Author(s): Graham Readfearn

Global heating is making El Niño and La Niña forecasts less reliable, BoM says

Source(s): Guardian, the (UK)
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Meteorologists say climate change and the amount of heat being added to the oceans make predictions based on the past less reliable.

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The Bureau of Meteorology is shifting the way it communicates about climate phenomena such as El Niño and La Niña, because global heating is making predictions based on the past less reliable.

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But Dr Karl Braganza, national manager of climate services at the bureau, said climate change and the amount of heat being added to the oceans made those old relationships less reliable.

Climate change may not have “broken” them, he said, “but the number of times when the climate is inconsistent with what we saw in the past will only increase”.

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Braganza said older statistical models that based predictions on historical observations “worked well in a stationary climate”, but that these dynamical models were now more useful.

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