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30 July 2018
A Guest Post on Another Blog That You Should Read.
Jason Furtado, a meteorologist (at my alma mater) the Uni. of Oklahoma, has a guest post on the Climate.Gov blog about the likely El Nino this winter. Every El Nino is different, but El Nino’s centered in the Pacific can have much different weather patterns across the U.S. compared to an East Pacific El Nino. Dr. Furtado explains why he thinks this one may be centered in the Pacific (good …
12 May 2016
La Nina Watch for Fall 2016
NOAA has issued a La Nina Watch for the fall, and there are growing signs that the super El Nino of last winter will become a La Nina event for our next one. It is too early to say how strong a La Nina will develop, but the odds are around 3 out of 4 that we will see a La Nina winter. La Nina events tend to bring cooler …
16 February 2016
January 2016 Blows Away Global Temp. Records
NASA announced today that this past January was an amazing 1.13 degrees C. above the 1950-1980 average. It becomes only the 4th month ever to reach over 1 degree C above the average, with the other 3 months being in 2015. The record is mainly due to the increasing greenhouse gases, and the strong El Nino in the Pacific. Having now reached 1 degree C above the average, we are …
1 January 2016
December 2015 Re-writes The Record Books. So Does the Entire Year.
December 2015 is in the record books and it was not just the warmest December on record for much of the Eastern Seaboard, it broke the old records by an amount that’s best described as incredible. This is what happens when you combine the strongest El Nino event on record, with the hottest year on record globally, along with the hottest oceans on record as well. Dr. Michael Mann at …
30 December 2015
2016 Brings A Changing Weather Pattern, but El Nino and The Hot Oceans Still Rule.
The weather pattern is finally changing. We’ve seen 5-6 weeks of extreme warmth in the Eastern U.S., floods and tornadoes in the south, and in the West, cold and snow. The new year will be different, but it will still be a rather mild and wet El Nino pattern, just not as warm as it has been in Eastern North America. The polar jet will dip down closer to New …
10 December 2015
U.S. Has Warmest Autumn on Record
Temperatures across the U.S. (at 3 PM) were over 30 degrees above average in North Dakota this afternoon. With dozens of cities reporting temperatures of 12-28 degrees above average. The map below is based on the average weather (for 3 PM on December 9th) over the last 30 years. The maps below show the temperatures over the last 30 and the last 90 days compared to normal. The NOAA Climate …
4 December 2015
El Nino In A Can
Click the image above to see a video from the GFDL CM2.6 climate model. This is NOT this year’s El Nino. When you start a climate model in which the ocean and the land and atmosphere can interact with each other, weather systems develop on their own. So do hurricanes and blizzards, and yes El Nino events happen as well. This El Nino happened naturally about 80+ years into the simulation. …
2 December 2015
The Coming Winter Part Two: The Elephant in the Room
THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM Ask me what the Northern Hemisphere winter will be like, and I can easily tell you. As a matter of fact, It’s a slam dunk! It will be WAY above normal. I’ll say the same for the whole planet for December through January. As a matter of fact, rising greenhouse gases in our atmosphere make it quite likely that the U.S. will see an above average …
16 November 2015
El Nino Warms Equatorial Pacific To Record Levels
The 2015 El Nino continues to be one of the strongest ever measured and the weekly temperatures this week have passed the 1997 event, which was the strongest on record. The El Nino index is based on a running average, so technically this El Nino has not passed the 97 event, but we now have a new record of warm water in the area, where El Nino is measured. The …
6 November 2015
Satellite Detects Food Chain Impact of El Nino
El Nino is not just a warming of the surface waters in the East Pacific, the depth of that warm water increases as the thermocline lowers. This keeps nutrient rich colder waters from upwelling to the surface, impacting the very bottom of the food chain. NASA has a cool page (with much more info) where you can toggle back and forth and see the drop in chlorophyll here. How you …
Dan Satterfield has worked as an on air meteorologist for 32 years in Oklahoma, Florida and Alabama. Forecasting weather is Dan's job, but all of Earth Science is his passion. This journal is where Dan writes about things he has too little time for on air. Dan blogs about peer-reviewed Earth science for Junior High level audiences and up.