El Niño, NAO Fade Fast... So What's Next?

Two Major Weather Phenomenon Losing Presence as Climate Variability Now Rules

For the past year we've blamed any and every weather extreme on El Niño and its interaction with the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO). Wait, the NAO? Look, I'm not just talking to myself again. The NAO was really present this past winter and it, along with the famous El Niño warm-water effect in the Pacific Ocean, sent moisture-soaked air up from the Gulf of Mexico as a linebacker high pressure block kept the jet stream on a steady ride up the East Coast, therefore forcing Arctic air deep into the South and throwing a plume of wintry precipitation along the I-95 corridor.

The result: record-breaking cold east of the Mississippi, powerful and damaging tornadoes in the southern plains, dozens of snowstorms and even several epic blizzards across the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast, and historic flooding in the Ohio Valley.

But what about this past weekend's torrent in Tennessee, which caused the city of Nashville to become water-logged, causing the famous Grand Ole Opry to flood? Well, climatologists say that El Niño has weakened so much already that it likely had very little impact on the event, and the NAO has pretty much spun itself out by now. That said, our weather pattern is now largely going to be affected by climate variability, or pretty much whatever happens, happens.

Ever-changing and unpredictable! This blog post has been brought to you by reason # 198,765,499,876,534 why I love weather! Enjoy it, it's the only weather you've got!

Paleotempestology: The History of Hurricanes

One of the best things about writing blog posts for The Northeast Quadrant is that I'm constantly learning new things about something I'm so passionate about. So naturally today when I was reading an article about long-term hurricane forecasting and came across the term paleotempestology, I was all kinds of like What?! Really??!

This crazy word I've never heard, which by the way spell check does NOT recognize, is the study of past tropical cyclone activity by means of geological proxies as well as historical documentary records. Hmmm... interesting. Well, it turns out this science is slowly proving that hurricane activity can be predicted decades in advance.

So, how does it work? In order to gain a perspective on prior hurricanes and predict future trends, researchers study proxy data such as sand layers deposited by storms behind barrier islands, changes in coral chemistry, variations in tree-ring patterns growing in coastal areas, and historical documents that include ships' logs and newspaper accounts. These sources of hurricane information build a picture of hurricane activity for the past hundreds and thousands of years.

Last month, hurricane pioneer Dr. William Gray of Colorado State University issued his forecast for the 2010 Atlantic hurricane season. Gray uses 60+ years of data on sea surface temperature, atmospheric pressure and winds to make his annual predictions. He says, “We assume the future is going to behave similarly to how the past has behaved.”

However, according to a recent article, predicting the number and intensity of hurricanes before they spawn in the Atlantic has been a hit-or-miss proposition, even just a few months before hurricane season begins.

Experts in the field of paleotempestology say such predictions, should they continue to validate, could provide insurers, homeowners and policymakers an opportunity to adapt by changing land-use policies, strengthening building codes and preserving or restoring natural mitigation by wetlands, floodplains, and beach and dune systems.

Hey, maybe there really is something to this paleotempestology thing... but until I can successfully pronounce it, I'm just going with paleohurricanescience!