typhoon monsoon
belated disambig dis-aggregate
indonesia jakarta 12/19
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https://www.alternet.org/2022/09/alaska-pounded-by-rare-typhoon/
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CONTEXT AN TC 5 26
Talk of a “super El Niño” developing in 2026 is gaining momentum, with concerns rising that this climate pattern could bring extreme rainfall, heat, drought and destructive flooding around the world.
The signals appear to be in place: The tropical Pacific is warming along the equator, and computer models point toward extreme conditions by the end of the year.
However, forecasting El Niño is not like predicting next week’s weather. Forecasts for El Niño typically aren’t reliable before late spring – not because scientists don’t understand the system, but because we understand its limits.
As an ocean-atmospheric scientist who studies El Niño, I spend a lot of time thinking about what scientists can forecast confidently – and what remains uncertain. Here’s what we know about the current event, what we still don’t, and why many regions should begin preparing now, even if a strong, or “super,” El Niño never fully materializes.
Why is El Niño hard to forecast in spring
The starting point for any El Niño forecast is the heat stored beneath the surface of the eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean. Computer models use data about those conditions to simulate how ocean temperatures will evolve over the coming months, and how they affect weather patterns around the world.
Right now, an exceptionally large reservoir of warm water sits beneath the surface there. In principle, this ocean heat should be a reliable signal of El Niño developing. In practice, what happens next depends heavily on what the atmosphere does.
The warm reservoir was shaped by a burst of wind activity in early 2026. Normally, the Pacific trade winds blow from east to west along the equator, pushing warm water toward Asia and leaving cooler water near South America. But in April, a pair of cyclones straddling the equator caused the wind direction to reverse. This short-lived reversal triggered a downwelling Kelvin wave – a pulse of energy beneath the ocean surface moving eastward along the equator.
That subsurface pulse has now reached the eastern Pacific, helping fuel intense warming off South America. At the ocean surface, this can resemble the early stages of a strong El Niño.
But there is a catch.
For El Niño to develop fully, the ocean and atmosphere need to lock into a feedback loop: Warmer surface waters weaken the trade winds, triggering more downwelling Kelvin waves that push warm water eastward and reinforce the warming. But that loop doesn’t engage automatically. It requires repeated bursts of eastward winds to sustain the process.
Until that feedback loop takes hold, the ocean-atmosphere system is in an unpredictable phase. It might tip into a super El Niño. It might not.
Spring is precisely when forecasts are most uncertain. Impressive early signals can fade if the winds don’t cooperate.
There’s a further complication: When models detect strong subsurface warming, they can simulate a stronger feedback loop than actually develops.
The result is that models can look too confident – even alarming – despite the system not being locked in. As of mid-May 2026, the wind patterns needed to amplify the warming have not clearly emerged.
We’ve seen this scenario play out before. In both 2014 and 2017, forecast models were pointing toward strong El Niño conditions by midyear. In both cases, the anticipated wind patterns never fully materialized and El Niño either stayed weak or returned to a neutral state. The early signals were real, but the expected follow-through didn’t happen.
So what do the forecasts suggest?
The current forecasts for 2026-27 still span a wide range in mid-May – from expecting weak to strong El Niño conditions.
How the winds behave in the coming weeks will determine what develops. If trade winds weaken again at the right moment, it could tip the system into self-sustaining warming – the kind that’s hard to stop.
As of mid-May, long-range weather forecasts weren’t showing strong eastward wind bursts on the horizon that could strengthen El Niño. In fact, quite the opposite was expected for the second half of May: a burst of winds blowing in the opposite direction. A full month without major eastward wind activity would be a meaningful brake on ocean warming.
The Pacific has loaded the dice for El Niño, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s May outlook reflects elevated odds of El Niño developing and potentially strengthening later in the year. By NOAA’s mid-June update, the picture should be substantially clearer.
El Niño intensity matters for weather worldwide
The difference between a weak El Niño and an extreme one is not subtle. It reshapes climate patterns across the globe – and with them, real-world risks.
If El Niño intensifies into a strong or “super” event, it can drive drought in the Amazon, fires in Indonesia, flooding in Peru and heavy rainfall in parts of California and southern South America. These effects could materialize by the Northern Hemisphere winter, when El Niño typically peaks.
In some regions, the stakes are immediate.
In India, the monsoon rains, which support agriculture and water supplies for hundreds of millions of people, have historically weakened during strong El Niño events. Even modest shifts in monsoon strength can bring food and water shortages, and harm economies.
At the same time, when El Niño is strong, hurricane activity in the Atlantic is typically suppressed – a rare upside – while the eastern Pacific often becomes more active with storms.
El Niño can even push global temperatures temporarily higher, as changes in cloud cover and the amount of heat the ocean releases alter the planet’s energy balance.
In contrast, a weak El Niño produces far more muted effects. This is why predicting intensity matters.
Using uncertain forecasts in real-world decisions
Because El Niño forecasts deal in probabilities, deciding how to prepare for the seasons ahead should be based on managing risk – not waiting for certainty.
El Niño’s impact does not occur everywhere at once. Some effects emerge quickly. Its impact on the Indian monsoon and Atlantic hurricane activity unfold over the summer and early fall.
Other impacts arrive later, toward the end of the year when El Niño peaks, bringing extreme rainfall to parts of South America between November and January. In Southeast Asia, scorching heatwaves often emerge even later, in April of the following year.
In regions like India, decisions about how to respond to El Niño risks cannot wait for more certainty. Communities need to prepare their water infrastructure now in case El Niño means the monsoon season brings too little rain.
Even where forecasts suggest reduced risks – such as a quieter Atlantic hurricane season – it would be a mistake to assume safety. Destructive hurricanes still hit in otherwise quiet years.
Pedro DiNezio, Associate Research Professor in Climate Modeling, *University of Colorado Boulder
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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https://www.alternet.org/2022/09/climate-change-supercharging-tropical-cyclones/
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an 921 no lnx twt
Climate inaction leaves majority of young people believing humanity is 'doomed'
Julia Conley and Common Dreams September 15, 2021
Amidst a sharp increase in deadly wildfires and flooding, increasingly violent storms, and extreme heat, new research published Tuesday found that refusal by governments to act on the climate emergency is causing a widespread sense of hopelessness and eco-anxiety in teenagers and young adults worldwide.
The global advocacy group Avaaz joined researchers at the University of Bath in the United Kingdom and five other universities to survey 10,000 young people between the ages of 16 and 25—the first large-scale eco-anxiety survey of its kind—and discovered that majorities of the respondents were fearful for the lives and livelihoods of their families and the future of the planet.
As Luisa Neubauer, a 25-year-old leader of the global Fridays for Future movement in Germany, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation, while the climate extremes caused by the planetary emergency are frightening, inaction by world leaders "is too much to handle, too much to accept."
"Government is pushing us in front of a bus,"Neubauer told the outlet.
The mental health professionals who conducted the study spoke with young people in 10 countries including Nigeria, the Philippines, India, the U.K., and the U.S., finding that respondents in both wealthy countries and the Global South are facing "feelings of anger, fear, and powerlessness" as the climate crisis directly causes at least one famine, deadly flash flooding, and wildfires in multiple regions.
Nearly half of respondents said their worries about the climate crisis negatively affect their daily life and their ability to function, and more than half told the experts they feel humanity is "doomed."
Four in 10 said they would hesitate to have children in the future due to the state of the planet, while three-quarters of respondents described their futures as "frightening."
Avaaz reported that one of the most "shocking" findings was how respondents described their feelings about government inaction, including more than half who said they feel policymakers "are betraying them."
"If this isn't a wake up call for world leaders, what is?" asked Avaaz.
Young people in the cyclone-ravages Philippines andBrazil, where deforestation—driven by President Jair Bolsonaro's government—has become increasingly destructive in recent years, showed the most anxiety of the countries surveyed. More than nine in 10 respondents said they were frightened about the future. Caroline Hickman, lead author of the study, which was published in The Lancet on Tuesday, cautioned adults against telling young people it is up to them to save the future of the planet. "Thinking the way to cure eco-anxiety is eco-action isn't right," Hickman told Thomson Reuters, adding that what will solve the climate crisis is decisive action by world governments.
The survey "shows eco-anxiety is not just for environmental destruction alone, but inextricably linked to government inaction on climate change. The young feel abandoned and betrayed by governments," Hickman told the BBC. "Governments need to listen to the science and not pathologize young people who feel anxious."
The survey results were released less than two months ahead of the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 26), where policymakers will meet in Glasgow to discuss commitments to phase out fossil fuel subsidies, provide climate mitigation support for frontline communities across the globe, and rapidly transition to an emissions-free energy system.
Young people are "doing everything we can" to push for climate action, Neubauer told Thomson Reuters, "but that won't be enough."
"We won't fix it" through the Fridays for Future movement, she added. "We need everyone there." no lnx
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https://www.ecowatch.com/:{cyclone:(style="background-color:#ffff66ff"):}:-amphan-india-bangladesh-2646063894.html
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aha yikes: ocean buffer turns into amplifier?! 5/20 typhoon displace inda? bangladesh in covid outbreak --> camps
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/18052020/hurricane-tropical-storms-climate-change
New warnings of a global warming-driven increase in the most deadly and destructive tropical storms are especially scary in regions already hit hard, including the Southeastern U.S., where Hurricane Michael damaged 60,000 homes in 2018, and the Caribbean, where Hurricane Maria killed nearly 3,000 people in Puerto Rico and crippled the island's infrastructure.
There's more of the same ahead, recent federal research suggests. One study found that the chances of major tropical storms forming increased globally by 6 percent in each of the last four decades. A second shows the biggest increase in frequency in already storm-battered areas, including Florida, the Bahamas, eastern Africa, Japan, China and the Philippine Islands.
The results bolster "projections of increased (tropical cyclone) intensity under continued warming," the authors of the first study wrote. Those researchers focused on storms with winds greater than 115 mph (category 3 or above), because those cause the most damage.
The findings landed as residents are warily watching Tropical Storm Arthur spin toward the Carolina coast well ahead of the official start of the hurricane season, and with projections for above-average hurricane activity in the Atlantic this summer.
In the Bay of Bengal, Tropical Cyclone Amphan is projected to drive a deadly surge of flooding toward Bangladesh this week, with winds of more than 170 mph. Emergency responders are struggling to evacuate up to a million people, and provide them with emergency shelter during the global coronavirus pandemic, which requires evacuees maintain physical distancing to prevent the spread of the disease.
New tropical storm data from 2010 to 2017 showed that "the probability of a hurricane having wind speeds of at least 100 knots increased by approximately 15 percent between the early and latter halves of the 39-year record."
Overheated oceans caused by global warming are super-charging tropical storms, but year-to-year variations are also affected by short-term climate cycles like El Niño. The new study helps sort out the different influences, making it "95 percent certain" that oceans heated by global warming are brewing up bigger storms more often, according to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) hurricane scientist Jim Kossin, who led the study.
"This shows us there is a global trend of more stronger hurricanes," Kossin said. "It's consistent with our expectations, based on physics." Warmer oceans supply more energy for storms and the warmer atmosphere holds more moisture.Several recent studies show how those combine to cause more damage worldwide, and pin down the role of global warming.
Increasingly, such projections help city planners and coastal developers consider if they should abandon some areas, build seawalls or floodgates, or discourage development on the most vulnerable beaches and bluffs in the next few decades.
Tropical storm frequency has increased in the warm waters of the Atlantic hurricane belt, where dangerous storms often spin toward the Southeastern U.S. and the Caribbean, while decreasing in the southern Indian Ocean and Western North Pacific, according to the second study.
Hiroyuki Murakami, a climate scientist with the NOAA's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, led that research, which was published May 4 in PNAS. Murakami said the average annual number of tropical storms globally had held steady at 86 since 1980. The frequency increased in hotspots like the Arabian Peninsula and East Africa, Southeast Asia, around the Hawaiian Islands and especially in the eastern Atlantic.
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