) and conspiracy theorists alike (such as myself) for some time now. While backers of the 'global warming' agenda present some hard to deny facts, we must take into consideration all aspects of the geophysical model that is the earth. Things like elevation, latitude, and humidity. The last two posters can attest that the more arid regions such as California and Australia are prone to wildfires. Whereas people like myself, and others in more temperate regions in North America, can attest to the curious late start of the seasons. I just noticed a poplar tree sprouting buds and it is already July. In the past you would usually notice this around mid April or June. I am in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. That's right in the middle of the prairies for those of you who don't know. I for one believe that global warming is not necessarily a myth or lie, but that it used to be more true than it is today. Not as true as it was 30 years ago, when industrial pollution was not as much of a concern as it is today. I recently took part in a poll on this issue and was not surprised that the majority of people believed that global warming is heating up the planet. I voted no. I recently changed my tune after having something of an epiphany while watching an old tape of Carl Sagan discussing, among other things, nuclear winter:

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=juXn972d3g8

I thought, factories everywhere are pumping out dark clouds, especially the coal ones in China. We could be creating something like nuclear winter with the high demand for our amenities. Newton's third law comes to mind. Why is it that some places are getting hotter and, simultaneously, other places are getting cooler? "For every action, there is an equal or opposite reaction." When air gets colder, it contracts and pulls more air toward it. This, in turn, creates a storm system which draws clouds away from those more arid regions making it colder in more temperate regions while exposing areas like California and Australia to the harsh summer sunshine. Perhaps global warming is a half truth, some places are getting cooler, and the reason is because of hyper industrialized nations pumping out greenhouse gasses. China still has coal burning power plants. Say what you will on nuclear power. It is more efficient and, potentially, safer for our environment as well. Many people are reserved about nuclear power often refer to the disaster at 3 mile island and Fukushima but those 'catastrophes' were largely overplayed and dramatized and were possibly acts of sabotage but that is a story for another time. As far as I remember nobody was hurt. Maybe the investors. Industrial pollution is making the planet cooler, not fast enough for Australia, California or other arid regions but I don't think we would want that anyway. If we fail to cut emissions, we may reach a point where plants cannot photosynthesize.

It is ironic that the technology we once thought would destroy us would actually save us. It may be our last bastion.