At the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach, a new show debuts Saturday devoted to the global weather phenomenon known as El Niño.
Unfortunately, that’s likely to be the only place to experience El Niño’s warm seas and heavy rains in Southern California this winter.
Even though predictions of a coming El Niño reached 80 percent this summer as warm tropical coastal waters flooded the area, NASA and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientists announced this week that a much-hoped-for El Niño probably won’t materialize. That means Southern California can expect another dry season burdened by ongoing extreme drought.
“Everybody got pretty excited because it was definitely a preview of a coming El Niño,” said Bill Patzert, climatologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “But it just sorta fizzled out.”
Climatologists now say there is a 53 percent chance of a weak El Niño arriving from the western Pacific, where shifting trade winds that normally blow from east to west stall or reverse in an El Niño year. That atmospheric shift affects the ocean by causing tropical surface waters to pile up along the equator and move eastward. The entire process is depicted in the Long Beach aquarium’s show, which will be played daily in the Ocean Science Center.
The show is projected on the aquarium’s 6-foot-diameter Science on a Sphere globe that hangs from the middle of the science center flanked by TV monitors that can display secondary footage of earthquakes, tsunamis and other images to help explain complex, large-scale weather phenomena in a compelling way.
Scientists still don’t know what initiates an El Niño event, though it appears to be the planet’s way of keeping temperatures from getting too hot or too cold.
National Weather Service Science and Operations Officer John Dumas said Thursday that, though the estimated chance of an El Niño still exceeds 50 percent, it would be very mild if it does arrive in Southern California this winter.
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“What is the El Niño forecast this year?” Dumas asked at a news conference Thursday announcing the latest expectations at Aquarium of the Pacific. “The water’s there. The temperatures are there (in Southern California). But the big portion of it is still in the western Pacific.
“The Climate Prediction Center is calling it a 53 percent change of an El Niño, and a weak one at that if there is one,” Dumas said. “Some people have said: ‘Will El Niño get us out of the drought? Unfortunately, we’ve had three years of drought conditions and one (near) El Niño event.”
Since summer, tropical ocean currents have flooded Southern California waters, delighting anglers with species rarely seen here like wahoo, opah and mahi-mahi. Scientists closely monitored the warm waters from the western Pacific to see if they brought with them wind patterns consistent with a full-fledged El Niño, but they now say it may have more to do with an active tropical storm season.
“I love El Niño,” Patzert said. “Why do I love El Niño? We live in the American Southwest, which is normally dry. But when we get an El Niño — which is not that often — we can get double our normal rainfall. Wouldn’t that be sweet, because we’ve been in a long-term, large-scale drought.”
While scientists have lost hope of a large-scale El Niño this year, they said an active tropical storm season has at least brought some rain.
“Just to give you a little hope: There are other weather systems that can deliver rain,” Patzert said. “And any El Niño — even a wimpy one — would help. But it will take several years to get us out of this drought.”
El Nino show at Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach may be only place to see weather ...
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