WASHINGTON, D.C. - It’s no secret that we are in an El Niño year and that the numbers have meteorologists certain that this is one for the record books.
Previously referred to as the “Godzilla” of El Niños, NASA has been tracking the pattern to monitor its growth and learn more about the impact it could have.
“El Niño is a fascinating phenomenon because it has such far-reaching and diverse impacts,” Lesley Ott, Research Meteorologist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, said in an earlier NASA release. “The fact that fires in Indonesia are linked with circulation patterns that influence rainfall over the United States shows how complex and interconnected the Earth system is.”
Now, NASA has placed satellite images from the U.S./European Ocean Surface Topography Mission (OSTM)/Jason-2 mission side by side with those of the El Niño event of 1998 (the strongest on record) and the resemblance is striking.
"In 2014, the current El Niño teased us -- wavering off and on," Josh Willis, Project Scientist for the Jason missions at JPL, said in the latest release. "But in early 2015, atmospheric conditions changed, and El Niño steadily expanded in the central and eastern Pacific. Although the sea surface height signal in 1997 was more intense and peaked in November of that year, in 2015, the area of high sea levels is larger. This could mean we have not yet seen the peak of this El Niño."
This adds to our previous report, in which it was announced that despite seeing more precipitation and stronger storms this year than the last, the peak for El Niño wasn’t expected to hit until late January-early February, 2016.
Though NASA is still trying to understand the correlation between El Niño’s warming of the Pacific and how that effects weather around the world, it did say that one anticipated result is some relief for California and the Western U.S.
"The water story for much of the American West over most of the past decade has been dominated by punishing drought," Bill Patzert, JPL Climatologist, said. "Reservoir levels have fallen to record or near-record lows, while groundwater tables have dropped dangerously in many areas. Now we’re preparing to see the flip side of nature’s water cycle -- the arrival of steady, heavy rains and snowfall."
But while hopes continue to raise, NASA continues to caution that no one can predict the exact timing or intensity of U.S. El Niño impacts. "Looking ahead to summer, we might not be celebrating the demise of this El Niño. It could be followed by a La Niña [associated with less moisture in the air over cooler ocean waters], which could bring roughly opposite effects to the world’s weather," Patzert added.
While large El Niños delivered about twice the average amount of rainfall to Southern California back in 1982-83 and 1997-98, Patzert cautioned that, over the long haul, big El Niños are infrequent and supply only seven percent of California’s water.
As 2016 shapes up to be one of the largest El Niños yet, we will keep crossing our fingers that it could bring record relief as well.
