Sunday, March 16, 2008
here is an article choon ting pointed out to me on today's newspaper:
(click on the image to read the article)
Although this article is basically about the heavy rainfall that has come upon singapore so far and some shot some straits times photographer took, it has mention to La Niña, a coupled ocean-atmosphere phenomenon similar to El Niño.
La Niña and El Niño are related: La Niña is the opposite of El Niño, where the latter corresponds instead to a higher sea surface temperature by a deviation of at least 0.5 °C.
La Niña is often preceded by a strong El Niño. (El Niño is famous because of its potentially dangerous effects on the weather near Chile and Austrailia)
As La Niña is directly related to El Nino, I thought it would be good to read beyond our research topic and learn something more about the La Niña effect this article is referring to.
There was a strong La Niña episode during 1988-1989. La Niña also formed in 1995, and in 1999-2000. The last La Niña was a minor one, and occurred 2000-2001.
Currently, a moderate La Niña, (the one mentioned in the article) which began developing in mid-2007 and that it will be likely to continue into this year. According to NOAA, La Niña impacts are expected during November – January, they include a continuation of above-average precipitation over Indonesia and below-average precipitation over the central equatorial Pacific.
This month, La Niña caused a drop in sea surface temperatures over Southeast Asia by a astronomical amount of 2 C. It also caused heavy rains over Malaysia, Singapore as well as Indonesia.
samantha k blogged at 9:13 AM
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here is an article choon ting pointed out to me on today's newspaper: