As Global Warming starts changing the weather patterns that we've become accustomed to, new weather and climate terminology starts entering our vocabulary.
We all remember the Polar Vortex from last winter and how it dipped way down into the U.S. and gave the eastern U.S. a brutal winter.
Well that term probably isn't going away soon, especially now that there's
some evidence that links the polar vortex to sea ice melt in a warming arctic.
And as most of us know by now, August was the warmest on record for the month and was the warmest ever for the oceans.
For the ocean, the August global sea surface temperature was 0.65°C (1.17°F) above the 20th century average of 16.4°C (61.4°F). This record high departure from average not only beats the previous August record set in 2005 by 0.08°C (0.14°F), but also beats the previous all-time record set just two months ago in June 2014 by 0.03°C (0.05°F).
The combined average global land and ocean surface temperature for the June–August period was also record high for this period, at 0.71°C (1.28°F) above the 20th century average of 16.4°C (61.5°F), beating the previous record set in 1998.
Most of the heat from Global Warming is going into the oceans. You have to wonder what that heat is going to do to the normal ocean currents that drive a lot of the weather events on the land surface.
Most of us are pretty familiar with El Nino. The term itself originated with the fisherman off the coast of Peru when the waters there became warmer than usual.
El Niño was originally recognized by fisherman off the coast of South America as the appearance of unusually warm water in the Pacific ocean, occurring near the beginning of the year. El Niño means The Little Boy or Christ child in Spanish. This name was used for the tendency of the phenomenon to arrive around Christmas.
But now scientists have recognized a similar El Nino like pattern that takes place more in the middle of the Pacific called
El Nino Modoki
El Niño Modoki is a coupled ocean-atmosphere phenomenon in the tropical Pacific. It is different from another coupled phenomenon in the tropical Pacific namely, El Niño. Conventional El Niño is characterized by strong anomalous warming in the eastern equatorial Pacific (see figure below). Whereas, El Niño Modoki is associated with strong anomalous warming in the central tropical Pacific and cooling in the eastern and western tropical Pacific...
Anomalous SST during El Niño
Anomalous SST during El Niño Modoki
So El Nino Modoki is a rather newly discovered phenomenon and there isn't as long of a history as there is for a normal El Nino, but some patterns have begone to appear. Here are some possible rainfall patterns for the U.S.
USA, rainfall during El Niño
USA, rainfall during El Niño Modoki
Are we heading for a regular El Nino or an El Nino Modoki? Here's the latest sea surface anomalies for the mid Pacific.
If you look off the coast of Peru, there certainly isn't an organized column of warm water heading west into the Pacific, and there doesn't seem to be the usual cold current there either. There is a large pool of warm water in the central Pacific, but it's not exceptionally warm.
What we've got is kind of a mess and we'll just have to wait to see if we get a weak El Nino, a weak El Nino Modoki, or if we get another wild Polar Vortex! With every ton of CO2 we dump into the atmosphere and with every BTU of heat we dump into the ocean, the weather of the future becomes less like a pattern and more like a roll of the dice.