Thursday, November 19, 2015

El Nino Now Strongest In Modern History

CBS San Francisco reports:
You can now call it “The Strongest El Niño In Modern History”.

There are several different ways to measure the strength of El Niño, and we hit a milestone on one of those measuring sticks Monday morning. Looking only at the weekly departure from normal ocean temperatures, ENSO Region 3.4 – the one that means the most to winter weather in California – just hit an all-time high. The ocean temperature in that part of the equatorial Pacific has risen to 3.0 degrees Celsius warmer than average. That’s higher than the peak values for both the 1997-98 event (+2.8 degrees C) and the 1982-83 event (+2.7 degrees C).

2 comments:

  1. The sad thing is how utterly unprepared the state water monopoly continues to be. The southwest has been subject to dry spells and then rainy seasons for hundreds of years. Yet our state water monopoly has failed to build even one new reservoir in over ten years. As a result, if this El Nino produces above average rainfall it will only refill the existing reservoirs which have proven inadequate if we are to believe the states imposition of water usage restrictions. Of course allowing the market to set the prices for water would also eliminate "shortages." But there is no groundswell of anger at the water monopoly's pathetic performance...and so it goes..

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  2. This is misleading. Yes, the Nino3.4 region is warmer than in '97 but there are 3 other regions and in '97 it was the Nino 3.0 region that was the culprit. The Nino 3.0 region is east of Nino3.4 . In order to understand the whole El Nino phenomenon you need to look at the whole picture not just one slice of it.

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