Hi Tweets, thought this might interest you. Although El Nino hasn't reached
us yet, it looks like one hell of a winter coming up. I don't know how much
this will affect the Pacific Northwest, but I'm sure we'll get clobbered here.

Peggi


>PUBLIC INFORMATION OFFICE
>JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
>CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
>NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
>PASADENA, CALIF. 91109. TELEPHONE (818) 354-5011
>http://www.jpl.nasa.gov
>
>Contact: Mary A. Hardin
>
>FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE September 15, 1997
>
>INDEPENDENT NASA SATELLITE MEASUREMENTS CONFIRM EL NINO IS BACK
>AND STRONG
>
> Pacific Ocean sea-surface height measurements and
>atmospheric water vapor information taken from two independent
>Earth-orbiting satellites are providing more convincing evidence
>that the weather-disrupting phenomenon known as El Nino is back.
>
> "The new data collected since April 1997 confirm what we had
>earlier speculated upon and what the National Oceanographic and
>Atmospheric Administration has predicted - a full-blown El Nino
>condition is established in the Pacific," said Dr. Lee-Lueng Fu,
>project scientist for the U.S./French TOPEX/Poseidon satellite at
>NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA.
>
> The five years of global ocean topography observations made
>by TOPEX/Poseidon have been a boon for El Nino researchers, who
>have been able to track three El Nino events since the
>satellite's launch in August 1992.
>
> "The recent data are showing us that a large warm water mass
>with high sea-surface elevations, about 15 centimeters (six
>inches) above normal, is occupying the entire tropical Pacific
>Ocean east of the international date line. In fact, the surface
>area covered by the warm water mass is about one and a half times
>the size of the continental United States," Fu said. "We watched
>this warm water mass travel eastward from the western Pacific
>along the equator earlier this spring. Right now, sea-surface
>height off of the South American coast is 25 centimeters (10
>inches) higher than normal, which is comparable with the
>conditions during the so-called 'El Nino of the century' in 1982-
>83."
>
> In addition, recent atmospheric water vapor data collected
>from NASA's Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) show tell-
>tale signs of an El Nino condition in the tropical Pacific Ocean.
>
> "The Microwave Limb Sounder experiment on UARS is detecting
>an unusually large build-up of water vapor in the atmosphere at
>heights of approximately 12 kilometers (eight miles) over the
>central-eastern tropical Pacific. Not since the last strong El
>Nino in the winter of 1991-92 have we seen such a large build-up
>of water vapor in this part of the atmosphere," said JPL's Dr.
>William Read. "Increased water vapor at these heights can be
>associated with more intense winter-time storm activity from the
>'pineapple express,' a pattern of atmospheric motions that brings
>tropical moisture from Hawaii to the southwestern United States.
>This phenomena is an example of how the ocean and atmosphere work
>together to dictate the severity of El Nino events."
>
> An El Nino is thought to be triggered when steady westward
>blowing trade winds weaken and even reverse direction. This
>change in the winds allows the large mass of warm water that is
>normally located near Australia to move eastward along the
>equator until it reaches the coast of South America. This
>displaced pool of unusually warm water affects evaporation, where
>rain clouds form and, consequently, alters the typical
>atmospheric jet stream patterns around the world. The change in
>the wind strength and direction also impacts global weather
>patterns.
>
> In May, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric
>Administration (NOAA) issued an advisory regarding the presence
>of the early indications of El Nino conditions. Subsequent El
>Nino forecast activities supported by NOAA indicate the
>likelihood of a moderate or strong El Nino in late 1997. The
>forecast model operated at NOAA's National Centers for
>Environmental Prediction used data collected by the
>TOPEX/Poseidon satellite.
>
> "The added amount of oceanic warm water near the Americas,
>with a temperature between 21-30 degrees Celsius (70-85 degrees
>Fahrenheit), is about 30 times the volume of water in all the
>U.S. Great Lakes combined," said Dr. Victor Zlotnicki, a
>TOPEX/Poseidon investigator at JPL. "The difference between the
>current, abnormally high amount of heat in the near-surface
>waters and the usual amount of heat in the same area is about 93
>times the total energy from fossil fuels consumed by the United
>States in 1995."
>
> Ongoing NOAA advisories on El Nino conditions are available
>on the Internet at the following URL:
>
>http://nic.fb4.noaa.gov:80/products/analysis_monitoring/ensostuff/index.html
>
> The climatic event has been given the name El Nino, a
>Spanish term for a "boy child," because the warm current first
>appeared off the coast of South America around Christmas. Past
>El Nino events have often caused unusually heavy rain and
>flooding in California, unseasonably mild winters in the Eastern
>United States and severe droughts in Australia, Africa and
>Indonesia. Better predictions of extreme climate episodes like
>floods and droughts could save the United States billions of
>dollars in damage costs. El Nino episodes usually occur
>approximately every two to seven years.
>
> Developed by NASA and the Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales
>(CNES), the TOPEX/Poseidon satellite uses an altimeter to bounce
>radar signals off the ocean's surface to get precise measurements
>of the distance between the satellite and the sea surface. These
>data are combined with measurements from other instruments that
>pinpoint the satellite's exact location in space. Every 10 days,
>scientists produce a complete map of global ocean topography,
>the barely perceptible hills and valleys found on the sea
>surface. With detailed knowledge of ocean topography, scientist
>can then calculate the speed and direction of worldwide ocean
>currents.
>
> The MLS instrument was originally designed to study
>atmospheric ozone depletion, but scientists have devised new ways
>of using the data to study atmospheric water vapor. The UARS
>satellite is completing its sixth year of operation after being
>designed for only a two-year mission, and is conducting an
>extended mission of longer-term global monitoring.
>
> The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California
>Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, manages the TOPEX/Poseidon
>mission and the MLS instrument for NASA's Mission to Planet Earth
>enterprise, Washington, DC. The UARS satellite is managed by
>NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD.
>
> NASA's Mission to Planet Earth is a long-term science
>research program designed to study the Earth's land, oceans, air,
>ice and life as a total system.
>
> #####
>
>9-15-97 MAH
>#9777
>.-
>
>
Ben & Peggi Rodgers
Aptos, CA (near Santa Cruz 122 W, 37 N)
USA
woodduck at cruzio.com
http://www2.cruzio.com/~woodduck/


"A bird does not sing because it has an answer,
It sings because it has a song"