Earth may be at warmest point in 1 million years
Earth may be close to the warmest it has been in
the last million years, especially in the part of the Pacific Ocean where
potentially violent El Nino weather patterns are born, climate scientists
reported on Monday.
Earth may be close to the warmest it has been in the last million years, especially in the part of the Pacific Ocean where potentially violent El Nino weather patterns are born, climate scientists reported on Monday.
This doesn’t necessarily mean there will be more frequent El Ninos — which can disrupt normal weather around the world — but could well mean that these wild patterns will be stronger when they occur, said James Hansen of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City.
The El Nino phenomenon is an important factor in monitoring global warming, according to a paper by Hansen and colleagues published in the current Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
El Ninos can push temperatures higher than they might ordinarily be. This happened in 1998 when a so-called “super El Nino” helped heat the Earth to a record high.
Human-caused global warming influences El Ninos much as it sways tropical storms, the scientists wrote.
“The effect on frequency of either phenomenon is unclear, depending on many factors, but the intensity of the most powerful events is likely to increase as greenhouse gases increase,” they wrote. “Slowing the growth rate of greenhouse gases should diminish the probability of both super El Ninos and the most intense tropical storms.”
Ever figure out the contradiction — when scientists try to explain something to politicians and then politicians try to tell scientists what they’re allowed to say?
Posted: Tue - September 26, 2006 at 06:36 AM