This year is headed toward a La Nia effect that could cause bigger and stronger tropical storms in the Atlantic. The season starts on June first and lasts through the end of November. Climate change is one of the factors that affects the intensity of its storms. It is possible that it is a La Ni or El Ni year. The girl and the boy are named after the two most famous of the two weather events. Warming ocean water and El Ni conditions are usually seen in South America around Christmas, so they are named after a religious figure. It looks like the boy has left town and we are getting a visit from his little sister. According to Daniel Gilford, a climate scientist at Climate Central, La Ni is somewhat of an opposite of El Ni. The Pacific jet stream is pushed south by La NiF1;a because it causes warmer waters that cause more rain on the East Coast. Next-Level Sound can be experienced. Theater-like sound surrounds you with spatial audio with dynamic head tracking.
What is La Niña?
Gilford told Earther that less rain and more descending air causes temperatures to go up.
This means that parts of the U.S. will become dryer and Alaska and Canada will see colder temperatures. It means an active storm season for the second half of the year.
We had two very active hurricanes in 2020 and 2021. In 2020 storms formed so fast that we ran through the usual list of storm names, starting with the letters of the alphabet and ending with Greek characters. The season saw the formation of 30 storms. According to the yearly reports, both years saw billion dollar disasters like Hurricane Laura and Hurricane Ida.
But how does La Ni contribute to this? The way air circulates around the Atlantic causes strong winds in the upper levels of the atmosphere, which decreases the chance of a storm forming. This calms down during La Ni months.
Hurricanes like warm sea surface temperatures to grow in, but they also need the atmosphere in their surroundings to be calm and favorable for development, according to Gilford.
Remember the warmer temperatures in the lower half of the U.S. during La Ni? That helps build warmer sea surface temperatures, creating some of the fuel needed for hurricanes to form and move to areas like the Gulf of Mexico, the coast of Central America, and up the U.S. east coast. According to Gilford, this year is still experiencing La NiF1;a conditions, and could continue until late in the summer.
Hurricanes are supposed to occur in the Atlantic. The climate crisis didn't create these weather events. Our climate is making them worse. Our national infrastructure is not prepared to deal with this.
Gilford said that being in an El Ni year doesn't tell us what will happen, but they are guidelines for what to expect. Climate change is its own force. The strength of storms has increased. As storms become stronger, higher category storms are more likely to occur. According to a 2020 report, storms over a category 3 increased by about 8 percent each decade.
Gilford said that we are seeing an increase in sea surface temperatures.
This is an example of it being seen during a dry spell. Extreme dry periods are part of the natural cycle in many regions of the world and we expect to see more of them in the U.S. Warming temperatures and changing precipitation patterns make the situation worse. There are signs of that here. The Southwest is in the midst of a megadrought. Some of the largest water basins in the nation are seeing historic lows, so much so that bodies are being discovered in areas that used to be covered by dozens of feet of water.
Gilford said that they are still trying to understand it.
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