Mystery "Warm Blob" In the Pacific Ocean Could Be Causing California's Drought 173
Mr D from 63 writes A mysterious "warm blob" in the Pacific Ocean could be the reason why US West coast states like California are experiencing their worst ever drought, a new study says. From the article: "Nick Bond, a climate scientist at the Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean at the University of Washington, began watching the blob a year and a half ago. 'In the fall of 2013 and early 2014, we started to notice a big, almost circular mass of water that just didn't cool off as much as it usually did, so by spring of 2014 it was warmer than we had ever seen it for that time of year,' Bond said in a news release about the studies appearing in Geophysical Research Letters."
You have to be careful (Score:5, Insightful)
When your data size is 1, drawing conclusions is problematic.
Also, the blob itself went away last fall. There is a significant amount of warmer than average water that has appeared along much of the West coast this winter, but it's not in the same location as the blob.
Re:You have to be careful (Score:5, Insightful)
We know some things at least so far. California have over-used the water for a long time now, the ground water table is a lot lower than it was a century ago. The dam fill levels have varied up and down more and people have a tendency to look at them when it comes to how much water that can be consumed.
There have been periods of drought before through history - at which time major population movements were necessary. In some cases enough to end empires.
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They're building a new $billion desalinisation plant near San Diego that should be operational by this fall. If the warming trend continues, this may be the 1st of many for CA & TX.
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We need water recycling plants. Why are we wasting money on desalination when we can recycle our water for a fraction of the cost?
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Likely because of agricultural demands. A lot of CA's water, in the hundreds of billions of gallons, leaves the state in the form of produce.
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We should still be recycling as much water as possible, though... ;)
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Absolutely. Given the history of the Southwest, it's astonishing to me that water recycling & conservation isn't mandatory & widespread.
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Never underestimate the power of visceral, illogical squeamishness.
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Sorry but if you any did any risk assessment, you would now that squeamishness is not associated with process but with the risk of failure in that process and the consequence of that failure. Yeah, psychopathic corporate driven short cuts to reduce cost and increase profits, will and I repeat, will result in failure and contaminated water reaching the public and killing people. Alright for some dick head to make a big show of drinking a glass of cleaned up water, that was totally and thoroughly tested befo
Re:You have to be careful (Score:5, Insightful)
YOU LIVE IN A DESERT!! UNDERSTAND THAT? YOU LIVE IN A FUCKING DESERT!! NOTHING GROWS HERE! NOTHING'S GONNA GROW HERE! Come here, you see this? This is sand. You know what it's gonna be 100 years from now? IT'S GONNA BE SAND!! YOU LIVE IN A FUCKING DESERT!
If you want to fix CA then remove all of the beef and dairly subsidies that make it economical to raise cattle in a desert. Same thing for the ranchers up in the high desert of Oregon and Washington who bitch about water rights. Boo hoo beef is going to cost more, good then maybe we won't have so much cheap shitty beef around.
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Love your post... Unfortunately, it's completely logical. Therefore, it will not be done. People are stupid pack-thought animals that don't respond well to logic, even if it's in their best interest.
I miss Kinison and Carlin. Both used simple logic and common sense in their comedy.
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Are they really not recycling water now? I don't know of any location that doesn't recycle their water where there are other users and a shortage. The ones I know that don't are places like in Alaska where there is enough fresh water available in m
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We have some limited recycling in San Diego, but it doesn't create potable water. Most of our waste water is treated and discharged into the ocean.
There has been discussion about building water recycling plants but there is a lot of FUD created about it by the reactionary opposition. I think their successful labeling of it as "toilet to tap" has been especially damaging to attempts to move forward with the idea.
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But the ocean-discharge water is fine for agricultural use, and some industrial use. A separate water system using non-potable water for some uses would make more sense than using potable water for all uses.
I'v even seen indications that you could use osmosis as a power source for reverse osmosis, so that you could desalinate seawater from the power of the salinization of the wastewater.
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Actually whether the water is reused or just discarded depends more so on where you are. For cities and towns that have river sources this may be the case, but in socal there are no such sources - most of our water is either imported or pumped from the ground. Some of the wastewater is reused for irrigation, but as far as I know there is only one plant in socal that pumps the wastewater back into the aquifer.
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So CO made CO's problem. They are banning local people from catching water because they want to sell water for a profit, not because of CA, NV, AZ, NM, TX, NE, or OK.
Tap the power of beer and frat houses (Score:1)
The cost of recycling can be brought down by starting with lower-mineral sources. Those that drink beer produce nearly clear output after the first one. By tapping frat house urinals less processing is required. Effective efficiency is best if the beer comes from outside the drought area.
The water lost in toilets might be reduced if they were some sort of chemical toilet, but they also need to be designed using negative pressure or something to keep odors from being released. Nobody wants a stinky one.
C
Water and history, even war in California (Score:5, Interesting)
It's amazing how much more water there was in parts of California in the relatively recent past, much lost outside of any extreme drought events.
Owens lake was used to fuel development in the Los Angeles area, especially the San Fernando Valley about 100 years ago.
Tulare lake is now gone, yet during the wetter years in the 1800's was as large as 900 square miles.
There's actually a tale of sunken treasure from a gold shipment lost in a storm.
http://www.tularecountylibrary... [tularecountylibrary.org]
http://www.workmansbooks.com/c... [workmansbooks.com]
I found a late 1850's newspaper report originating from Fort Yuma of a cinnabar (mercury ore) discovery near the junction of the Mojave and Colorado rivers. (Although dangerous, mercury was commonly used for extracting gold since that readily dissolves into it) The thing is, the mojave river isn't shown reaching the Colorado in later times. There were conflicting reports of the reach of the Mojave in the era, but whatever the recent water source had been, it certainly isn't there now. Here's a pdf of some of the study done of the mojave and ancient lakes. It looks like water at high levels about 7000 years ago went beyond a spillway causing erosion the led to water not being held. It seems that it isn't just climate shifts, but the keeping of water from the wetter periods that is behind some of the major changes seen in California.
The California land around Tulare lake was once treated as worthless because of it flooding, and was sold for a dollar an acre.
Well great job on getting rid of that troublesome water guys. The area was once so rich in animal and plant life that for a very long period it had one of the highest population densities of North American native (Indian) populations. Although about a third of the west coast natives had already been killed off by the combination of violence and exposure to European diseases, things got much worse after the mid 1850's. The gold rush drove much of the change, but climate played a role also. There was already a drought by the end of the 1850's. Santa Barbara saw a 133 degree heat burst of 133 degrees three solar rotations before the Carrington storm. Much of the Santa Barbara beef was culled to to limited grass in the drought. The southern part of the state saw some rain (and the death of Bernardo Yorba on his rancho by the Santa Ana river near what's now Yorba Linda near Anaheim) related to the San Diego Hurricane of 1958, the storm went back out to sea before getting to Santa Barbara. Even with the great California flood of early 1862, which silting in the lagoon at Santa Barbara, the drought was severe in 1863 and 1864. That caused the collapse of some of the rancho operation near Santa Barbara, leading to some land becoming available for sale to outsiders. The combination of drought, an extreme 1861-62 winter, and cattle eating what little the Indians grew led to problems when Indians working with ranches near the Owens Valley didn't get paid and stole cattle for food. That led to the Owens Valley Indian War of 1864. Fort Independence, seen as the town of Independence. The U.S. military found that going out and killing anything that the Indians might eat was the most effective way to drive them to submission. The population was largely killed off, less than 40 inhabit the current reservation in the area. In retrospect, as with the plight of some of the struggling farmers in Syria, climate variation had a major impact on what unfolded.
Here's a PDF of some ancient information on the Mojave river/lake and related areas.
http://quest.nasa.gov/projects... [nasa.gov]
The 1859 Santa Barbara heat burst event was not just a variation of the local "sundowner" winds causing compressive warming from sinking air in coastal canyons. The even peaked ju
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From what I understand, most of CA's water use is agricultural. Most of the US's produce comes from CA.
The cities themselves don't use nearly as much water.
Most likely, a lot of the farms need to move, but the cultural centers in LA and San Francisco can remain.
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Just waiting for the sandworms to show up first.
Re:Plastic (Score:4, Funny)
Perhaps the water is being insulated by the eddy of plastic trash in the central Pacific?
Expensive article (Score:5, Informative)
Based on a mixed layer temperature budget, these anomalies were caused by lower than normal rates of the loss of heat from the ocean to the atmosphere, and of relatively weak cold advection in the upper ocean. Both of these mechanisms can be attributed to an unusually strong and persistent weather pattern featuring much higher than normal sea level pressure over the waters of interest. This anomaly was the greatest observed in this region since at least the 1980s.
"Warm blob" (Score:5, Funny)
We prefer to called: "Coolness challenged entities"
You insensitive clod.
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Clod is Blob's brother, you insensitive human!
Wrong Mr. Bond (Score:1)
Sounds like the new SPECTRE base has been located.
No Bad management is causing the drought (Score:1)
There's a whole ocean out there waiting to be used. Droughts are bullshit, nothing but a disagreement over the price.
Siphon water to the Salton Sea (Score:2, Troll)
Drop a pipe in the Pacific, run it over the mountains, maybe parallel to the road that descends into Palm Springs and refill that nasty smelling swamp. On the way down the hill you can generate electricity, desalinate, extract minerals and make sushi. Win, win, win and wasabi.
Death Valley is next. I'm pretty sure turtles float.
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Drop a pipe in the Pacific, run it over the mountains, maybe parallel to the road that descends into Palm Springs and refill that nasty smelling swamp. On the way down the hill you can generate electricity, desalinate, extract minerals and make sushi. Win, win, win and wasabi.
Death Valley is next. I'm pretty sure turtles float.
I don't think you understand the limits of a siphon -- the maximum rise along a siphon for water is 32 feet (the same limit as the limit for a suction pump, which is why well pumps are at the bottom of the well) -- any higher and the pressure within the liquid drops below its vapor pressure and bubbles form, breaking the siphon. It'd take large pumps and a lot of energy to pump the water over any significant rise - even if you extract some of the energy on the way down, you don't get nearly as much back as
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We're all drinking 'toilet' water. The dinosaurs shit in it! Fear of recycled water was created by the bottling industry (which causes local 'mini-droughts' by buying up all rights to an aquifer and restricting water usage by the locals). I'm sure they are on the verge of telling us that drinkable tap water is unfair competition. Economics and politics are the direct causes of all shortages of all kinds.
Re:No Bad management is causing the drought (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, the lack of reprocessing and reusing of waste water. We could achieve a lot by filtering and reusing the waste water aka "toilet to tap."
This is exactly the wrong approach. The last thing California needs is more top-down "solutions". Just price the water properly, and if recycling makes economic sense, it will happen. Most likely it will NOT happen, because it is a dumb idea. You have to deal, not only with the cost of cleaning the sewage, but also the energy cost of pumping it back uphill to where it can be reused. A far simpler solution is to end the subsidies for growing rice in the desert.
Re: No Bad management is causing the drought (Score:2, Interesting)
Actually that an extremely viable solution. The only problem is the public's reaction. However, LA currently has a system the alleviates public "concerns" by recharging the groundwater aquifer with treated effluent and the pumping the water back up nearby as drinking water. The aquifer provides an additional level of treatment comparable to tertiary treatment that would be required if it was directly from toilet to tap. This actually solves a number of problems: it treats the water further, it reuses water,
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"price water properly" is probably a good, and simple solution.
But there are many practical barriers that make this nearly impossible.
For one, there are treaties and water-rights already assigned. These involve multi-state government agreements, and there really is not an authority mechanism in existence that can address these in a unified way.
For two, there are political entanglements (regulatory capture, and officials who are basically corporate AG lapdogs).
This is one of those Utopian Ideals issues, wher
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Sure. And then say goodbye to the agricultural industry in California as they try to compete with everywhere else on the planet that doesn't "price water properly". Seriously, you can't see that?
Say 'goodbye' to 2% of the state's economy that is causing serious hardship to the other 98% and which is the largest draw to increasing illegal immigration?
To the CA ag industry I say "don't let the door hit you in the ass!"
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Jobs, the age old fallacy. (Score:5, Informative)
sci fi comes true (Score:1)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T... [wikipedia.org]
Alien power plant (Score:1)
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Or perhaps Godzilla and/or Cthulhu waking from their slumber(s).
Legislation to the rescue! (Score:4)
California lawmakers are currently writing up new legislation that bans warm blobs and requires warning labels on any existing warm blobs.
Problem solved!
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Warm blobs are known by the state of California to cause cancer.
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While Republican lawmakers...
California has Republican lawmakers?
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Stop being so fucking thin skinned kids - there is a pox on both houses.
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Actually this is America -- we should declare a "war on warm blobs"
This effect of climate change was predicted in '05 (Score:5, Informative)
http://thinkprogress.org/clima... [thinkprogress.org]
The Blob (Score:1)
Does it coincide with with the garbage blob?
"worst ever" (Score:4, Interesting)
"worst ever drought"
It might be the worst drought since the area became a state (though there were others that were close if not worse) but it is far from the worst drought ever in the region. On at least 5 occasions over the past 1000 years there have been droughts that make this one seem mild in comparison.
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"worst ever drought"
It might be the worst drought since the area became a state (though there were others that were close if not worse) but it is far from the worst drought ever in the region. On at least 5 occasions over the past 1000 years there have been droughts that make this one seem mild in comparison.
Exhibit A: A freshly minted climate denier talking point. It was likely created by a "PR" company and focus group tested. It sounds like it comes from an expert...someone who has studied the climate history of California. However, no references are given. It merely relies on the confident tone to reach its target audience...the sector of society that has little scientific expertise and that doesn't want to believe that the truck in their garage is likely to make the lives of their grandchildren quite d
Re:"worst ever" (Score:5, Informative)
I hope you're just being sarcastic, but in case you aren't
http://www.mercurynews.com/sci... [mercurynews.com]
http://wattsupwiththat.com/201... [wattsupwiththat.com]
http://www.usatoday.com/story/... [usatoday.com]
http://news.nationalgeographic... [nationalgeographic.com]
a five minute internet search for "California drought history" can point to the fact that California has had water issues for centuries (it can be said of any area as well), it had destroyed Native American Cities and entire empires long before European settlers arrived. A statement in the National Geographic article pretty well sums it up "Unfortunately, she notes, most of the state's infrastructure was designed and built during the 20th century, when the climate was unusually wet compared to previous centuries."
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Exhibit A: A freshly minted climate denier talking point.
Exhibit A++: The smug bullshit of people that immediately claim "denier" when faced with an argument that they dont want to be true, and that they cant even do such a trivial web search to make sure that they arent so obviously putting their foot in it (like one of the people that replied to him did) isnt surprising at all. They have always been this way. This is what they do.
Hint: The grandparent is not only right, he is very right. The parent doesnt want him to be right, so calls him names.
Re:"worst ever" (Score:4, Insightful)
But outside of COMPUTER MODELS that are tweaked TO GIVE THE RESULTS THEY WANT 'climate scientists' have nothing to show for years of 'science'.
This is how models work. You tweak the model until it fits both what your predictions suggest, and also makes sense. If you can't make it fit enough situations then maybe you learn a new way to change the model. Meanwhile, the model which makes the most successful predictions gets reused. None of the models ever describe reality perfectly, but we use the model which best approximates reality to get work done.
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And that is BAD SCIENCE.
Your use of capital letters doesn't excuse your lack of understanding of how science works.
Who cares if the model tells you want YOU WANT.
Because what YOU WANT is for the model to describe reality. So you fiddle with it until it both agrees with observed reality, and with your projections of what you think will happen based on established science.
And, as I said, NOTHING the models have predicted have come true.
Bollocks.
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All-Purpose Explanations (Score:1)
The Blob Has Been Identified (Score:5, Funny)
It's Kim Dotcom.
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I rather suspect it's the Vineans using magma to create artificial land for themselves [blogspot.fr].
warm water (Score:2)
A few decades ago, before global warming became popular, there was El Nino and La Nina - depending on whereabouts in the Pacific the warm surface water was located.
And before that, the meteorologists refered to "the southern oscillation"
Re:warm water (Score:5, Informative)
And before that, the meteorologists refered to "the southern oscillation"
It's still called that.
there was El Nino and La Nina - depending on whereabouts in the Pacific the warm surface water was located.
Those are names for the warm and cold phases of that oscillation. The only thing that might have changed is that people are more willing to use the Spanish words to describe the phenomenon.
A few decades ago, before global warming became popular
The Southern Oscillation and Anthropogenic Climate Change refer to different phenomena that are explained by different processes. The only thing they have in common is that they both have something to do with the weather.
not the ocean warming, it's the jet stream (Score:1)
the jet stream has moved very far south and is running north south - so it blocks the "atmospheric rivers" which are the big storms from Alaska and Hawaii. each one carries more water than the Mississippi, and we need a dozen or more a year...
Kaiju Rift (Score:2)
That thing looks like it gives off a lot of heat.
When the last bit of ice does melt... (Score:2)
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As a sailor, I can assure you that once you run out of ice you switch to rum, and it's all good until you make port and can run the freezer off shore power again.
Somebody got the party started early (Score:2)
This is, if not the truth, the kernel of a very good story...
Mystery compnay X decides that no one is "doing anything" about Global warming. So they decide to help everyone out, by submerging Project X in the ocean off California, meant to cause the water to somehow absorb more CO2 (or if you want to go for an advanced version of the story they were trying to "remove the acid" from the PH neutral sea water).
Well as large scale attempts at terraforming on a working system tend to do, things we terribly awry
More Information (Score:3)
PDO (Score:2)
Just looks like the PDO's flipped back to positive to me - not exactly a mystery!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P... [wikipedia.org]
Excuse me... (Score:2)
That's Bond. Nick Bond.
Not a blob, its Octopussy
Great Pacific Garbage Patch (Score:1)
Mega drought in Cali is neither rare nor modern (Score:4, Interesting)
Calling the current period a "drought" is contingent upon assuming the rainfall pattern of the last 150 years or so is normal. Research seems to indicate that the last 150 years were abnormally wet and that Cali climate is usually much drier. Doesn't matter though, as the current drought plays into the AGW narrative, because "climate change".
"California's current drought is being billed as the driest period in the state's recorded rainfall history. But scientists who study the West's long-term climate patterns say the state has been parched for much longer stretches before that 163-year historical period began.
And they worry that the "megadroughts" typical of California's earlier history could come again.
Through studies of tree rings, sediment and other natural evidence, researchers have documented multiple droughts in California that lasted 10 or 20 years in a row during the past 1,000 years -- compared to the mere three-year duration of the current dry spell. The two most severe megadroughts make the Dust Bowl of the 1930s look tame: a 240-year-long drought that started in 850 and, 50 years after the conclusion of that one, another that stretched at least 180 years.
"We continue to run California as if the longest drought we are ever going to encounter is about seven years," said Scott Stine, a professor of geography and environmental studies at Cal State East Bay. "We're living in a dream world."
Stine, who has spent decades studying tree stumps in Mono Lake, Tenaya Lake, the Walker River and other parts of the Sierra Nevada, said that the past century has been among the wettest of the last 7,000 years.
Looking back, the long-term record also shows some staggeringly wet periods. The decades between the two medieval megadroughts, for example, delivered years of above-normal rainfall -- the kind that would cause devastating floods today.
The longest droughts of the 20th century, what Californians think of as severe, occurred from 1987 to 1992 and from 1928 to 1934. Both, Stine said, are minor compared to the ancient droughts of 850 to 1090 and 1140 to 1320.
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More dishonest than trying to use the current drought as proof of AGW?
I wasn't trying to use this to dispute AGW theories, just pointing out that AGW-theorists will almost certainly use the current drought as proof of AGW when it instead appears to be a reversion to the norm.
"The extreme atmospheric conditions associated with California's crippling drought are far more likely to occur under today's global warming conditions than in the climate that existed before humans emitted large amounts of greenhouse g
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You're thinking of the mass of hot air in the atmosphere; this is in the ocean.
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Isn't Liberal Elite an oxymoron? Liberals are typically blue collar or white collar worker with families, while conservatives are the elite moneyed types seeking to an ever larger slice of the pie.
Clearly you've never been to Marin County.
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but could it be all of the REALLY HOT radioactive material from Fukushima making its way to the US West coast?
No.
They way maps are flattened doesn't make it obvious, but it is closer between Chernobyl and New York than it is between Fukushima and the US West coast.
The much worse disaster at Chernobyl didn't have any impact on the US and Fukushima won't have any either.
Unfortunately media likes to spread FUD to make people panic.
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The _really_ hot stuff has already decayed. High output = short half-life. The most dangerous stuff is not dangerous because it's especially hot, but because the human body likes to retain and concentrate it (cesium-137, for example).
Re:uhh...warm oceans=wet land (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:uhh...warm oceans=wet land (Score:5, Interesting)
Those are not tropical deserts, but on the 30-35-degree latitude lines, the hottest and driest places in the world. Between these lines is cooler, but a lot wetter.
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* The Chihuahua Desert - 30 degrees North
* The Namib Desert - 23 degrees South
* The Sahara Desert - 23 degrees South
What is your point? Two are tropical deserts (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropics) while none lie between 30-35 degrees.
Re:uhh...wrong Wikipedia article (Score:2)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horse_latitudes [wikipedia.org]are what you are referring to. These deserts are referred to as "sub-tropical", as opposed to, say, the northern Great Basin or eastern Washington, which is mainly created from rain shadowing.
Also, Sahara is north of the equator (the desert, the street, and the casino).
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Also look up "Pineapple Express"
While I don't disagree with the article, it should be noted that the problem isn't specific to California, and Glaciers have been melting at such high speeds, and low snow packs from lack of cold-enough precipitation that it's predicted there will be no water for California in as early as 20 years. Start those desalination plants now or water will have to be rationed. Californian farming businesses meanwhile have been buying land in Washington and BC so they can move farther
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How do you explain the South Pole then?
It only gets about 6.5" of precip per year. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_of_Antarctica)
Re:uhh...warm oceans=wet land (Score:5, Informative)
Your assessment is flawed. Warmer temperatures do mean more water can evaporate, but that does not mean it will precipitate in nearby regions. There are many regions around the world that are hot, humid, and still dry as a bone (Somalia, Northwestern Peru, most Middle Eastern countries that border the ocean, etc.).This is like the other bad science assumption often tossed around by deniers: " Well if there is more water vapor then there will be more clouds and so the world will cool down!". No, it doesn't work like that.
There are conditions that need to be met for cloud formation and precipitation. If the atmosphere is stable, then it really doesn't matter how much moisture is present. If a blocking ridge forms over the region, then those warm moist air masses are going to move somewhere else. If there is a thick enough layer of dry air beneath the moist air, then it'll just be virga. If the air masses destabilize before coming ashore, then it'll just dump rain back into the ocean.
But I'm sure you know all this.
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My understanding was that a lot of the moisture that CA usually gets was from the north pacific, carried by winds that are (lately) being diverted by an unusually strong high pressure zone. It seems conceivable that a patch of warm water could make a patch of warm wet air, that would divert more overall moisture than it carries.
Of course, not being a meteorologist, my understanding is probably somewhat flawed. But I don't think it's quite as simple as "this patch has more evaporation therefore CA gets more
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Hint: read wikipedia.
California is not affected by El Niño or El Niña (itself). Both phenomena are southern hemisphere events.
However during an El Niño you often have an additional warm event around California, which often causes heavy rain fall and flooding.
Most important: we don't have fully developed El Niño yet. We are actually in the 'normal' phase between an El Niña and an El Niño.
Your ideas how the weather/climate works are unfortunate
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I can see you are not familiar with the weather patterns, or the Spanish language. It is La Nin~a, not El Nin~a.
If only /. supported unicode.
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It does support HTML, however: ñ
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True, she is female, sorry :)
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Actually, it does work like that. Warmer temperatures increase cloud cover which increases albedo, helping mitigate the temperature change.
It doesn't offset the change entirely though (else the temperature would never change). Water vapor is on a negative (stabilizing) feedback loop with tempera
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Wow, which idiot is modding you?
The observable facts make clear that your idea about "more rain" is wrong. :)
a) a pool of hot water in front of California/Oregon, a drought, obviously: no more rain, but less rain
b) if had payed attention in school you knew what a costal climate is. The hot water has the exact opposite effect you believe it has. At night it is not "pushing humid air over the mountains into the desert" it does the opposite. Actually most children know that
At coasts you have usually over dayt
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The garbage patch is where it is in the Pacific because it's a gyre, currents funneling inward on the surface from all directions. Could this be concentrating warm water also?
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Humans barely scratch the surface, known long time (Score:2)
The last 150 years or so in Cali have actually been abnormally wet, similar to the wet period between two century-plus drought period 2000 years ago.
http://www.nytimes.com/1994/07... [nytimes.com]
BEGINNING about 1,100 years ago, what is now California baked in two droughts, the first lasting 220 years and the second 140 years. Each was much more intense than the mere six-year dry spells that afflict modern California from time to time, new studies of past climates show. The findings suggest, in fact, that relatively wet