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It’s official: El Niño is back. Now what?

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Thursday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that El Niño — the periodic warming of the tropical Pacific Ocean, with weather consequences worldwide — has officially arrived.

El Niño typically peaks between October and March, so it’s pretty late in the season for a new one to form. This year’s El Niño is expected to remain relatively weak, but that doesn’t mean this one won’t be felt — in fact, its cascading consequences already in motion.

El Niños normally happen every two-to-seven years, but this is already the sixth El Niño of the 21st century. It’s also the first since the so-called “Godzilla” El Niño of 2015-2016, which boosted global temperatures to all-time records, snuffed out entire coral reef ecosystems, and created havoc for about 60 million people worldwide. There’s some evidence that El Niños are becoming more frequent and more intense due to climate change.

The advent of this El Niño means that 2019 is “almost certain to be another top-5 year,” wrote Gavin Schmidt director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, in an email to Grist. He gave “roughly 1-in-3 odds” that 2019 will surpass 2016 as the warmest year on record, thanks in part to the boost from El Niño.

Most short-term climate models show Pacific Ocean temperatures remaining unusually warm for at least the rest of this year, and a few hint that a bigger El Niño could form within about six months — though forecasting that far ahead is notoriously tricky.

This winter has been warmer and wetter than usual for most of the West Coast — a classic sign of El Niño weather. After years of drought, California snowpack currently sits at about 130 percent of normal, and on Thursday, Los Angeles officially surpassed its “normal” annual rainfall threshold for the first time in years.

In the short term, this El Niño is likely to keep pushing stormy weather ashore out West, especially in Southern California. Judging by past weak El Niños, the rest of winter elsewhere in the country could be cooler and wetter than normal, especially for the Northeast where snow has been notably absent so far. El Niño could bring some late-season snowstorm doozies for the East Coast as well as severe weather and flooding in the Southeast. Later this year, it’s likely that widespread wildfires will return to portions of the West Coast (new grasses and brush from the wet weather will become kindling in dry weather) and Southeast Asia, and severe drought could afflict East Africa and Australia.

The biggest potential consequence of this El Niño is its effect on global temperatures. Carbon dioxide is driving the long-term acceleration of global warming, of course, but there’s evidence that El Niño droughts prevent carbon dioxide uptake and permanently worsen climate change. The five warmest years in history have occurred in the past five years, and odds are that 2019 temps will rank second in all-time weather records. Should El Niño intensify later this year, 2020 would be even warmer, and may even be the first year to breach the much-feared 1.5 degree Celsius mark.

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It’s official: El Niño is back. Now what?

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How Many Hurricanes Will Hit Hawaii This Weekend?

The islands face a forecast that is being called “unprecedented.” Hurricane Iselle on August 4. NASA/Wikimedia Commons It is not—yet—officially an El Niño year. However, we’ve already seen two El Nino-like hurricane records. And now, yet another atmospheric event reminiscent of El Niño conditions is unfolding in the Pacific Ocean: Namely, the Hawaiian islands are under hurricane threat. Actually, it’s a double threat. Right now, Category 3 Hurricane Iselle is headed Hawaii’s way. Following closely behind is Tropical Storm Julio. The current forecast has Iselle hitting the islands as a strong tropical storm on Friday morning (if it stays a bit stronger, it could strike as a weak hurricane), and Julio arriving in the area as a Category 1 hurricane two days later. Look: A view of the central Pacific. NASA This situation is “unprecedented,” says top Weather Channel meteorologist Kevin Roth, who notes that in 1982—the closest analogy—two weak tropical storms arrived in Hawaii separated by 10 days. Adds Jeff Masters of Weather Underground: It’s been a very active hurricane season in the Eastern Pacific, which has seen 10 named storms, 4 hurricanes, and 3 intense hurricanes so far in 2014. On average, we expect to see 6 named storms, 3 hurricanes, and 1 intense hurricane by August 4 in the Eastern Pacific. The Eastern Pacific hurricane basin stretches from the western coast of Mexico out towards the Central Pacific north of the equator, where Hawaii lies. Hawaii is not officially located in the Eastern Pacific basin, though many storms that affect it start their life there and travel westward towards its islands. Once a hurricane moving westward crosses the 140th meridian west (a line of longitude running from Alaska down through the Central Pacific), its forecasting becomes the responsibility of theCentral Pacific Hurricane Center located in Honolulu. Hawaii’s worst hurricane in recent memory was 1992′s Hurricane Iniki, which also arrived in an El Niño year and struck Kauai with 140 mile-per-hour winds, causing over $3 billion in damage and six deaths. Visit site – How Many Hurricanes Will Hit Hawaii This Weekend? Related ArticlesWorld’s top PR companies rule out working with climate deniersWhy’s This Tea Party PAC Going After a Top Tea Partier?Watch Drought Take Over the Entire State of California in One GIF

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Obama Plans Protected Marine Area in Pacific Ocean

The president says he will use his executive authority to create the world’s largest protected marine area to defend diverse habitats from harmful activities. Original post –  Obama Plans Protected Marine Area in Pacific Ocean ; ;Related ArticlesThe Earth’s Hidden OceanDot Earth: Indian Point’s Tritium Problem and the N.R.C.’s Regulatory ProblemRecreating Wilderness in Spain ;

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Obama Plans Protected Marine Area in Pacific Ocean

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Why This Year’s El Niño Could Grow Into a Monster

Mother Jones

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This story originally appeared in Slate, and is republished here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

The odds are increasing that an El Niño is in the works for 2014—and recent forecasts show it might be a big one.

As we learned from Chris Farley, El Niños can boost the odds of extreme weather (droughts, typhoons, heat waves) across much of the planet. But the most important thing about El Niño is that it is predictable, sometimes six months to a year in advance.

That’s an incredibly powerful tool, especially if you are one of the billions who live where El Niño tends to hit hardest—Asia and the Americas. If current forecasts stay on track, El Niño might end up being the biggest global weather story of 2014.

The most commonly accepted definition of an El Niño is a persistent warming of the so-called “Niño3.4” region of the tropical Pacific Ocean south of Hawaii, lasting for at least five consecutive three-month “seasons.” A recent reversal in the direction of the Pacific trade winds appears to have kicked off a warming trend during the last month or two. That was enough to prompt US government forecasters to issue an El Niño watch last month.

Forecasters are increasingly confident in a particularly big El Niño this time around because, deep below the Pacific Ocean’s surface, off-the-charts warm water is lurking:

That giant red blob is a huge sub-surface wave of anomalously warm water that currently spans the tropical Pacific Ocean—big enough to cover the United States 300 feet deep. That’s a lot of warm water. Australia Bureau of Meteorology

As that blob of warm water moves eastward, propelled by the anomalous trade winds, it’s also getting closer to the ocean’s surface. Once that happens, it will begin to interact with the atmosphere, boosting temperatures and changing weather patterns.

There are signs that this huge pool of sub-surface warmth is starting to emerge on the surface in recent days:

Which means that April 2014 could be the month the mega El Niño gets officially underway.

Now, before we get ahead of ourselves, meteorologist Cliff Mass warns that this time of year is known for lower performance in forecasting El Niños. But in general, scientists who follow these things are anticipating what could become a strong event.

“We’re carefully watching the potential development of an El Niño later this spring and into summer,” said forecaster Tony Barnston of the International Research Institute for Climate and Society in a recorded briefing message. “Below the surface we have a lot of warming and that could eventually make its way to the surface and create an El Niño.”

The warm water just below the ocean’s surface is on par with that of the biggest El Niño ever recorded, in 1997-98. That event caused $35 billion in damages and was blamed for around 23,000 deaths worldwide, according to the University of New South Wales. The 1997-98 El Niño is also the only other time since records begin in 1980 that sub-surface Pacific Ocean water has been this warm in April.

Climate change skeptics point to El Niño-fueled 1998 as the year global warming “stopped.” Of course, global warming hasn’t stopped at all. The 10 hottest years on record have all occurred since 1998. The acceleration of that warming has slowed, though, compared with the previous breakneck pace during the late 20th century.

One of the theories put forth by the mainstream scientific community to explain the slow-down since 1998 has been increased storage of warm water in the Pacific Ocean. If that theory is true, and if a major El Niño is indeed in the works, the previously rapid rate of global warming could resume, with dramatic consequences.

As I wrote last fall, the coming El Niño could be enough to make 2014 the hottest year in recorded history, and 2015 could be even warmer than that. The 1997-98 super El Niño was enough to boost global temperatures by nearly a quarter of a degree Celsius. If that scale of warming happens again, the world could approach a 1ºC departure from pre-industrial times as early as next year. As climate scientist James Hansen has warned, that’s around the highest that temperatures have ever been since human civilization began.

Indeed, even the forecast is already having an effect: An index of global food prices reached a 10-month high in March, blamed in part on shortages an El Niño may exacerbate. Here’s what else we could expect:

A severe drought continues to rage in and around Indonesia, which an El Niño would likely worsen.

Peru’s anchovy catch may be significantly affected should a strong El Niño materialize.

Australia’s ongoing battles with bush fires may be intensified once its dry season resumes later this year.

But perhaps the strangest impact so far has been in India, where monsoon forecasting is at the heart of national politics. The meteorology department there has accused US weather forecasters of “spreading rumors” and colluding to ruin the Indian stock market by forecasting a return of El Niño.

There’s a bit of good news, too: Hurricane seasons in the Atlantic tend to be less severe under this kind of forecast. And people in drought-stricken California could be forgiven if they’re crossing their fingers for a strong El Niño, which is linked to some of the wettest years in state history. Still, it’s certainly no slam dunk that an El Niño would be enough to end the crippling drought there or even bring above normal rainfall. And if the El Niño ends up being as strong as current predictions indicate, there’s a chance it may even tip the scales from drought to deluge across the state, spurring damaging mudslides amid bursts of heavy rain. The two strongest El Niños in the last 30 years—1982-83 and 1997-98—both caused widespread damage from flooding in California.

The moral of the story here is: Be careful what you wish for.

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Why This Year’s El Niño Could Grow Into a Monster

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On ‘Global Terror’ and the Fukushima Fuel Move

The Fukushima Daiichi cleanup enters a new phase as TEPCO begins moving fuel rods from a damaged reactor building. See the original post: On ‘Global Terror’ and the Fukushima Fuel Move ; ;Related ArticlesDot Earth Blog: On ‘Global Terror’ and the Fukushima Fuel MoveRoom for Agreement on Next Steps for Nuclear Power?Examining ‘Media’s Global Warming Fail’ ;

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On ‘Global Terror’ and the Fukushima Fuel Move

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Dot Earth Blog: 10,000-Year Study Finds Oceans Warming Fast, But From a Cool Baseline

Recent ocean warming is from a relatively cool baseline, a new study finds. See the original post:   Dot Earth Blog: 10,000-Year Study Finds Oceans Warming Fast, But From a Cool Baseline ; ;Related ArticlesDot Earth Blog: Performing Global Warming10,000-Year Study Finds Oceans Warming Fast, But From a Cool BaselineHow Does a Tick Do Its Dirty Work? Research Video Offers a Clue ;

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Dot Earth Blog: 10,000-Year Study Finds Oceans Warming Fast, But From a Cool Baseline

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Fukushima meltdown appears to have sickened American infants

Fukushima meltdown appears to have sickened American infants

Shutterstock

Fallout from that Fukushima meltdown thing a couple years back? It’s not just the Japanese who are suffering, though their plight is obviously the worst.

Radioactive isotopes blasted from the failed reactors may have given kids born in Hawaii and along the American West Coast health disorders which, if left untreated, can lead to permanent mental and physical handicaps.

Children born in Alaska, California, Hawaii, Oregon, and Washington between one week and 16 weeks after the meltdowns began in March 2011 were 28 percent more likely to suffer from congenital hypothyroidism than were kids born in those states during the same period one year earlier, a new study shows. In the rest of the U.S. during that period in 2011, where radioactive fallout was less severe, the risks actually decreased slightly compared with the year before.

Substantial quantities of the radioisotope iodine-131 were produced by the meltdowns, then wafted over the Pacific Ocean and fell over Hawaii, the American West Coast, and other Pacific countries in rain and snow, reaching levels hundreds of times greater than those considered safe.

After entering our bodies, radioactive iodine gathers in our thyroids. Thyroids are glands that release hormones that control how we grow. In babies, including those not yet born, such radiation can stunt the development of body and brain. The condition is known as congenital hypothyroidism. It is treatable when detected early.

“Fukushima fallout appeared to affect all areas of the U.S., and was especially large in some, mostly in the western part of the nation,” wrote researchers with the Radiation and Public Health Project in their peer-reviewed paper published in Open Journal of Pediatrics.

The links between iodine radioisotope exposure and juvenile hypothyroidism were established after the 1986 Chernobyl meltdown. The authors of this new paper suspect that the spike in Pacific Coast cases in 2011 was linked to the Fukushima accident, but they warn that further analysis is needed “to better understand any association between iodine exposure from Fukushima-Dai-ichi and congenital hypothyroidism risk.”

Their findings may be only a tip of an epidemiological iceberg.

“Congenital hypothyroidism can be used as one measure to assess any potential changes in U.S. fetal and infant health status after Fukushima because official data was available relatively promptly,” the researchers wrote. “However, health departments will soon have available for other 2010 and 2011 indicators of fetal/infant health, including fetal deaths, premature births, low weight births, neonatal deaths, infant deaths, and birth defects.”

So stay tuned. Two years and one month after the meltdown, we’re only just beginning to understand how the nuclear catastrophe affected the health of people living around the vast Pacific Ocean.

John Upton is a science aficionado and green news junkie who

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Fukushima meltdown appears to have sickened American infants

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