This morning’s Union Leader includes a story from the LA Times, “Report: El Niño could be most powerful on record.” It suggests that an important region used to measure the strength of the phenomenon is as warm as anyone has ever recorded. And it is. The problem is that data critical to such a comparison has been left out of the reporting.
The significance of the 1997/1998 El Niño was higher surface water temperatures in “important regions” to the east of the area being reported on by the Times and Union Leader; where the water is cooler today than it was in 97/98.
“…it will be obvious to you that the NINO3.4 region does not capture the full strength of the 1997/98 El Niño! Why? Because the 1997/98 El Niño was not at its strongest in the central Pacific. The 1997/98 El Niño was an East Pacific El Niño, and it was strongest east of the NINO3.4 region. The 1997/98 El Niño was unlike any El Niño that had been studied by Barnston et al. (1996). And the current El Niño is also unlike the one in 1997/98.”
The eastern regions used as a measure of the phenomenon, region 1+2 in particular, are much cooler so far than in 97/98.
Here’s another relevant graph to help put some color in to the debate.
2015 does not yet compare.
The point is, that while 2015/16 has a strong El Niño the data that matters most for the sake of comparison with 97/98 is not cooperating and the LA Times (and other media) have just ignored that fact.
El Niño 2015/2016 needs to heat up a lot more eastern Pacific water before it becomes a contender, and not just on paper; the farther east an El Niño is taking place, the greater impact it has on “normal” global weather patterns. If you are making the case for the escalation of phenomenon as a result of mans influence then that water should be warmer and it is not.
And shouldn’t ‘scientists’ worth their warm Pacific saltwater (absent an agenda) share this data, given that it defined the 97/98 El Niño and it’s effect on weather across the globe?
Maybe they did share, but the LA Times wasn’t looking for that story. They were looking for a subtle seed to plant in the minds of the regular people before the Paris COP20 climate confab in Paris. ‘These are not the droids you’re looking for,’ so we’ve taken the liberty of excluding them from our article.
Taken as a whole, with all the data in front of you, 2015 pales by comparison up to this point. But as we’ve seen so often in the past the so called experts and the propaganda media are less and less about the science and more about alarmism. The LA Times story, reprinted in the Sunday Union Leader, is just the latest example of soft-selling climate dogma through the exclusion of relevant truths for the purpose of advancing a political agenda; to scare people in to thinking that they are responsible and that the only way to fix it is to give more of their power and property to the government.
It’s a global confidence scam and by reprinting garbage like this the editors at the Union Leader are in on it.
