Warm Pacific Waters and Not Global Warming, Blamed for Extreme Weather Along West and East Coast US
Weird weather that people along West and East Coasts of North America witnessed this year has been attributed to warm pacific waters that refused to cool down.
A blob of warm water was first noticed last year and then estimated to be around 1000 miles wide, extending to about 300 feet into the ocean. Now however it is longer in dimension extending from Alaska to Mexico. Researchers noticed that the blob is 2 to 7 degree Fahrenheit lower than the temperature of waters in the region. This prevented circulating air from cooling, causing warming events and drought like conditions along the west coast.
"In the fall of 2013 and early 2014 we started to notice a big, almost circular mass of water that just didn't cool off as much as it usually did, so by spring of 2014 it was warmer than we had ever seen it for that time of year," said Nick Bond, a climate scientist at the University of Washington's Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean.
A related study claimed that a pattern called North Pacific Mode forced cold air over East Coast area and forced warm dry air over the West Coast. The pattern is a result of higher than normal sea surface temperatures.
"Lately this mode seems to have emerged as second to the El Niño Southern Oscillation in terms of driving the long-term variability, especially over North America," Dennis Hartmann, the second study's author, said.
However the warming of ocean's waters are not being attributed to climate change or global warming.
"This is a taste of what the ocean will be like in future decades. It wasn't caused by global warming, but it's producing conditions that we think are going to be more common with global warming," Bond said.
