Multi-Year, Monster La Niña can deliver the fatal blow to Global Warming Hysteria

Curiously, a couple of exceptions aside, the official meteorological departments around the world initially refused to even term the current La Niña as strong, calling it moderate. No more. They now concede it as the strongest on record, some terming it a climatic monster. Then again, they were initially hesitant to forecast it as a multi-year one, their computer models first indicating it would peak sometime the last quarter of 2010 and then subsequently revised to the first quarter of 2011. No more. Now, almost everyone is in unison that it would be multi-year. The current La Niña is expected to last through the next northern winter and its residual effect to linger on until 2012. 

This blog on the other hand was predicting almost right from the current La Niña’s inception, it would likely to be multi-year and a monster event. Our rationale: Rapid flips like this in the past have ended up precipitating a two-year La Nina, such as right after the El Nino episodes of 1972-73 and 1997-98. Last year's transition from El Nino to La Nina was about the most sudden ever.

Though there are many parameters that the current La Niña exceeds in thresholds, the two important ones are the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) and La Niña 3.4. 21.1, the average August-December SOI for current La Niña is exceeded only by the La Niña of 1917-18 which was 24.4. But for the last two months, as seen from the above graph, the current La Niña is averaging around 27 - the strongest seen on record.  

[Sustained positive values of the SOI above +8 may indicate a La Niña event, while sustained negative values below −8 may indicate an El Niño event. Values of between about +8 and −8 generally indicate neutral conditions.]  

Niño 3.4, another indicator was -1.8C last week, only behind-2.3C in 1988,  -2.1C in 1973 and -1.9C in 1988. But the current La Niña is still to peak and may exceed these record years.

[Sustained positive values of the Niño 3.4  above -0.5C  may indicate a La Niña event, while sustained negative values above +0.5C may indicate an El Niño event. Values of between about +0.5C and −0.5C generally indicate neutral conditions]

Average global temperature anomaly for 2010, a strong El Niño year, was + 0.41C, the baseline period used to determine is a 20-year (1979 to 1998) period at the beginning of the satellite record. There is now a consensus that 2011 would be a cold year, with average global temperature in the negative band. The only speculation is how far down will be temperatures plunge? Would it be as 1999-2000 when it touched -0.4C or- 0.6C in 1985, where cooling was aided by the volcanic eruption of Mt Pinatubo? A multi-year, strongest on record La Niña gives the current one with a chance to equal or surpass these record cold years. And because it is multi-year and sustained cooling, it can totally erase last year’s strong El Nino warming.

Global warmist have this nasty habit of creating hysteria whenever global temperatures spike and keeping silent when they plunge, displaying their “character & integrity”. But 2011 is a very different ball game with climate skeptic movement on the roll who would grab the opportunity to create awareness that movement of temperature in either direction is part of natural variability of the climate and not anything to do with CO2.

2009 was declared the year of the climate skeptic. The outcome of Climategate, leaked e-mails from the Climate unit in UK that revealed collusion, falsification of data, suppression of contrary opinion, political interference and fraudulent scientific conclusions - that moulded public perception away from the science. In January 2010, the IPCC was exposed for a series of errors and making claims based on high confidence levels when in reality they had no hard scientific evidence. These two events largely contributed to the skeptic surge all over the world and global warming hysteria has been lying in the ICU, terminally ill ever since. This year’s La Niña will rescue it from this misery with global warming likely to be declared dead and cold finally.

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June 2010: Drought in Sri Lanka is your fault; January 2011: Record rain in Sri Lanka is your fault - Tom Nelson

Trust the Tom Nelson Blog to bring out interesting nuggets like this. Droughts, floods, cold, heat and what have you, everything is climate change. Six months ago, Sri Lanka experienced a drought due to the El Niño effect and this month a flood due to the La Niña effect. "Sustainable or organic farming" had been given a big boost by humanitarian organizations after the Tsunami of 2004. And yet, the drought and floods within a space of six months have pushed Sri Lanka into a food crisis - the food shortage to be felt in the months ahead. All their "sustainable" experiments withered away by these weather extremes. 

When will NGOs get over their global warming obsession? They can  only start making an impact if they track ENSO (El Niño-Southern Oscillation)  a natural oceanic cycle, in their adaptation and mitigation programmes.

June 2010: Surviving droughts in Sri Lanka

Like many countries in the Global South, Sri Lanka is burdened with a variety of hazards, including cyclones, floods and not long ago a tsunami.  But one of the most severe hazards in Sri Lanka is drought and is considered the most significant hazard in many districts of the country, such as Hambantota and Puttalam.

Dr Gunatilake Marasinghe from University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka, recently gave a seminar at IHRR: ‘International Relief Aid and Surviving Droughts in Sri Lanka.’  He explained how 2,548,310 people are exposed to drought in Sri Lanka compared to other hazards such as cyclones, where far fewer people are exposed at 24,132.  Indeed, drought has affected Sri Lanka since ancient times and leads to scarcity of water, food and other resources.  In 2001, drought overtook seven districts in Sri Lanka affecting 231,076 families.

Aid was provided to people in Sri Lanka during this time, but one of the major obstacles to overcome, as is the case with international relief aid efforts in other countries, is delays in receiving aid. International relief aid tends to flow into areas with high density droughts, but a major problem that has yet to be resolved in Sri Lanka is providing aid to people who endure mild recurrent droughts that are also a threat to their lives.  Listen to Dr Gunatilake Marasinghe’s seminar at IHRR here.

Usually, international aid donors give the most attention to large-scale hazards, but smaller hazards such as mild recurrent droughts are often overlooked.  People in Sri Lanka who depend upon growing their own food are most affected by droughts of this kind because they wipe out their crops and they are left with nothing to eat.  Instead of depending on aid, which is not provided, people must either migrate to other parts of the country or sustain themselves by eating ‘inferior food’ such as lotus yams or leaves of wild plants.  Family ties are strong in Sri Lanka and this is one of the forms of humanitarian assistance people affected by mild droughts depend on to survive.

Drought in Hambantota, Sri Lanka (Government of Sri Lanka)

 
In order to develop resilience in communities affected by recurring mild droughts in Sri Lanka, both a transparent way to distribute relief aid and implementation of infrastructure to deal with droughts are needed.  One way is to store water in large tanks during monsoon seasons or periods of heavy rain that could be used later during times of drought.  Another is to use resources provided by international aid donors to prepare for future droughts.  This could include gathering information in advance to create communication networks where early warning systems are used to warn people of drought instead of waiting for it to occur.  Early warning systems are being used in countries throughout the world, but not yet in Sri Lanka.  In the future, these forms of infrastructure need to be in place in Sri Lanka and other countries in the Global South as problems of drought, whether they are severe or ‘mild’, will likely accelerate due to climate change.

SRI LANKA: Record rains increase urgency of climate change adaptation

 

National climate scientist WL Sumathipala said recent storm activity had sped up the timetable to help residents cope with changing weather.

"We have looked at weather patterns for a long period of time and it is only now that we are ready to make scientifically supported statements about climate change."

There could be several factors responsible for the severe rains in the island country. Sri Lanka is in the midst of the winter monsoon. Rupa Kumar Kolli, Chief of the World Climate Applications and Services Division at the Geneva-based World Meteorological Organization, noted,

"There is an established La Niña, which is at its peak at the moment. The phenomenon is associated with stronger than normal monsoons over South Asia."

Continuous rains since 26 December have caused rock slides and displacement, mostly in northern and eastern parts of the country, and closed schools. As of 11 January, about 33,330 families have been displaced to 351 relocation centres. Some 300km east of the capital, Colombo, Batticaloa District - which set the century's rainfall record - accounts for almost half of those families, according to DMC. Here, some 200 reservoirs have completely washed away, with most other tanks spilling over, based on early government surveys.

Former Minister of Disaster Management, Rishard Bathiudeen, told IRIN the Environment Ministry was considering adaptation strategies.

"We are now being warned by scientists that climate change is not only real but Sri Lanka needs to be well prepared. We do not want to wait till the people become climate refugees as is happening in other parts of the world."

A top official in the Ministry of Agriculture, who preferred to remain anonymous, told IRIN that experimentation had been under way to find highly resilient crop species, especially rice.

"We are reverting to traditional knowledge. Sri Lanka has some 2,000 traditional rice varieties and [some] have a special capacity to withstand extreme weather." But production is slow and will take several years to bear results, he added.

Since the 2004 tsunami, the Colombo-based office of the NGO Practical Action has trained farmers in how to cultivate four weather-resistant traditional rice strains.

"Priority was given to varieties which are popular and already have a market," said Hemantha Abeywardena, a facilitator with an organic agriculture project at Practical Action. "A key factor was to avert impending food crises. With the climatic change and overuse of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, salinity in the fields has increased," said Abeywardena.

The government's meteorology department has reported that heavy rains will continue until at least through 12 January across the north and north-central sections of the country, particularly the provinces of Eastern and Uva (south of Eastern) and the country's southernmost district, Hambantota. The government, with the UN, conducted an assessment in all affected districts in the east, north and central provinces on 11 January, with results expected soon.

Sri Lanka Faces La Nina’s Wrath: Devastating Floods leave 21 dead, One million displaced

The troubles of Tamil population in East Sri Lanka appear never ending. The heaviest rain in 18 years flooded Sri Lanka left about 11 dead. Mudslides caused by heavy rains and floods in Sri Lanka have additionally killed another ten people.  These floods were especially bad news for people in the East, who in recent years have also endured a civil war and a tsunami.

The Disaster Management Center said more than millions have been affected by the rains, with 1 million becoming homeless. Mervyn Fletcher of the UN explains from Colombo: "That means they have either been forced from their homes or have seen their property flooded”. Floods have besides left marooning traffic and submerged the country's Parliament in four feet of water. Sri Lanka's president had to abandon a visit to areas hit by flooding. The flooding has reportedly swelled ponds and reservoirs to bursting, and the flow is wrecking rice paddies.

The government said the worst-affected areas include Batticaloa, Ampara, Trincomalee, Polonnaruwa, Nuwara Eliya, Moneragala, Kandy, Badulla and Kegalle districts. The Eastern Province is the worst affected with over 860,000 flood victims according to the latest figures released by the Disaster Management Centre with many villages in Eastern Province inundated, with some cut off from supplies, including 9 villages in Muttur area of eastern Trincomalee district being isolated with only sea access. 

The Director General of Disaster Management Centre stated that Batticaloa District is worst hit by the floods with 533,000 people belonging to 30,264 families have been displaced. He said eight deaths have been reported from the district and 225 displaced camps have been set up in the district. Batticaloa District is experiencing a rainfall of 113mm/day continuously. Yesterday it had been 200mm.

More than 28,000 troops, backed by transport helicopters and navy boats, are rescuing flood victims and delivering food, authorities said. It is the biggest troops operation since the defeat of Tamil Tiger rebels one-and-a-half years ago. State and private organizations were setting up centers in Colombo and its suburbs to collect relief items for affected victims. The displaced are being housed in hundreds of camps. They have crowded into 800 camps set up near schools.  But officials say that in some cases those camps in turn have been flooded – it is estimated that 25 out of 200 have been inundated in the coastal area of Batticaloa. The Sri Lankan government is reported to make arrangements to provide those displaced with cooked meals. Aircraft were ferrying cooked meals to the affected areas while navy boats were delivering them to the victims.

About 200 ponds and 404,163 acres of paddy land, used to grow rice, a staple for Sri Lankans, have been devastated by the floods.  According to a media report:

"North central and eastern part of Sri Lanka had destroyed over 404,163 acres of cultivated paddy lands, the government said today. A major portion of the paddy cultivation is in the dry zones of North Central Province and Eastern Province. Both regions are inundated with rain water as well as water from breached tanks and opened sluice gates of major tanks.

Following the end of war the government launched a major drive to cultivate the 100,000 acres of fallow paddy lands in the North. The floods have destroyed the paddy cultivation in Anuradhapura, Polonnaruwa, Trincomalee, Batticaloa, Ampara and Kilinochchi districts. 

According to the Disaster Management Center (DMC) in Polonnaruwa district 12 sluice gates of Kaudulla tank, 10 gates of Parakrama Samudraya, 8 sluice gates of Minneriya Wewa have been opened. In Anuradhapura district the 2 sluice gates of Kala Wewa and 16 sluice gates of Rajanganaya tank have been opened to relive the water and the rains have breached the Tikkampatana dam.

In Eastern Province, Irrigation Department has sent a team to fix a leak in the Mavil Aru tank, the major reservoir in the Province. The people in the area have been ordered to evacuate, the officials said. According to irrigation officials 607 tanks and bunds have been completely damaged and 228 have been partially damaged due to the heavy rains."

President Rajapaksa warned his Cabinet Ministers that the country should brace itself for a food shortage. Mounting prices of vegetables have also sparked concern. For the first time in post-independent Sri Lanka, the military was manning vegetable-selling outlets. The vegetables were collected from production areas in army trucks. We now face a real threat of severe food shortages due to the complete destruction of over 130,000 acres of paddy field. Agriculture Minister Lakshman Yapa Abeywardhana stated the following to the Daily Mirror:

“There is no doubt that we need an advanced strategy to face the food crisis that is inevitable. We can have a better picture only after the flood waters have fully receded. Therefore, we cannot say what kind of response we have to the crisis right now. What I can assure is that the government is going to face this with resolve and people must be prepared to it.”

India will be sending tomorrow 25 metric tons of relief material, including food, drinking water, water purifying tablets, sleeping mats, blankets, and bed sheets on an Indian Air Force transport aircraft, IL76 in two sorties. Food items to be sent will include ready-to-eat meals, sugar, pulses, milk powder, baby milk formula, salt and other essential seasoning powders.

Tens of thousands of people are in need of food and medical supplies and stocks are quickly running out. Two youth were electrocuted when they climbed a tree to avoid raging flood waters in a village of Ariyampathu, south of the eastern capital of Batticaloa. A BBC report quoted people in some remote areas as saying they have not received any aid from agencies or the government and some of the affected people in makeshift camps were going without food.

The Sri Lankan government however claims that they have deployed naval forces to transport cooked meals to areas where roads are submerged under water. Submerged roads are proving the main obstacle in getting food to affected people. Major General Hettiarachchi admitted in Batticaloa District, air force helicopters had been deployed to distribute relief and to rescue the affected people but they could not be taken off the ground due to bad weather yesterday as well.

The Sri Lankan government has also appealed to the public to donate items including drinking water, mattresses, bed sheets and dry rations. Sewage lines and tanks have overflowed in many villages and authorities are concerned about diseases like typhoid and diarrhoea.  A BBC blog gives excellent clues on the challenges facing the humanitarian response:

"Access to clean water is becoming a major problem and we and other agencies are distributing purification tablets." The UN says that crocodiles and snakes are a threat to anyone wading through the flood waters. Mr Fletcher said that the floods were especially bad news for people in the east, who in recent years have also endured a civil war and a tsunami. Food shortages The floods have left some stretches of railway line under nearly a metre of water.

Officials in Ampara say the rainfall there since Saturday has been the highest ever recorded in such a short time. Flood victims in Sri Lanka Over a million people have seen their homes flooded There is a shortage of food for children," a member of Sri Lanka's minority Muslim community in Ampara told Tamil on Wednesday. "In the morning we were forced to divide a single breakfast food parcel into four and give it to our four children.  We have not got any help from the government. But the local people – especially the rich – have come forward and helped us. We are only getting something to eat because of their generosity.

A number of big reservoirs have burst their banks, destroying paddy fields in a major rice-growing area. People in some remote areas on Wednesday told the they had seen no sign of aid agencies or government relief, and that some people in makeshift camps had been missing out on meals.

People in Batticaloa district told the Tamil service on Wednesday that they had done their best to stay in their villages, but had been forced to flee in the end. The air force has helped evacuate people and drop food supplies to some cut-off communities. The government has made an emergency appeal for ordinary people's help in sending dry rations, mattresses and bottled water. Deputy Disaster Management Minister Duleep Wijesekara said on Wednesday that some places, such as Muttur, had been difficult to reach. "I boarded a high-speed navy boat to get there to Muttur, but due to the huge waves we had to turn back after sailing for about 15km. After that we had to send food in by air," he said. The floods bring a risk of disease, including the mosquito-borne dengue fever, which even in normal times is a severe problem in the country"  

 

Google has provided a map (above) that identifies the main flood-affected regions, sites where relief and rescue operations have been conducted, areas prone to landslides and specific locations that are at risk.  Please click on the link below the map to view it on a larger screen. Read more here for updates and to click on individual markers for detailed information or  zoom in to view the location of specific shelter camps located in the east.

Sri Lanka Faces La Nina’s Wrath

The Sri Lankan Met Dept indicated the magnitude of the rainfall: 

"The Batticaloa District has received a rainfall of 1606.2 mm just in 42 days during the period from 1st December 2010 to 12th January 2011, almost equal to its total annual rainfall. The total rainfall experienced in Batticaloa from January 1st to 12th of this month is 894.8 mm. The annual total rainfall of the district was 1650.9 mm.

Similarly at Trincomalee a rainfall of 1030.6 mm. has been received during the same period while its annual rainfall was 1580.1 mm." 

With nightmarish floods in Queensland, Australia and now in Sri Lanka, global warmists can be only expected to flog the dead horse “climate change”. One media report goes as so:

“Climate change has likely intensified the monsoon rains that have triggered record floods in Australia’s Queensland state, scientists said on Wednesday, with several months of heavy rain and storms still to come.”

So let’s assume that it was that awful CO2 in the atmosphere that led to global warming that caused the Queensland floods this year. But how would these global warmist characters explain similar floods in the 19th Century in Queensland, at the start of industrialization when CO2 levels were a fraction of what it is today? 

1841 - 17th January: Highest flood on record occurred at Brisbane and Ipswich.
1844 - 10th January: Heavy floods at Ipswich.
1845 - 17th December: Flood at Ipswich.
1852 - 11th April: Heavy floods at Brisbane and Ipswich.
1857 - 19th and 20th May: Great floods at Ipswich and Brisbane; river at Ipswich rose 45 feet, and at Brisbane 12 feet. 

All these 19th century floods were double the depth of the current Queensland floods, when there were no SUVs whom global warmists blame for all weather extremes we face today. More importantly, all these flood years were La Nina years, just as it is this year (2010-2011).

So is it a coincidence? As our archive posts indicate, we do not consider such floods a mere coincidence but a manifest of La Nina, particularly a strong one. As illustrated in the graph given above (reproduced from one of our archives - Strong La Nina: Bundle up, Monster Winter Ahead! October 7, 2010); the areas coloured in blue that includes Sri Lanka and Australia are those vulnerable to flooding during a La Nina.

So what’s a La Nina? It’s the climatic and natural phenomenon where the central pacific ocean cools, accompanied by an increase of natural disasters globally. At the time we wrote our archive post “Disasters to Surge as La Nina Returns” with dateline July 17 2010, we assumed a moderate to strong La Nina that was in the offing as the phenomenon was still its early development stages. Since then with Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) touching27 (see graph below), the current La Nina is proving to be a monster and likely to be the strongest on record, though this could be only confirmed only after the event ceases. 

[Sustained positive values of the SOI above +8 may indicate a La Niña event, while sustained negative values below −8 may indicate an El Niño event. Values of between about +8 and −8 generally indicate neutral conditions.] 

Most computer models initially forecasted the La Nina to peak sometime Oct-Dec last year. Now nearly all models indicate that La Niña (Niño-3.4 SST anomalies -0.5˚C or less) will persist at least into the Northern Hemisphere spring 2011. But the Japan Meteorological Agency (JPA) forecasts possible strengthening is expected till Northern hemisphere winter this year and its effects will linger on into the first quarter of 2012.  This blog has been using the JPA forecast as an assumption in all our previous La Nina related posts.

The monster intensity and extended duration of the current La Nina accordingly explains the Queensland and Sri Lankan floods. The island's two main monsoon seasons run from May to September and December to February. La Nina tends to accentuate the monsoons. It’s eastern city of Batticaloa was pounded by repeated cloudbursts that left more than 28 inches, or 72 cm, of rain within four days as of Wednesday. Alone, more than one foot of rain fell with 24 hours at the end of last week. According to Accuweather:

“January normally marks the tail end of the rainy season in eastern Sri Lanka, where normal monthly rainfall is upwards of one foot, or 30 cm. However, these outbursts were abnormal in their intensity and persistence... The area will be prone to further flooding downpours through the end of the week.”

Meanwhile Colombo Page reported that meteorologists have forecasted more heavy rains and strong winds in the already ravaged eastern, north central and central provinces. Some of those areas also were placed under landslide warnings. The Sri Lankan Met Office also confirmed their opinion of the cause of the floods:

"Stating that the current bad weather is a result of Sri Lanka being affected by the La Nina phenomenon that had hit the entire globe, the Department of Meteorology warned that the country should be prepared to face any weather condition in the future.

Department of Meteorology Director General P. B. Samarasinghe told at a news conference as the amount of rains which the country is "experiencing have increased by 100 percent."