The Madden Julian Oscillation And Its Effects On Eastern United States Climate

Global climate change and variability, particularly at regional levels, are not completely understood. Therefore, there are many significant

The El-Niño Southern Oscillation is a complex sequence of natural climate variations that take place in the tropics of the Pacific Ocean, yet affect the climate of the entire globe. The climate phenomenon, known as ENSO, has three main phases that each differ markedly in their atmospheric and oceanic conditions. El Niño, also known as “the warm phase”, is the first cycle that begins when warm water in the eastern Pacific Ocean shifts to the west toward South America. During El Niño, the east-to-west trade winds halt and sometimes reverse directions, causing significant disturbances in the biological life of the Pacific Ocean. Conversely, La Niña is the complete opposite of El Niño. La Niña, also called “the cold phase” brings unusually strong east-to-west winds and colder temperatures along the equatorial Pacific. Both phases have consequences that affect the regular atmospheric conditions of the world; El Niño is linked to both droughts and floods, La Niña is linked to extreme tropical cyclones and monsoon rains. The climatic events also have relationships to forest fires, economic changes, famine, plagues and widespread crop failure. The study of ENSO is necessary in order to attempt to reveal patterns and key factors that can affect the intensity and severity of this phenomenon that occurs globally on average every two to seven years.

Over the past few years record-breaking and extreme weather events including sweltering summers, super-storms, wildfires and shrinking icecaps, alongside the acidifying of the oceans has been the topic of discussion. In Missouri this winter we have seen more snow, extreme freezing temperatures, and then day’s later 60 degree weather just to start over again. Who or what is responsible for these record breaking events and climate changes?

It is important to understand the various cycles our atmosphere goes through due to how they affect our daily lives. The ENSO Cycle has a large impact globally and locally in California as we have seen with the long-term drought Southern California is currently in. The ENSO cycle can be defined by sea surface temperature (SST) anomaly in the Pacific Equatorial Area known as Nino 3.4 region (5oN-5oS, 120o-170oW). Unusually cooler waters (-.5 degrees centigrade) occurring for three consecutive months outlines a La Niña. La Niña’s bring wetter weather to Australia and Indonesia but often leaves the Eastern Pacific dry. Unlike La Niña’s, unusually warm water (+.5 degrees centigrade above average) occurring for 3 consecutive month’s outlines an

could have improved in this extended abstract. On several occasions, they used abbreviations without definitions. Some of these included “AMS”, “AUG”, “NCDC” and “NWS”. Though these abbreviations would have been common knowledge in the meteorology community, they should have still been defined with their first use. Another off-putting tendency was that the authors referred to Changnon by his first name, which was especially strange since they later referred to him by his last name. Furthermore, there were what appeared to be a few typographical errors in the abstract. For example, in Figures 4, 6, and 7, the nautical mile unit is abbreviated as “nim” instead of “nmi”. Additionally, the tense was not constant in the first paragraph. These changes would have been relative easy for the authors to

El Nino is a warm current in the Pacific Ocean that flows southward along South America’s west coast. It usually last nine to twelfth months and returns an average 4 years. Normally deep, cold Pacific waters well up to the surface of the Peruvian and Ecuadorian coast, bringing up nutrients and chilling surface waters and causing climatic changes worldwide. A powerful El Nino in 1982 and 1983 caused severe drought in Australia and Indonesia and an unusually large number of storms in California. During the 1997-98 El Nino, heavy rains caused flooding in Peru, Ecuador, and Argentina; monsoons and cyclones struck Madagascar: and severe storms pelted Texas and the Southeast. More recent El Nino events in 2003 and 2006 were not as devastating.

Extreme weather has been on the rise for many years. Tornadoes, high amounts of precipitation, floods, and droughts have all been affected by the constant climate change. There has been many fires, storms, and tornadoes in different parts of the united states that have never happened before until recently. In the beginning of the article Chanan says “The United States has suffered record-breaking floods along the Mississippi River this year, plus giant snowstorms from the Midwest to the Northeast, massive wildfires in the West and South, deadly tornadoes in the South and Midwest and an extended drought in a quarter of the contiguous United States” (Chanan 1). I will use this information in my essay to show how climate change is affected by

Over the last six decades heat waves have increased in the Midwest. In July of 2011, 132 million people were under heart alert and the Midwest experienced most of it with temperatures of 100 degrees F. This is caused because of the increased humidity. We now have heat warnings that saved a lot of lives. We have to deal with high temperatures, pollution, and pollen exposure.

The 2015 El Niño is projected to be the strongest one in over a decade, leading to record-high temperatures. El Niño causes variability

A very well known climate expert, James Hanson is known for studying and experiencing weather patterns for years and dedicated his life to understand and educating people on them. During my research, I took time to interview him and investigate just as he would.

This is going to be the tour of the United States to learn about the weather in each region. Different regions in the United States have different weather patterns. The north-eastern part of the United States tends to have warmer and colder weather throughout the year. While the south-eastern part of the United states tends to be warm all year round and is more likely to have hurricanes. The midwest region of the U.S. tends to have warm to brisk weather throughout the year. The western region of the United States tends to have warmer temperatures all year and lots of rain. The United States has a very complexed weather system.

The first article or website that I explored was titled Extreme weather. It begins by stating that as the world has warmed, it has triggered several other things in the earth’s climate to be altered. It then goes further into depth specifically naming the factors that have been changing due to the altering of the climate. These factors include: heat waves, droughts, heavy downpours, floods, and lastly, hurricanes (Extreme Weather, 2014).

The mid-west of the United States is not effected by El Niño as much as the other portions of North America are. Generally speaking, there are usually above-average temperatures in the Northern Plains and Upper Mid-West leading to a milder Fall and Winter. This also reduces heating/energy bills. While the Ohio and Tennessee Valleys are left with drier and below-average precipitation (NOAA, 2017). Since there is a reduction in moisture

Groundbreaking heat in the summer of 2003 caused an estimated 70,000 deaths in Europe. Temperatures during that summer in parts of Europe were 5-10°C (9-18°F) higher than in 2001. The number of record high temperature events in the United States has been increasing, while the number of record low temperature events has been decreasing, since 1950. The U.S. has also witnessed increasing numbers of intense rainfall events. Since the 1970s, December-February temperature increases have ranged from 1 to 2 degrees in the Pacific Northwest to about 4 degrees in the Northeast to more than 6 degrees in Alaska. Winters are getting shorter, too. Spring arrives 10-14 days earlier than it did just 20 years ago. The frequency of large wildfires and the total area burned have been steadily increasing in the Western United States because of the lack of rainfall, with global warming believed to be a major contributing factor. There have been many other rapidly changing weather patterns in the past few decades. The question is: Are humans responsible for these unusual weather patterns because of global warming? Scientists worldwide are trying to find the answer.

2a) reveals that the winter-to-winter recurrence of SST anomalies is more widespread in the global ocean (reddish shades) than previously thought 17. It is estimated that 54% of the oceanic area (spanning 65N-65S and 0-360) exhibits a positive correlation difference of >0.0 (37% if r > 0.1). We have already mentioned that a positive difference between 12 and 6 months lag correlation could be considered as a significant indication of re-emergence (red-noise curve in Fig 1a). Further, the spatial distribution of the difference in SSTA lag correlation spreads a wide domain compared to the global area. Therefore, larger areas with any positive difference cannot be neglected as it can influence the overlying atmosphere quite significantly.