Sunday, July 15, 2012

El Niño Update - July 2012


Has anyone noticed the lack of tropical storm activity in the Atlantic Ocean?
We do see storms in the Pacific, and this is because of the recent changes and effects of El Niño.

I am waiting for the map on the blog to be updated to show data past July 4th, so until then I found this image from NOAA. You can see the positive phase evident from the higher ocean temperature readings off the upper west coast of South America.

This is why there is terrible flooding in Arizona and horrific drought conditions in the mid west.  I have been searching for a long time for evidence of climate change and I have read a lot about this topic.  I had difficulty finding evidence of climate change, and  I wrote a long story about flooding SE PA.  I stated in that story that I could not find direct evidence of climate change.  Now that I have continued to search for this, I did finally notice that the El Niño and La Niña cycles have become more frequent than before.  These Oscillations used to occur every 11 years, this is no longer the case.   There are many long term natural variables to change our climate, I have to say that it looks like mans habit of living comfortably may have a partial influence on our weather.


Image from NOAA and wunderground.com