From IPS MeteoStar, this “YIKES!”
Is this the Big Niño pattern we’ve been waiting for all these years (well, one, anyway)? Its the kind of thing we looked for last winter during the giant El Niño and there was all that publicity about how much precip the Great Southwest would likley get. Then it was pretty much a “no show.”
Could this really be a lagged Big Niño pattern caused by a stratospheric phenomenon known as the Quasi-biennal Oscillation or “QBO”?
It was posited years ago by a researcher in a peer-reviewed journal article (not The Atlantic or Reader’s Digest) that I have been too lazy to look up, that the QBO can induce a lag in El Niño effects.
Hmmmmm.
Personally, I blew it off when I read it, but now have hope that person was onto something.
Also, in Science mag recently, it said that the “QBO was positioned to produce heavy rains in Europe”, the first time I have heard that the QBO was associated with weather in the Weathersphere where all weather occurs, clouds and storms and sh… like that. Hahaha, it is so funny to cuss right there, out of science context!
(Its not really called the “Weathersphere” but rather, the “Troposphere1“, but thanks for reading that anyway. ) ((Too much laughter-inducing caffeine imbibed this AM…))
The Troposphere is BELOW the stratosphere as my one blog reader might already know, but its generally thought that doings in the stratosphere don’t have much effect on the Troposphere. Well, unless there’s a lot of smog up there produced by a volcanic belch (like Pinatubo, which cooled the earth for a coupla years back in ’92-’93). That’s 1992 and 1993.
Will be fun to see what REALLY happens. And, oh, I guess things are collapsing sooner than around the 20th, too. But will defer to Bob and the other fine professional meteorologists to let you know about that happenstance. (There are some great photos from Yellowstone by Mike L in Bob’s last post!)
The End
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1It was suggested by this keyboard pounder in a scintillating article, oh, 50 years ago or so, in the Spartan Daily student newspaper, San Jose State, not Michigan State, that the “Troposphere” be renamed, “The Pollutosphere” due to all the crap we put in it and that we rename Earth, “Polluto”). Think of what the other civilizations out there think of us as they see things flying off the planet into outer space; “There they go, littering again….”, besides their evaluations of the increasing aerosol depth of the atmosphere.
Polluto? Fits doesn’t it , with all we’ve messed up; microplastics throughout the oceans, smog most everywhere, invasive plants and species wiping stuff out, burning up forests, etc. Perhaps renaming Earth could be seen as an honorarium of sorts for the late planet, “Pluto.” Well, that was a depressing summary. Need more coffee…and more thinking about storms!
