Surviving Capitalism (Not) : 2015 El Niño produces new climate record: 3 simultaneous Pacific category 4 hurricanes

We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Monday, September 7, 2015

2015 El Niño produces new climate record: 3 simultaneous Pacific category 4 hurricanes

Click here to access article by Rolf Schuttenhelm from Bits of Science.

I discovered only this morning (see this, this, and this) that a huge El Niño is brewing over the South Pacific ocean which will be creating a number of effects such as the hurricanes that are now occurring over the ocean reported in this article, and predicted near future events for the west coasts of North and South America such as rising ocean levels, more record high temperatures, heavy rainfalls and other extreme types of weather.

This website is operated by a self-described small group of science researchers and writers who often run articles that are loaded with technical terms and material which are difficult to understand by ordinary readers. One such term in this article is "ENSO" which means El Niño Southern Oscillation.

The climatic effects of the 2015 El Niño will not be limited to the Pacific basin. During 2014 the world went from negative to positive ENSO state – and even that was sufficient to produce a new global heat record.

In 2015 that record will be broken again, and 2016 may again break that record – as 2016 will be strongly influenced by the (forecast) end-2015 Super El Niño – adding at least ~+0.2C to the 1998 Super El Niño – as that is the greenhouse-gas-induced trend over that period.

A cursory search of articles on Google revealed many such articles from various local sources, but the environment and science sources I depend on have largely overlooked this phenomenon or it was hidden behind very benign headlines such as "1997 vs. 2015: Animation Compares El Niños Side-by-Side" from Climate Central (one of the sources I depend on).