The cult is trotting out yet another scary story
(USA Today) Some of the worst El Niños, the infamous climate patterns that shake up weather around the world, could double in frequency in upcoming decades due to global warming, says a new study out Sunday in the journal Nature Climate Change.
During an El Niño, water temperatures in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean tend to be warmer-than-average for an extended period of time – typically at least three to five months. This warm water brings about significant changes in global weather patterns.
The most powerful El Niños – such as the ones that developed in 1982-83 and 1997-98 – are forecast to occur once every 10 years throughout the rest of this century, according to study lead author Wenju Cai of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, Australia’s national science agency. Over the past 100 years or so, however these “extreme” El Niños occurred only once every 20 years, he said.
Hilarious. We know the conditions that cause an El Nino to occur, but we do not understand how those conditions come about in the first place.
The research results came from an aggregation of 20 climate models, which were used in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report.
Oh, good, more computer models.
“It looks like a solid study,” said meteorologist Michael Mann of Penn State University, who was not involved in the research. “The authors appear to provide reasonably convincing evidence that El Niño events are likely to become more extreme as the climate continues to warm, in turn implying greater future regional climate/weather extremes than past studies.”
If Michael “robust debate” Mann (who is being called out by Judith Curry) thinks this is solid, it’s probably complete bunk. Regardless, you know what it doesn’t prove? Anthropogenic causation.
