Subject:
Is Global Warming Causing More Extreme EL Nino's?
Date: Tue, 17
Feb 1998
From: cibe@web.apc.org
(Gary T. Gallon)
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IS GLOBAL WARMING CAUSING MORE FREQUENT AND EXTREME EL NINOS?
Global warming may be contributing to the
increased frequency and severity of the El Nino weather disasters. This is
according to the preliminary research of the National Centre for Atmospheric
Research in
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WHAT IS EL NINO? HOW IS IT CAUSED?
Normally El Nino events occur on average every 4 ½ years. These events can be weak, moderate, strong or — rarely — extraordinary. Yet it has been the extraordinary that we have been getting from El Nino currently. The last extraordinary El Nino took place in 1982-83. It did tremendous damage. However, the current El Nino event is lasting much longer and is much stronger. It has already causing hundreds of billions of dollars in flood, freeze and drought destruction to the world's nations. The current El Nino event has caused the devastating elongation of the forest fires set deliberately in Indonesia. El Nino has been blamed for the wild floods and freezing rain in Canada that have cost that nation a record multi-billion dollars in pay-outs in the past 12 months for damages claims and reparations.
The name El Nino (EN) was originally used to describe a seasonal warming of sea surface waters off the western coast of South America, centered on Peru. Normally, warm ocean water builds up in the western part of the equatorial Pacific Ocean near Australia, the Philippines and Indonesia. This build-up results from strong westward flowing winds blowing across the ocean from the Peruvian coast. Every so often these winds weaken and sometimes reverse and blow towards the east, which allows a warm pool of water to form in the central and eastern part of the Pacific Ocean. As sea surface temperatures rise, evaporation from the warm water increases, leading to cloud formation and ultimately rainfall. The rain follows the warm water. So the areas that are normally wet such as Indonesia, the Philippines and northwest Australia become plagued with drought, while areas that are normally dry such as the west coasts of Peru, California, and Chile become excessively wet. El Nino (EN) is counter-balanced is the Southern Oscillation (SO) which takes place in the atmosphere on the other side of the Pacific. This atmospheric phenomenon is a seesaw-like change in seal-level pressure across the Pacific basin. When the pressure is low in the region around Darwin, Australia, it is usually high in the region of Tahiti. These two processes (EN+SO) together produce ENSO, a Pacific basinwide phenomenon that disrupts weather around the globe. Although El Nino refers to a local phenomenon off Peru and the ENSO to the basinwide event across all the Pacific including El Nino, many people, including scientists, now use these terms interchangeably. There are several excellent global warming information websites you can visit. They are: http://www.ipcc.ch, and http://www.nrdc.org/field/gwact.html.
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CANADA GETS SERIOUS ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING GASES REDUCTION
The federal government is creating a special central co-ordinating secretariat amongst the various ministries that will be involved in delivering Canada's Kyoto commitment to reduce its 1990 levels of greenhouse gas emissions by 6% by 2010. The secretariat will be headed by a powerful senior government Assistant Deputy Minister (ADM) from the Department of Agriculture, David Oulton. The secretariat will pull together a wide-ranging group of government departments, provincial governments, and diverse industry groups to design and implement a reduction plan. An important part of the strategy will be to design and roll out a GHG emissions tradeable emissions system. In addition to involving Environment Canada and Natural Resources Canada, the secretariat will involve Transportation Canada, Agriculture Canada and even Finance Canada with delivering the programs. The implementation secretariat will most likely have a permanent staff of two dozen officials and will report regularly to the special committee of deputy ministers, which itself will report to one of the most powerful economic committees of Cabinet. Source: The Ottawa Citizen, February 6, 1998, p. A3.
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Gary T. Gallon
Canadian Institute for Business and the Environment
506 Victoria Ave.
Montreal, Quebec H3Y 2R5
Ph. (514) 369-0230
Fax (514) 369-3282
email: cibe@web.net
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Waterloo Field Naturalists.
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