La Nina Trumps Global Warming... for a while

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 I was having a nice hot chocolate with my mates last Tuesday. Mike surprised us saying: “I have great news; climate change has just reversed. The Earth temperature has actually gone down 0.5 degree”.

It was a bit cool that day but it got cold, rainy and miserable the next day. I stayed home and my trusted woodfire going all day! With a bit of time on my hands I decided to look into all this again.

In September last year, the Bureau of Meteorology announced a La Niña event. We certainly got wetter than average conditions in the last few months. There is a lot of clouds and less sunlight also means lower day temperatures. This is why I was freezing my butt last week. These conditions apply to most of Eastern Australia.

On a global level, La Niña brings a lot of cool water to the surface of the East end of the Pacific Ocean. This is a huge area of our planet. So while this situation lasts, it does look like the global temperature goes down a bit.

The latest NOAA* report explains it this way: “The year began with a La Niña episode in the tropical Pacific Ocean that started in August 2020. The El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) can affect global temperatures. La Niña tends to cool global temperatures slightly”. The top right corner of the graph actually shows 0.4 degrees drop between 2020 and 2021. Unfortunately, this is only a temporary relief.

*National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

Reference:

https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/202101



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