BigBull,
FYI: Some preliminary winter weather stuff, excerpted from my posts Yahoo RRC:
From NWS CPC faq page:
6.8 Can you explain, in laymen's terms, how sea surface
temperature in the tropical Pacific Ocean affect weather patterns
in the U.S.?
The answer can be put into laymen's terms, but is not so
simple.
The sea surface temperature (SST) near the equator in the
Pacific Ocean changes little from day-to-day, week-to-week, or
even month-to-month. This means that SST anomalies, i.e., SST
which is warmer or colder than the 30-year average for the
location and date, last for months, seasons or even years.
The SST in the tropics is closely related to the occurence of
large thunderstorms throughout the tropics. These storms
transfer the warmth from the ocean surface into the atmosphere
overhead. In regions where the SST is greater than 28 degrees
Centigrade over a large area, thunderstorms tend to occur. In
"normal" years, the cloudiness tends to be located in the
western equatorial Pacific. During an El Nino the SST warms to
above 28 degrees well into the eastern equatorial Pacific.
This causes the cloudiness to shift eastward and to cover a
much more of the tropics.
The difference in temperature between the poles and the equator
supplies all of the energy that the atmosphere uses to produce
weather. The larger this difference, the more energy there
is. During El Nino, this difference is larger than normal, due
to the strong heating of the tropics, and so is the energy
available to the atmosphere to create jet streams and storms.
The effect of ElNino upon the global atmospheric circulation
together with the location of the United States just to the
northeast, make the U.S. particularly vulnerable to increased
storminess over its southern sections during El Nino. Another
effect is a tendency for reduce stormines over the northern
U.S. along with unusual warmth.
cpc.ncep.noaa.gov
elnino.noaa.gov
Global climate La Niña impacts tend to be opposite those of El Niño impacts.
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BTW, This is not my prediction (yet), just some grist for the weather mill so far from the NWS/NOAA/CPC pages (and the misspelling is theirs also)
Best Regards,
Roebear |
