Initial note: Don’t get angry before you read the whole thing. I am absolutely not an Anthropogenic Climate Change denier! This diary is specifically about how a natural weather occurrence is exacerbating this year’s temperatures. The Earth is still definitely getting warmer.
There is no arguing that this year’s April is the hottest one recorded in 136 recorded years. A discussion of that fact, and the effect of the warming in general, can be found at the DK diary “Earth records hottest April and it wasn’t even close”. (here)
Not noted in that diary is this: In addition to human activity, cyclic weather patterns affect global temperatures, and the larger the pattern, the larger the effect. This year is no exception. It brought a particularly strong El Niño to the Pacific Ocean. It’s been news now for quite some time, but for those who’d like some info about this cyclic phenomenon:
All pull quotes from: El Niño and global warming — What’s the Connection? (link)
El Niño is a complex and naturally occurring weather pattern that results when ocean temperatures in the Pacific Ocean near the equator vary from the norm. The phenomenon typically occurs every two to seven years. The 2015-2016 El Niño, however, is being called a “super” El Niño, the worst in 15 years. The two previous super El Niños occurred in 1982-1983 and 1997-1998.
So this El Niño (a really bad one) is actually the strongest since 1998. Because of the way that El Niño affects trade winds, it was pretty much guaranteed (we knew in November here in CA) that this year’s April would be hot. (You should also be preparing for one of the hottest summers on record.) While scientists do know that a strong El Niño will definitely affect short term temperatures as result, there is no solid answer about how climate change will affect the strength, or even cycle, of El Niños in future.
One 2014 study suggests that super El Niño events could double in the future due to climate change. Using 20 climate models to examine possible changes in El Niño over the next 100 years, the scientists projected that extreme El Niño events could occur roughly every 10 years instead of every 20.
So, El Niño, a weather pattern that already exaggerates world temperature may be stronger in future. In those years when very strong El Niños do occur you can expect hotter average temperatures as well. Scientists still don’t know if strong El Niños will mean continued climate changes (will those hot temperatures stay higher?).
Like I said at the start, I’m not denying climate change at all. This is a comment about short term weather changes (by a known cause) vs. long term climate changes (continuing beyond that cause) vs. temperature. Weather is short term while climate is long term, but “short term” doesn’t always mean “daily”. The NOAA has a great description for the difference between the two:
Climate is what you expect, weather is what you get.
“Temperature” is a measurement that can be used to describe either weather or climate. So, this year’s hot April (hotter than expected with original temperature increase predictions not including the force of this year’s “super” El Niño) is currently best considered more “weather” than climate. That’s because there was an expected increase in temperature, but we actually increased more than in previous years according to the existing trend. If the now stronger pattern continues after the El Niño and holds strong, it then will become a true part of climate change.
We’ll only really know the answer this time next year.
The following is written in response to the grammar-oriented discussion below. It is not a part of the original diary. To those who have been suggesting that I need to go back to grammar school:
Actually, I don’t need the “lesson” at all.
This has been a test.
I have never, ever trolled anyone before, but I did here — and who knows, by openly admitting that, I may get sidelined and this post may be deleted. Deleting this post would be a shame, it contains valuable information. I did not write the diary with the intent of taking this action, but the tone of the first commenter (GayIthican), one that you have to admit was pretty rude, made me feel that I needed to do it — just to check. In fact, that commenter probably knew the “e” was a typo because s/he failed to include all three instances of the word “affect” (two of which correctly used “a”) in the paragraph containing them, and chose instead to pull quote only part of it.
What I truly wrote:
So this El Niño (a really bad one) is actually the strongest since 1998. Because of the way that El Niño affects trade winds, it was pretty much guaranteed (we knew in November here in CA) that this year’s April would be hot. (You should also be preparing for one of the hottest summers on record.) While scientists do know that a strong El Niño will definitely affect short term temperatures as result, there is no solid answer about how climate change will effect the strength, or even cycle, of El Niños in future.
What s/he quoted:
While scientists do know that a strong El Niño will definitely affect short term temperatures as result, there is no solid answer about how climate change will effect the strength, or even cycle, of El Niños in future.
(sigh.) My full confession follows:
In the comments section, I was deliberately being obtuse and stubborn (for example, I well-know the difference between a noun and a verb), and for good reason. I wanted to see how far this would go, how much attention would be drawn to a grammar point in a non-grammar diary, and how many more comments I would receive here than in other diaries I have written where all the comments were on topic. Ready for some numbers?
As I type this edit, this diary has 42 comments, and of those 42 — 14 (some of which I wrote) are dedicated to a topic that is not the topic of the diary. 35% of the comments responding to this diary are about grammar.
In fact, the original content of this diary (prior to this edit) contains 2,946 characters — including multiple accent-marked “n”s — and out of that 2,946, only two letters were wrong, one in the title and one in the body of the diary. (That’s 0.07% for anyone counting.) Also, the change in letters did not even markedly alter the meaning of the sentence and title they were contained within. (I didn’t accidentally include a “no”, call “God” “Dog”, or “battle” my “bottle”.)
So why did I bother with this ruse?
Well, I did it because the last few diaries I wrote had very little discussion attached to them, and they were neither un-researched nor unimportant.
“Leveling the Paying Field” is a discussion about a possible stop-gap measure for SNAP (one that I came up with and I don’t think could have been tried prior to per-item tracking of goods for sale) that only has 11 comments. On that diary, I even bothered to note that there was no typo in the title. :)
“A Short History of Law-Abiding and Targeted-Law-Breaking Disobedience” is a diary about peaceful protesting, and it includes information that one commenter didn’t know about Rosa Parks. (She broke no law in retaining her seat.) That diary has only 7 comments.
“Please Protest in the Streets but Stay Off the Freeways!” (a diary written by me as the survivor of a violent car crash and a resident of Los Angeles county) only has 14 comments.
It would appear that people are far more interested in correcting someone’s grammar than actually being involved in serious discussions. I’m now editing this post (yep, I’m happily changing those two lowly “e”s to “a”s), and including this information in the edit. Fun and games time is over, and you’re all far less likely to hear any of my thoughts in future. Why?
Simple, I really don’t believe you’ll take them seriously. I mean, GayIthican made that point blatantly clear:
I mean, if you want to be taken seriously………
Wait a minute, aren’t there far too many ellipses after that? (link)