Are We Heading for a Worrying Super El Niño?

[xchrom]

http://www.livescience.com/45333-are-we-heading-for-a-worrying-super-el-nino.html

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We could be in for some warmer weather with an increased risk of drought and bushfires.
Credit: Flickr/Len Matthews, CC BY-NC-SA

We have only just moved into May and despite being seven months away from next summer in the southern hemisphere, climate researchers are seeing the beginnings of what could be the most powerful El Niño event since 1997/98.

An El Niño is a change in Pacific Ocean and atmosphere that typically causes drought, extreme heat and bushfires in Australia.

Last year was a neutral El Niño and we have been surprisingly lucky with only a few small El Niño’s since the 21st century started, despite having two of the hottest years on record globally in 2005 and 2010.

The last really big El Niño was in 1997/98. It is no coincidence that 1998 is the only remaining year from the past century that still sits in the top 10 for the hottest years, globally, on record.

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Mount Macedon after the Ash Wednesday bushfires in 1983 which followed another big El Nino event.
Credit: Flickr/Sydney Oats, CC BY

[immoderate]

1. A sure sign of a climate denier is they start measuring from 1998.

If you measure climate change from 1998, it will show a static or even decreasing temperature. If you measure from almost any other year, the temperature increases.

--imm

[pscot]

2. The National Weather Service thinks

there's one in the making. How super it will be they don't say, but it should end speculation about the imaginary hiatus in AGW. It may give us a preview of what climate change is really going to look like.