8/8/2023 0 Comments Rain in la![]() ![]() The Pacific Ocean is moody: It turns slightly hot or slightly cold every couple of years. Both cycles typically peak in December.Įl Niño and La Niña aren’t the only cycles evident in this image series. El Niño occurs when the trade winds are weaker than normal, and La Niña occurs when they are stronger than normal. The development of El Niño events is linked to the trade winds. Often, El Niño is followed immediately by La Niña, as if the warm water is sloshing back and forth across the Pacific. The cycle is not fully understood, but the times series illustrates that the cycle swings back and forth every 3-7 years. Ecuador, Peru, and the southeastern United States are correspondingly dry.Įl Niño and La Niña reflect the two end points of an oscillation in the Pacific Ocean. ![]() As a result, less rain falls over the eastern Pacific. The atmosphere cools in response to the cold ocean surface, and less water evaporates. La Niña’s impacts are opposite those of El Niño. La Niña is the build up of cool waters in the equatorial eastern Pacific, such as occurred in 1988 and, to a slightly lesser degree, 1998. During El Niño years, such as 1997, the southeast receives more rain than average. ![]() In the United States, the strongest change in rainfall is in the southeast, the region closest to the pool of warm Pacific water. The disruption in the atmosphere impacts rainfall throughout the world. The unusual rainfall extended into northwestern South America (Ecuador and Peru). The corresponding streak of dark blue in the rainfall anomaly image reveals that as much as 12 millimeters more rain than average fell over the warmed eastern Pacific. The unusually warm waters are dark purple in the sea surface temperature anomaly image, indicating that waters were as much as 6 degrees Celsius warmer than average. The clearest example of El Niño in this series of images is 1997. The warm ocean surface warms the atmosphere, which allows moisture-rich air to rise and develop into rainstorms. Many people recognize the extreme ends of the spectrum, El Niño and La Niña, by the severe droughts and intense rains each brings to different parts of the world.Įl Niño occurs when warm water builds up along the equator in the eastern Pacific. Changes in rainfall, right, echo changes in sea surface temperature, left. This series of images shows the dance between ocean and atmosphere. In turn, the changing ocean alters rainfall patterns. The ocean’s surface cools and warms cyclically in response to the strength of the trade winds. But on Thursday, that had dramatically changed: 0% of the state was in exceptional drought, and only a tiny portion of far Northern California, 0.32%, was in extreme drought.Perhaps nowhere is the intricate relationship between the ocean and the atmosphere more evident than in the eastern Pacific. Just one month ago, 7% of California was in exceptional drought and 36% in extreme drought, according to the U.S.
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