All of this and more can be blamed on a huge ‘blob' of warm water off the West Coast, about 1 to 4 degrees Celsius (2 to 7 F) above normal, says a University of Washington news release.
According to climate scientist
Nick Bond at the University of Washington, the
"warm anomaly" is behind California's ongoing warm and dry winters.
The warm blob earlier this week squished up against the U.S. West Coast. Scale in degrees Celsius (each increment is 1.8 F). NOAA National Climate Data Center
Discovered in the fall of 2013, the area of super-heated water is roughly 1,000 miles in each direction, about 300 feet deep, and is about 3°C (5°F) warmer normal for that part of the Pacific ocean, according to Bond.
Bond, who coined the term "
the blob" last June in his monthly newsletter as Washington state climatologist, said as air passes over the huge patch of warm water it brings more heat and less snow to coastal areas, which helped cause drought conditions in California, Oregon and Washington.
Brings very cold, wet air to the central and eastern states
The blob's influence may reach much farther inland-- possibly including the last two brutal winters in the eastern U.S.
A separate
study by UW professor of atmospheric sciences
Dennis Hartmann explores the relationship between the warm anomaly and the cold 2013-14 winter in the central and eastern United States.
Hartmann found a decadal-scale pattern in the tropical Pacific Ocean and North Pacific that brings warm and dry air to the West Coast and very cold, wet air to the central and eastern states.
In a
blog post last month, Hartmann focused on the winter of 2014-15 and argued that, once again, the root cause was surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific.
Second only to El Niño
That pattern seems to have become stronger since about 1980, and lately become second only to El Niño in its influence on global weather patterns, says Hartmann.
Today, the blob is still out there, "squished up against the coast and extending about 1,000 miles offshore from Mexico up through Alaska, with water about 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than normal."
Not exactly a small "blob"
The media may call it a "blob," but please note that the "warm anomaly" is not only 1,000 miles wide, it is also 1,000 miles long.
Multiply 1,000 by 1,000, and you come to the startling realization that this monster patch of warmer-than-normal water covers one-million square miles.
Enabling "warmest year on record" pronouncements
I think NASA is using this huge area of super-heated water to bolster its deceptive "warmest year on record" pronouncements.
Remember if you will, NASA's claim that
2014 was the warmest year on record. Now, NOAA claims that we just endured
the warmest March on record.
How did NASA and NOAA come up with those claims? Because both of these politically motivated entities use globally averaged temperature taken over both the land and the oceans.
Yes, both the land
and the oceans.
Look at a globe. The world's oceans cover almost 71% of our planet. No wonder the numbers are skewed.
Parts of the oceans now warmest on record --and again, it is NOT caused by humans
But it gets worse. Not only are large portions of the oceans much warmer than normal, they are the warmest on record, according this map from NOAA. (The areas in bright red are the warmest on record, says NOAA.)
March 2015 Blended Land & Sea Surface Temperature Anomalies in °C.
Bond, along with co-authors
Meghan Cronin,
Nate Mantuaand
Howard Freeland, believe the warm anomaly was created when a high-pressure system got stuck over the blob's location, allowing the ocean water to stay calmer and warmer.
Megaplumes
But I'm more inclined to agree with
geologist James Kamis, who thinks the blob has all the characteristics of a megaplume. Megaplumes are massive underwater vents -- underwater volcanoes, in other words -- that spew vast amounts of heat into the ocean.
Kamis thinks the giant cell of warm water, heated by submarine volcanoes, is altering normal California climate patterns and inducing a long term drought.
Generation of deep-ocean megaplume
Not only do I agree with Kamis, but I take it one step further. I fear that this super-heated cell of warm water could lead us into the next ice age.
And that is exactly what I say in
Not by Fire but by Ice.
As underwater volcanoes heat the seas, ever more moisture rises into the skies. If those skies have been cooled by above-water volcanoes --
presto! -- you have the recipe for a new ice-age.
Warmer seas and colder skies . . . a deadly combination.
