[HN Gopher] Triple-dip La Nina confirmed as BoM makes declaration
___________________________________________________________________
Triple-dip La Nina confirmed as BoM makes declaration
Author : indigodaddy
Score : 69 points
Date : 2022-09-17 18:19 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.scimex.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.scimex.org)
| andrewstuart wrote:
| Melbourne's gigantic Thomson Dam is nearly full - a rare event.
|
| DamCam: https://www.melbournewater.com.au/water-data-and-
| education/w...
|
| 200KM from Melbourne, the Thomson is the main water storage and
| holds 1,068,000 megalitres. For comparison, Sydney harbour is
| 562,000 megalitres.
|
| The Thomson is at 96% full, and in fact most of Melbourne's dams
| are full or nearly full according to:
|
| https://www.melbournewater.com.au/water-data-and-education/w...
| bombcar wrote:
| Many dams (Oriville for example) are important parts of flood
| mitigation - isn't having the dams nearly full _bad_ for that?
| Or is the rainy season over?
| 01100011 wrote:
| If it were, i think they'd drain off enough water between
| storms to preserve some reserve capacity for flood control.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| "Between storms" - no such thing for the last Australian
| summer
| ozzydave wrote:
| Some dams have additional capacity for flood mitigation, like
| Wivenhoe Dam in Queensland. Unfortunately that's not fool
| proof either: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010%E2%80%9320
| 11_Queensland...
| wumpus wrote:
| If you're asking about California, we're about to start the
| rainy season.
| kristianp wrote:
| Here's the site they link: http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/
| escapecharacter wrote:
| This sauce sounds delicious!
| enviclash wrote:
| Last I read was that the meeting of ice in Antarctica is
| increasing the probability of extending La Nina (sorry I lost the
| source). There are theories about ENSO states becoming more
| frequent with climate change, the most favoured one was a more
| stable El Nino (see PNAS article by Lenton on climate tipping)
| rrreese wrote:
| If like myself you are confused as to what the byte Ordered Mark
| has to do with weather, BoM is the Australian Bureau of
| Meteorology.
|
| Triple dipping refers to this being the third year of La Nina in
| a row.
| culopatin wrote:
| I thought it was Bill of Materials
| netsharc wrote:
| HNer's religious devotion to "Don't change the submission
| title" is sometimes infuriating. It needs to say what BoM is
| and that it's confirmed in Australia.
| backspace_ wrote:
| There is no need to make comments like that, others will just
| complain about it.
| JasonFruit wrote:
| Which is not always a reason not to say something when you
| believe it's important.
| indigodaddy wrote:
| Only takes a quick glance of the actual article to gain
| clarity on it though.
| backspace_ wrote:
| That is quite the confusion you got there. As la nina is a
| weather event, how is it related to Byte ordered Mark?
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| They were just defining the unknown acronym in a playful way,
| presumably.
|
| You got the joke, but didn't even notice.
| seshagiric wrote:
| I was actually thinking it meant bill of materials. I am a
| programmer with construction background
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| Lol, fwiw this was my initial reading as well.
| cstejerean wrote:
| > Known as a "triple-dip," a three-year La Nina stint has only
| occurred three times since record keeping began: from 1954 to
| 1957, 1973 to 1976, and from 1998 to 2001.
|
| So basically every 20 or so years and the last one was about 20
| years ago.
| kelnos wrote:
| It might be interesting to compare the severity of the three
| prior triple-dips with the current one. My zero-research guess
| would be that this current one is worse than the last.
| 2muchcoffeeman wrote:
| I was around for the last one in Sydney. Anecdotally, this
| seems like the worst floods. But that could also be because
| we've had 3 major events in a row: massive forest fires,
| pandemic, multiple bad floods.
| [deleted]
| loxias wrote:
| Interesting! The '97 & '98 ones were intense, I remember.
|
| I think ever since then it's had higher awareness in the larger
| population but I have no way of knowing.
|
| It was a significant enough event to even be represented in
| entertainment[1]. ;-)
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5tttyTWXzU
| mylons wrote:
| that's not la nina though..?
| hammock wrote:
| Is this due to global warming?
| marcosdumay wrote:
| You mean things happening on the same frequency that they
| always happened?
| Arnt wrote:
| You're assuming that this one is a three-year La Nina.
| You'll know whether this is a 3- or >=4-year La Nina in
| about 18 months. The warmest seven years since records
| began have all been since 2015, so I wouldn't bet against a
| La Nina record now either.
| johnchristopher wrote:
| s/y\ always/last\ three\ times\ it\
| blowski wrote:
| Might be clearer if you just write in English.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| And to keep it snarky there is "ftfy"
| lucb1e wrote:
| I mean it's quite clear, but yeah a direct question would
| be easier for everyone to understand at a glance
| thrown_22 wrote:
| s/\/\/\//\\\\\\\\\\\g
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Ever since we started keeping track of it.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Don't have to escape the slashes, non?
| djbusby wrote:
| The back-slash escapes the space. And the training slash
| is missing.
| johnchristopher wrote:
| Bad habit from vim, sorry :).
| renewiltord wrote:
| Sorry that's what I meant. It's not necessary to escape
| the spaces.
|
| s/Jesus Christ/Jesus, the only begotten son of God who
| came to Earth and died so that we may be saved from our
| sin,/g
|
| Is a regex I ran as a young fellow in scriptures who had
| exhausted spacing as a means to hit minimum essay size.
| [deleted]
| colechristensen wrote:
| These la nina/el nino cycles seem to be long period climate
| patterns which already existed, because they're measured in
| decades and we don't have records for all that long _n_ is
| very small and quite hard to determine if there are
| anthropogenic effects to them.
|
| Things people forget with climate is that there are indeed
| long cyclical patterns not all of which are well understood
| which have significant weather effects. You can't just yell
| global warming every time there is an apparent change or bad
| weather.
|
| If you are interested in truth and not just a political
| narrative you have to be curious, open, and ready to
| acknowledge not everything is going to fit the popular doom
| stories.
| jliptzin wrote:
| I agree with you but in a situation like this it's a lot
| better to overreact than to underreact. If we do more than
| we need to, we get cheap solar panels, long lasting
| batteries, and maybe a lot of time and money wasted on
| ideas that didn't work out. If we do less than we have to,
| we get a possibly irreversible feedback loop of global
| warming that leads to the collapse of most habitats
| (including ours) on this planet.
| colechristensen wrote:
| It's not though.
|
| There are a large volume of people who question the
| validity of climate change at all, exaggerating only
| causes more doubt and recruits for the opposition.
|
| The doom scenario of "irreversible collapse" is also
| quite unlikely but some people really like scary stories.
| And to be blunt any practical imaginable progress is not
| going to be a very big change, if it's going to happen
| the damage is already likely done.
| pstuart wrote:
| There are a large volume of people who believe that
| demons and ghosts are real:
| https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2021/10/28/do-
| gho...
|
| I say that just to point out that popularity doesn't
| provide legitimacy. But with that case I'd assume that
| there just might be a significant overlap between that
| example and climate deniers.
|
| The doom scenarios have enough possibility and
| probability to warrant being taken seriously. Wishing it
| away on future generations is psychopathic.
| jliptzin wrote:
| You said yourself it's not well understood, don't you
| think it's wise to err on the side of caution? What's the
| downside of getting off fossil fuels anyway, besides some
| people needing to switch careers from coal mining to
| solar panel installation, for example?
| galangalalgol wrote:
| The precautionary principle is attractive, but it ignores
| the possibility that lost opportunity costs can exceed
| those of the risk being avoided. Turning on the lhc was
| considered by some to have a miniscule risk of turning
| earth into a tiny black hole that would last a moment
| before evaporating. My particle physics friends laughed
| and agreed there was a non zero risk. The notion that an
| action with a tiny yet finite risk of an event with
| infinite cost should itself have infinite cost would
| preclude most everyday activities. Not that climate
| change or emissions fit that category I think the risks
| aren't that small, just saying be careful with the
| precautionary principle.
|
| Some amount of climate change would probably be
| beneficial to some nations. Russia would vome to mind
| with more arable land potentially becoming available, but
| some models show it being borderline too dry to grow on.
| Those same models show a net benefit to agriculture in
| Midwestern US. I wonder if xkcd or 538 could whip us up a
| map of climate change winner/losers and areas that
| support co2 policies?
| sbdncuvh wrote:
| > What's the downside of getting off fossil fuels anyway,
|
| Poverty?
| grog454 wrote:
| It's wise to care about the climate. It's wise to
| investigate human behavior's effect on climate. It's also
| wise to question investigations, their results, and
| especially their conclusions.
|
| I don't know what a downside to getting off fossil fuels
| would be but its not hard to imagine some. Take this
| article for example :
| https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2016-06-15/what-is-
| an-ic... I seriously doubt the scientific basis for the
| statement "The Earth is due for another ice age now but
| climate change makes it very unlikely" but it's one idea.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| The downside is not having heat in the winter in Sweden.
| There is a pretty significant downside there.
| thrown_22 wrote:
| If we over react we get an unstable grid which is
| incredibly fragile and doesn't work in the winter. Just
| look at Germany today. The only country to voluntarily
| de-electrify itself.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| My understanding is that they have actually added brown-
| coal capacity to their grid. The problem wasn't a fear of
| climate change, but of another Fukushima type event. They
| have been ramping up wind, and they have fairly reliable
| wind, but wind patterns can shift too.
| kortilla wrote:
| Yes, everything that happens now is because of it.
| labster wrote:
| Possibly, but in isolation it's impossible to tell. Weather
| is a series of events; climate is a statistical phenomenon.
|
| But basically yes, all bad and exceptional weather is caused
| by climate change, at least in terms of moral equivalence.
| Many people somewhere is suffering from climate change, and
| you should pretend that it's you, because you want to have
| the mindset that it has hurt people most everywhere.
| bequanna wrote:
| Setting aside how silly it is to think about weather in
| this way, you're also just plain wrong.
|
| Despite the doom and gloom marketing from those seeking to
| put their hand in your wallet, most people will definitely
| NOT be negatively impacted by climate change.
| otikik wrote:
| When Newton saw that apple fall from the tree, his first
| thought was:
|
| - I just found a way put my hand in bequanna's wallet!
| irrational wrote:
| Most people won't be negatively affected? How do you
| justify that? How many people in the USA southwest are
| affected by the mega drought? How many people in China
| are affected by their mega drought? How many people in
| Europe are affected by the heat waves? How many people on
| islands and coastal areas are affected by sea levels
| rising? How many peoples are affected by glaciers melting
| and less snowpacks (such as villages in the Himalayas)?
| kortilla wrote:
| > How many people in the USA southwest are affected by
| the mega drought?
|
| This is a bad example because the area has gone through
| similar mega droughts over the last 5000+ years. The
| Colorado river compact was setup after an unusually wet
| period and now that the flow has returned to normal they
| are paying the price.
| bequanna wrote:
| Plenty of questions there. Do you have any of the
| answers?
|
| Ah, right. This problem is so terrible and sneaky that we
| (quite conveniently) can't even measure its effect! Just
| to be safe, we should just assume everything bad is
| caused by this spectre.
|
| Luckily, some very smart people who are not at all self-
| interested have told us that if we make great sacrifices
| and spend enough money that will help us avoid this
| impossible to measure problem.
| russelg wrote:
| How is anything the poster stated not measurable? We can
| measure the rise of ocean levels, the rise of global
| temperature, the number of people on said coasts etc...
|
| Take off your tinfoil hat for a quick second.
| peyton wrote:
| It makes for great agitprop: play as cardboard characters
| of perfect virtue or absolute evil.
| labster wrote:
| blowski wrote:
| I get the strong passions in this conversation, but I
| don't think name-calling helps anyone.
| labster wrote:
| It's not going to convince anyone, I know. It's just I
| get tired of dealing with small brain nonsense like this.
| Wind and solar are cheaper power, and from friends
| looking for tenure I know that any "doing it for funding"
| is imaginary. If they haven't been convinced by now, no
| logical argument could ever possibly convince them. I
| could use an argument in pure mathematics, and they would
| say there is no evidence for any of my axioms. They keep
| asking for evidence and debate, but they are simply
| lying. I'm just returning the same level of respect.
| wumpus wrote:
| You have a choice:
|
| 1) Say "you're so dumb" and everyone flags you, so you
| have little impact on the conversation
|
| 2) Don't say "you're so dumb", and enough people will
| vouch for you that your comments are visible
| bequanna wrote:
| If strong emotions were facts, I suppose you'd win this
| argument.
|
| Let's see what you think in ~10 years when the newest,
| focus-group tested climate crisis de jour is being pushed
| after "climate change" is quietly disproven and stops
| being sexy.
| labster wrote:
| I studied meteorology in university, and I've read a lot
| of papers in climatology and adjacent fields. Please come
| back and talk to me once you understand atmospheric
| radiation, the Madden-Julian Oscillation, ENSO, the
| Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, how isotopes can serve
| as proxy data, general circulation models and how they
| are modified for climate, economic models of ecosystem
| services, and how tropical storms cause economic damage.
| I'll wait.
| 988747 wrote:
| If anything your wallet is lighter because of the push
| for "green" technologies, which are usually much more
| expensive than "dirty" ones. Just compare price of Tesla
| vs ICE car. Not to mention things like "carbon tax"
| (already partially implemented in the EU)
| keepquestioning wrote:
| This is terrible. My Australian friends are complaining endless
| rain during summer is ruining their quality of life.
| bobnamob wrote:
| The 3 "once in a century" flood events haven't been great
| either
| keepquestioning wrote:
| Is there any link to climate change & flooding?
| culi wrote:
| Not Australia, but a recent study[0] confirmed the Pakistan
| flooding (in which 10% of this country that's larger than
| Texas is underwater) links to climate change. Historically,
| tying events like this to climate change in a way that
| lives up to scientific rigor has been quite difficult, but
| techniques and available data have been improving. Allowing
| us to tie many extreme weather events to climate change,
| including: the seemingly never-ending droughts in the Horn
| of Africa, Mexico, and China, flash floods in West and
| Central Africa, Iran and the inland United States and
| searing heat waves in India, Japan, California, Britain and
| Europe. They refrained for making estimates for the
| Pakistan flooding, but earlier this year scientists found
| that the heat that scorched India and Pakistan this spring
| had been 30 times as likely to occur because of greenhouse
| emissions. July's extreme heat in Britain had been at least
| 10 times as likely
|
| If you're looking for a mechanism of action for how climate
| change can make monsoons more deadly, it's likely to do
| with increased evaporation of water due to increased
| temperatures and the fact that hotter air holds more
| moisture
|
| [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/15/climate/pakistan-
| floods-g...
| gilded-lilly wrote:
| Increased instrumentation/data could also lead to bias in
| the data through increased volume. I'm sure there's a
| name for this effect.
| keepquestioning wrote:
| Measurement bias?
| lisper wrote:
| Yes.
| cassepipe wrote:
| Well let's hope Autralia steps away from being a major coal
| producer
| dotancohen wrote:
| Sounds better than drought, so long as there is no flooding.
| indigodaddy wrote:
| Believe will cause dryness in certain parts of US (Southwest
| perhaps)
| dbetteridge wrote:
| Lismore,NSW would like a word.
| bobnamob wrote:
| There's definitely been flooding.
| [deleted]
| bushbaba wrote:
| It can be just as bad if not worse for crops
| byhemechi wrote:
| For people like myself who live on top of a hill, it's been
| pretty good not having 40 degree heat
|
| For people in lower-lying areas, it's been less good
| notimetorelax wrote:
| Dublin would like to have a word with them.
| siquick wrote:
| Sydney gets almost double the rain that Dublin gets.
|
| http://www.weather-guide.com/Weather-Comparison/Dublin-
| Sydne...
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| After cancelling holidays for covid, they are now rained out.
|
| In addition mould is a big issue. Takes weeks or months to fix.
| Potentially could write off a house. " And those are the "first
| world" problems before you talk about actual floods.
| elevaet wrote:
| How will this affect winter temperatures in Europe, wrt limited
| gas supply?
| warble wrote:
| Wetter and colder in the north, warmer central Europe. Alps
| usually get a lot of snow.
| https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/climate/seasonal-to-de...
| jnovek wrote:
| I have migraines triggered by changes in the weather. The last
| two winters have been the most miserable of my life.
|
| This most recent winter I had a migraine that lasted an
| unbelievable 63 days starting the day after Christmas.
| taywrobel wrote:
| While I definitely agree climate change is a clear and present
| danger, how do you know that your migraines are weather
| related?
|
| Sounds like a conflating of correlation and causation.
| jnovek wrote:
| Your skepticism is reasonable. It does sound like an
| extraordinary claim.
|
| The relationship between migraine and weather is a studied
| phenomenon. I admit that I don't personally understand the
| research on this topic, but I trust my neurologist.
|
| I do know that the proxy data for weather changes is
| barometric pressure, so it's often specified in that way:
| "changes in the barometric pressure cause migraines for some
| people". However I find the concept easier to explain to
| people with the phrase "changes in weather" because, in my
| experience, most folks don't really know the relationship
| between the barometer and the weather.
|
| The Mayo has a layman's discussion on the topic of weather
| and migraine:
|
| https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/migraine-
| head...
|
| EDIT: I forgot to mention. I "know" about the correlation
| because I've done hundreds of days of migraine journaling
| over the years and used that to find probable triggers.
| Unfortunately, that's essentially the state-of-the-art in the
| field. :-/
| lucb1e wrote:
| Have you looked into how much energy/noise it would take
| for a fan to add those couple missing millibars to your
| house, to make the change more gradual? Assuming mostly
| gradual weather changes most days, it might be able to
| catch many of the big changes if you are able to stay at
| home for 24 hours after the change.
| krasin wrote:
| > changes in the barometric pressure cause migraines for
| some people
|
| I am with you. Have you considered moving to a geographical
| location with smaller pressure variations? Helped me a lot.
| klyrs wrote:
| It's funny to me that people have unlearned the
| relationship between pressure and weather. I grew up in a
| house with a faux-antique barometer, and always took that
| for granted. Like reading an analog clock, this isn't
| knowledge that "kids these days" pick up. Which is still
| weird, because TV weather announcers always talk about the
| pressure when describing their weather forecasts. But of
| course, people want to know if their BBQ is going to be
| sunny, they don't want a lesson in physics.
|
| https://www.amnh.org/explore/ology/earth/make-your-own-
| weath...
| bombcar wrote:
| We've even lost most of "looks like rain" - the average
| person a hundred years ago or so would have been able to
| relatively reliably predict the day's weather in the
| morning.
|
| Many of us can't do that now, even if we do go outside.
| lucb1e wrote:
| Honestly though, a proper prediction with various inputs
| is more accurate than eyeballing a barometer, and aside
| from this particular type of migraine, why would anyone
| need to know the pressure during the normal course of
| one's day? (Assuming your work doesn't happen to use
| environmental pressure.)
| thewebcount wrote:
| Does it matter whether it's correlation or causation? Maybe
| the weather causes something else to happen (like releasing
| more allergens or whatever), and that causes their (and my)
| migraines? Who cares? When the weather changes, many of us
| experience migraines. It doesn't really matter whether it's
| causation or correlation and your questioning it does nothing
| to help the people suffering or to educate those reading the
| discussion. It's just dismissive for no reason.
| qprofyeh wrote:
| Do you get a headache on an airplane when it's ascending or
| descending?
| jnovek wrote:
| I think I do, but there are so many other things in the
| airport and on airplanes (noises, smells, bright lights) that
| trigger migraine that I can't really say for sure.
| dominotw wrote:
| awesome ski season then?
| ISL wrote:
| 100%. The real strength of knowing these oscillations is the
| ability to get ahead of the cycles if you know they're coming.
|
| La Nina is great where I live, El Nino is not, but the reverse
| is true elsewhere.
| hammock wrote:
| The last one was terrible, what are you talking about
| iammiles wrote:
| Was great in the PNW
| hammock wrote:
| I ought to check it out this year. Where's your favorite
| place to go?
|
| I'm thinking of how last year wasn't hardly any snow and
| quite a few meltoffs in the east (where I did most of my
| skiing because of all the madness at the resorts all over).
| And the year before that worst avalanche year in memory for
| Colorado, if you do any backcountry
| rdudek wrote:
| It usually means below-average snowfall in Colorado. Other
| states might fare better than us.
| siquick wrote:
| The last 2 summers here in Sydney have been pretty much a
| writeoff due to the rain. And then before the double La Nina we
| had the bush fires of 2019 where the city had some of the worst
| air quality anywhere of the world. The (general shoddily built)
| houses just aren't built for this weather - I'd say that more
| than half of my friends, family, and work colleagues have had to
| deal with mould in their apartments and houses.
|
| A huge reason for living in Sydney is the quality of outdoor
| life, then combined with extensive lockdowns, insane housing
| prices, and an openly corrupt and overbearing state government,
| it's not been a great place to live for a lot of the population
| in the last few years.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-09-17 23:01 UTC)