Scientists have decided that the British summer is likely to be something of a washout. Citing evidence of a Pacific cooling - a fact that we mentioned here around two weeks ago (see this) - they point the finger of blame on this current spell of wet and unseasonal weather in Britain to the workings of the La Nina phenomenon.
The La Nina effect has been known for some time and is contrasted by the El Nino, with the difference between them being that El Nino refers to a warming of the Pacific Ocean wheras La Nina refers to a cooling down of the same ocean. The importance of this is that both these phenomenon are known to make a fundamental contribution to the weather around the world, and a latest study has tracked back instances of La Nina effects on the British climate for the last one hundred years.
For more on this please turn to the following article just published in The Times of London - but be prepared to scroll down the page quite a way.
La Nina.
For some time it has been appreciated that important weather changes, that in some cases may last for numerous years are due to shifting locations of hot and cold pools of water in the Pacific Ocean. These have sometimes been linked to extreme weather systems bringing widespread disaster and mayhem. Lately however these changes have been erroneously attributed to Global Warming and so called Climate Change.
Once again however the truth is considerably more prosaic, and far from evoking the spectacle of a planet threatening catastrophe, these changes in the Pacific Ocean are simply the result of natural forces that have existed for thousands of years.
For more on El Nino please visit the El Nino home page for all the latest news.
