The Southwest and even parts of the Northwest have been exceptionally dry over the past several months. The left and the media will blame climate change because, well, they blame just about everything on climate change. The real culprit is an exceptionally strong La Niña.
La Niña is part of what scientists call the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) cycle. It’s one of nine oscillations spread out over the world’s oceans.
An El Niño is a warming of the waters in the equatorial Pacific that tends to result in cooler-than-average temperatures and more rainfall in the Southwest. A La Niña has the opposite effect: a cooling of the waters in the equatorial Pacific that results in warmer-than-average temperatures and drier conditions across the Southwest. As the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) explains, “These changes disrupt the large-scale air movements in the tropics, triggering a cascade of global side effects.”
El Niño and La Niña episodes tend to last nine to 12 months, but they can last much longer. And there is a “neutral” phase in between the two.
As this figure from the National Ocean Service shows, a La Niña tends to push the jet stream north, leaving the Southwest drier. We are currently in a strong La Niña, and it doesn’t appear to be weakening.
Climate scientists don’t fully understand the ocean oscillations. They are all different, with some lasting decades before shifting from a cool phase to a warm phase or vice versa.
And scientists don’t fully understand why and when the phases shift. A few months ago, scientists were predicting a roughly 70 percent chance the current La Niña would last through May. The National Weather Service now sees a good chance it will last even longer.
But is the El Niño oscillation caused by climate change? Here’s the UN’s answer, “El Niño events are not caused by climate change—they are a natural reoccurring phenomenon that have been occurring for thousands of years.”
Dang, and just when the media thought everything was caused by climate change.
March 22, 2022