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Hothouse Monsters Clash: Godzilla El Nino Pummels Pacific’s Hot Blob
6
September, 2015
Two
climate change spawned monsters are duking it out over thousands of
miles of Pacific Ocean waters. And in a human heated world its an
epic battle between these two warming fueled atmospheric and oceanic
monsters — the
Godzilla El Nino versus the Pacific Ocean’s Hot Blob.
*
* * * *
Ridiculously
Resilient Ridge. RRR. Blocking high pressure system. All names given
to a sprawling heat dome that has plagued the U.S. West Coast for the
better part of two years running. It’s a weather system largely
responsible for the California drought — the
worst in at least 1200 years.
A weather system implicated in an extraordinarily intense outbreak of
wildfires across the North American West from Alaska through British
Columbia and all along the US West Coast — including within the
usually moist rain forests of Washington and Oregon.
(The
RRR is shrinking and increasingly besieged by storms. A sign that the
El Nino related Pacific Storm track intensification is beginning to
assert. Image source: Earth
Nullschool.)
It’s
a system connected to a climate change-enforced melting of Arctic sea
ice and a similarly forced warming of the Northeastern Pacific Sea
surface far above typical temperatures (seehere, here,
and here).
An unprecedented and extreme heating of waters into a ‘Hot Blob’
stretching for thousands of miles. A related drying of airs. Oceanic
and atmospheric heat energy generating an implacable atmospheric
bully. A high pressure system so powerful it typically flung Pacific
Ocean storms far off course — as far north as the High Arctic.
But
now the RRR is starting weaken. Its great northward extending ridge
has retreated from Alaska. Intense storms exploding out from a system
that is likely to rival the strongest El Nino on record (1997-1998)
are now surrounding the ridge, nibbling away at its edges, cooling
the waters of the hot blob through Ekman pumping, and raging on
through Alaska and the Pacific Northwest.
(Storm-based
upwelling is starting to cool Northeastern Pacific Ocean waters in a
region that has been dominated by the Hot Blob during recent years. A
condition that is undermining some of the RRR’s support. El Nino
based storm generation to the south will likely continue to aim blows
at this oceanic heat base. Image source: Earth
Nullschool.)
It’s
early sign of RRR collapse. That the Hot Blob is starting to fail.
With some of the precursors to likely far more intense Fall and
Winter storms starting to get caught up into its spiraling decline.
And as sea surface temperature anomalies are likely to hit 2.3 to 2.4
above average in the Niño 3.4 zone in this week’s NOAA El Niño
report, more RRR-challenging storms are likely on the way.
As
Ricky Rood over at Weather Underground said this week it’s Godzilla
vs the Blob.
And Godzilla, at this point, appears to have the upper hand. And once
the Blob goes down there’s nothing to keep what are likely to be
some seriously epic storms slamming into the west coast of North
America this Fall and Winter. But
according to recent science,
there’s a high risk that the Blob will creep on back as the
Godzilla El Nino retreats during mid to late 2016. And for the West
Coast that means high risk of a pretty vicious cycle of drought to
flood to drought. A dangerous weather pattern intrinsically related
to human-forced climate change.
Links:
Hat
Tip to Colorado Bob
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