The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says El Nino conditions are forming in the ocean.
Michael Halpert, the Deputy Director of the Climate Prediction Center for NOAA, says ocean surface temperatures are above normal but are not yet warm enough to officially proclaim El Niño conditions. “Down below the surface of the ocean,” he explains, “we’ve seen large changes in that of above average temperatures. And often times when that happens it eventually does surface and that signals we have transitioned into El Niño.”
Halpert’s team predicts California will have a 65 percent chance of a wetter than normal winter. But that is no guarantee. “I wish I could say, for sure, there will be a wet winter in California, but the reality is the link between El Niño and precipitation is not as strong for California as it is for other regions, like the Gulf Coast.”
In explaining the lack of rain from last year Halpert is quick to point out there wasn’t a lack of rain globally. “It was a pretty normal year and we saw as much rain fall as other years.” It, unfortunately, didn’t fall on California. There was a block in the atmosphere that sent the jet stream north rather than west, taking with it rain storms into Canada and Alaska.
Such a block is the subject of research by climatologists like Professor Lisa Sloan of the University of California at Santa Cruz. Her 2004 paper, Disappearing Arctic Sea Ice Reduces Available Water in the American West, predicted the jet stream being pushed further north and California getting less rain.
“What happens is, when the arctic ice melts, it’s like removing a cold lid off the water. It releases heat that warms the atmosphere. A warmer atmosphere will then steer the jet stream,” says Sloan.
Sloan’s research has not yet garnered widespread media coverage but if another block forms again to reroute the jet stream, you will most likely be hearing her name and about her research more frequently. Scientists, farmers as well as anyone who gets water out of a tap next year in California, also, will no doubt, become more familiar with an atmospheric block if it occurs again.