{"id":2462,"date":"2014-08-07T13:57:51","date_gmt":"2014-08-07T20:57:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.americanriverwildlife.com\/?p=2462"},"modified":"2014-08-07T15:15:19","modified_gmt":"2014-08-07T22:15:19","slug":"drought-busting-el-nino-getting-less-likely","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.americanriverwildlife.com\/?p=2462","title":{"rendered":"Drought-Busting El Ni\u00f1o Getting Less Likely"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Average<\/a>
Average sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies (\u00b0C) for the week centered on 30 July 2014. Anomalies are computed with respect to the 1981 – 2010 base period weekly means. Photo: NOAA<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The idea of an El Ni\u00f1o rescuing California from its devastating drought appears to be nothing more than wishful\u00a0fancy.<\/p>\n

Not only have climate scientists recently downgraded the strength of a potential El Ni\u00f1o, but a report released Thursday by the U.S. Climate Prediction Center indicates that the odds of an El Ni\u00f1o happening this year at all are\u00a0down.<\/p>\n

An El Ni\u00f1o is the much-watched warming of the Pacific Ocean that tends to influence worldwide weather and has had many in California hoping it will trigger a wet winter for the rain-starved\u00a0state.<\/p>\n

While Thursday’s climate report suggests that an El Ni\u00f1o is still likely, the chances of seeing one this fall or winter dropped from 80 percent – projected in early reports – to 65\u00a0percent.<\/p>\n

The change, said climate scientist Michelle L’Heureux, comes as the warmer-than-usual surface temperatures observed this spring in the equatorial Pacific have\u00a0cooled.<\/p>\n

The same underwater swell that pushed heat to the surface, known as a Kelvin Wave, is having its normal counter effect, but that effect has been much stronger than usual and has moved more cold water up than expected, L’Heureux\u00a0explained.<\/p>\n

“We’re still banking on seeing a reinvigoration of El Ni\u00f1o,” she noted. “But with that said, we wanted to lower our projections because there are structural weaknesses that have made this El Ni\u00f1o less\u00a0likely.”<\/p>\n

The federal forecast calls for the El Ni\u00f1o to be weak or moderate. The consensus earlier this year was that the event would be at least of moderate strength – and some believed it would be really\u00a0strong.<\/p>\n

In Northern California, strong El Ni\u00f1o’s have correlated with wet winters. San Francisco’s biggest rain year in the last century came during the big 1997-98 El Ni\u00f1o.<\/p>\n

Weak and moderate El Ni\u00f1o’s, however, haven’t translated into significant rain years in Northern California. (Southern California has sometimes seen wetter weather during moderate and weak\u00a0events.)<\/p>\n

The absence of a strong El Ni\u00f1o doesn’t sentence Northern California to a dry winter.<\/p>\n

More at SFGate.com<\/a> >>><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The idea of an El Ni\u00f1o rescuing California from its devastating drought appears to be nothing more than wishful\u00a0fancy. Not only have climate scientists recently downgraded the strength of a potential El Ni\u00f1o, but a report released Thursday by the U.S. Climate Prediction Center indicates that the odds of an El Ni\u00f1o happening this year … Continue reading Drought-Busting El Ni\u00f1o Getting Less Likely<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[209,7,12,3,13,6,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-boating","category-fire","category-fish","category-rafting","category-salmon","category-water","category-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.americanriverwildlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.americanriverwildlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.americanriverwildlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.americanriverwildlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.americanriverwildlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2462"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.americanriverwildlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2462\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2464,"href":"https:\/\/www.americanriverwildlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2462\/revisions\/2464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.americanriverwildlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.americanriverwildlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.americanriverwildlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}