Lamenting La Niña

Posted by Joshua S. Hill

November 12, 2007

Originally published here at Green Options (.com).

The current conditions Australia, my birthplace and home, are facing at the moment do not make it one of the “Greatest Living Condition” contenders of the world. Various levels of water restrictions ranging from level 3 to 5 make life very difficult. However, that is nothing compared to the problems being faced by our farmers. Crop failures and livestock loss are adding up to millions and millions worth of dollars lost.

As I said, it’s not really your top spot for living at the moment.

Beyond my Borders

Sadly, Australia isn’t the only country suffering at the moment (though we are definitely one of the worst hit at the moment). All across the globe countries are suffering from various meteorological scenarios.

Africa is currently suffering from flooding that has affected more than a million people. 20 African countries are currently being belted by abnormal weather, stretching in an arc across sub-Saharan Africa from Mauritania to Kenya.

La Niña normally brings above average rains to Sahel – the boundary zone in Africa between the Sahara to the north and the more fertile region to the south. But due to the warmer conditions in the Indian Ocean brought about by La Niña, the rainbelt has broadened.

“In the East African countries, particularly Kenya, Somalia and parts of Tanzania and Uganda, La Niña could influence the short rainy season in October-November-December, in the way where less rain than average could occur,” said Omar Baddour, head of the World Climate Data and Monitoring Programme at the UN’s World Meteorological Organisation (WMO).

Moving north-west and we find that America has been affected by the same weather pattern, but in an entirely different manner. The south-west and east of America has been afflicted by drought, bringing water restrictions and wildfire concerns to the inhabitants.

Texas fire officials are bracing for what could be a bout of bad wildfires, given the predicted increase in heat. Worse, with added humidity and low rainfall, the entire area is suffering.

The Cause behind it All

The story title essentially gave away the answer, but that isn’t really the point. La Niña is causing havoc the world over and it’s not doing it by the textbook either.

Africa and America – while well beaten by La Niña – are suffering predictable and historically accurate meteorological effects. However the same cannot be said for Australia and Indonesia, as we receive the brunt of an irregularity.

“The drought that’s going on in Australia right now is a very serious drought and it is one of the atypical situations associated with this particular La Nina event,” said WMO climate specialist Leslie Malone.
“The textbooks would have said that Australia would have had a problem with more precipitation than they could handle rather than less,” she told journalists, underlining that the current La Nina was “untypical”

Not Helping…

So while Africa and America are suffering from typical La Niña events, Australia and Indonesia are suffering from an atypical La Niña event. But this is because (bare with me, I’m learning as I go) of what has recently been called the Indian Ocean Dipole.

I won’t try and re-explain it any better than how Wikipedia has put it;

A positive phase [of the IOD which we are suffering from] sees greater-than-average sea-surface temperatures and greater precipitation in the western Indian Ocean region, with a corresponding cooling of waters in the eastern Indian Ocean—which tends to cause droughts in adjacent land areas of Indonesia and Australia.

The World Meteorological Organization recently announced that the Indian Ocean Dipole was currently wreaking havoc. The IOD causes cooler waters in the north-east of the Indian Ocean, while simultaneously causing warmer temperatures off the eastern coast of Africa, the western part of the Indian.

The End in Sight

All of this leads up to the fact that the WMO is predicting this current La Niña event to hang around in to the first quarter of2008. Sea levels have dropped 1.5 degrees Celsius over the period, causing the above worldwide problems.

Having strengthened over the past nine months, the oceanic temperature levels are indicated by the blue patch, stretching across the Pacific Ocean. The images were collected by the U.S-French Jason altimetric satellite, under NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

Our only hope is that the La Niña will come to a close, by the first quarter of next year, and not continue to strengthen. From a purely personal and patriotic standpoint, I know for a fact that we can’t last indefinitely like this. Farmers have only one planting season left, before the majority will go bankrupt without rain. Even so, loans are being processed and the national government is once again providing financial incentives and relief packages to stricken farmers.

The WMO and the National Meteorological and Hydrological Services (NMHSs) will be continually monitoring the Pacific. For further information, check out the collaborative report from the WMO, NMHS and the International Research Institute for Climate and Society.

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