'Godzilla' El Nino Likely Means Wetter and Cooler Winter

By MARC TORRENCE (Patch National Staff)

Climatologists are monitoring what could become the strongest El Niño ever recorded, a change in Pacific water temperatures that could cause flooding, landslides and perhaps the warmest winter ever in the United States.

The National Weather Service issued an advisory giving a 90 percent chance that El Niño — a weather pattern that begins with warming waters in the Pacific Ocean and carries with it the threat of severe weather and natural disasters — continues into the winter. Scientists put an 85 percent chance of it continuing into next spring.

One National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration blog jokingly referred to it as the “Bruce Lee” El Niño, and a NASA scientist took that a step further saying it has “Godzilla” potential.

“It’s already pretty warm,” Tom Di Liberto, an NOAA meteorologist at the climate prediction center, said. “It’s already a moderate to strong El Niño; the trend’s just continuing month in, month out.”

El Niño is a climate pattern that comes up every two to seven years. The waters in the Pacific warm near the equator and can impact climate around the globe.

What does that mean for Georgia? The National Weather Service in Peachtree City has noted that an El Niño typically means a wetter and cooler winter for the region.

Daniel Swain, a Ph.D. candidate at Stanford who runs the California Weather Blog, told the New York Times that this year’s could cause 2015 to be “very likely to be the warmest year on record.”

The most likely place for El Niño-related flooding is the southern United States. Landslides are most likely in California, caused by what is expected to be an increase in rain over most of the state and more snow in the mountains.

While such forecasts conjure up images of doomsday weather and end-of-the-world storms, the reality is much different. In many places in the United States, El Niño actually brings relief, with some negative effects scattered throughout.

The water temperature makes for a warmer winter and increased rainfall for much of the United States. It also disrupts storm-causing winds, leading to a drop in the number of hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean, a trend that’s already playing out as we enter the heart of the hurricane season.

The most powerful El Niño to date was recorded in 1997-98, and scientists say this current one could top it.

A 1999 study estimated that while the 1997-1998 El Niño caused $4 billion in damage, it brought with it $19 billion of economic relief: lower heating bills and less damage from hurricanes.

“In general, if you look at the United States as a whole during El Niño years, technically there’s a benefit,” Di Liberto said. “The negative outcomes, those are, generally speaking, more visible. People tend to see those more. That’s when you look at the landslides and the floods.”

--August 2015 Image via National Weather Service