The same El nino pattern is repeating in 2014 as it did in 1997

[OvB]

[QUOTE=I'm invisible;44892979]How does something like this even form? It's such a long cycle, it obviously can't be regulated just by seasons. There must be something that changes from year to year, and tips over at a certain point. If anybody knows more about the cause of this thing lemme know[/QUOTE]

It's a ocean-atmosphere climate event. Simply put, there's a big mass of warm water that's usually pushed up against Indonesia by the trade winds. When the trade winds weaken for a long period of time, this warm body of water sloshes back in a [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelvin_wave"]kelvin wave[/URL] toward South America, and it upsets the regional climate all over. La Nina is the opposite, having cooler than normal sea surface temperatures (SST) in the Pacific. Of course, this opens the question: Why do the trade winds weaken?

The thing about natural climate events is you could as "why" in a never ending loop because everything has an effect on everything else, which is why taking climate science seriously is important. If the sloshing of warm water in the pacific can cause devastating landslides and fisheries collapse, I think it's important to fund research into how we can better predict it. There's so much we don't know about our home.

I'm not sure if it's related, but we can look at the current SST Anomalies online: [url]http://www.ospo.noaa.gov/Products/ocean/sst/anomaly/[/url] You can see warmer than average temperatures along the coast of South and Central America. That may be part of all this.

[WishesForFishes]

So, I live in northern Virginia, will we get some insane ass tropical fuck-you-up storms?

[OvB]

[QUOTE=Katatonic717;44893095]So, I live in northern Virginia, will we get some insane ass tropical fuck-you-up storms?[/QUOTE]

El Nino inhibits tropical cyclone activity so probably not. Predictions and forecasts say this is going to be a mind season.