What explains the lull? That you can not connect the dots with Complex Systems.
2001
12th European Colloquium on Quantitative and Theoretical Geography.St-Valery-en-Caux, France, September 7-11, 2001. St-Valery-en-Caux, France, September 7-11, 2001
Modelling complexity : The limits to prediction
Modélisation de la complexité et limites à la prévision
Note: There is a bug in the HTML code (duplicate id) that might not take you to the right place in the text. If you see Full text scroll up a bit to the link The Limits to Prediction
Synopsis The problem is the models, they are simpler than the system they model.
Atlantic Niña is the cold phase of a natural climate pattern we call the Atlantic zonal mode. (Zonal means “along lines of latitude.”)…Typically, sea surface temperatures in the eastern equatorial Atlantic have a somewhat surprising seasonal cycle. The warmest waters of the year occur in spring, while the coolest waters of the year—below 25 degrees Celsius, or 77 degrees Fahrenheit—occur from July to August…
These steady southeasterly winds are strong enough to drag surface waters away from the equator, which brings relatively cold water from deeper ocean layers to the surface. This process, known as equatorial upwelling, forms a tongue of relatively cold water along the equatorial Atlantic during the summer months…
2024 began with extremely warm sea surface temperatures in the eastern equatorial Atlantic during February to March…Equally remarkable was the rapid transition from warm to cold SST anomalies. Never before in the observed record has the eastern equatorial Atlantic swung so quickly from one to another extreme event…
Plus, Atlantic Niños have been shown to increase the likelihood of powerful hurricanes developing near the Cape Verde islands. NOAA’s seasonal forecast of above-normal 2024 hurricane activity is based in part* on expected La Niña conditions in the equatorial Pacific and warm ocean temperatures in the tropical North Atlantic. It will be interesting to monitor whether this Atlantic Niña fully develops, and if so, whether it has a dampening effect on hurricane activity as the season progresses.
During a typical hurricane season, atmospheric waves move off the western coast of Africa and into the North Atlantic Ocean, along what’s called the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) — a belt circling close to the equator, where air from the Northern and Southern hemispheres meets. The ITCZ belt can carry clouds, rain and storms. The atmospheric waves carried west along the ITCZ over the Atlantic, combined with warm Atlantic waters, develop into tropical storms and hurricanes…
The effect of the current northward shift is that the ITCZ pushes rain further north in Africa than usual — across the Sahara — while those atmospheric waves from Africa are also displaced north of their usual path. Without ITCZ moisture moving over the warm Atlantic, the ingredients aren’t all there for severe storms to develop.
Things like this are what cause me to believe that the changing climate is very like a three body problem. We can predict where it is going next, but after just a few iterations of the models, a thousand typing monkeys would have better luck.
Frankly, I am super happy with the hurricane season so far. If it can stay like this through 2026 I am good.
Planning on retiring and selling my condo in the spring of 2027.
Yes, and that is exactly why GCC worries me big time — its unpredictablility on massively immense systems.
I also miss tens of Sierra Nevada glaciers that fed ice melt into late Spring into late Summer meadows with glorious flowers and trout streams as a side effect.
A few degrees shift everything but that is not hugely radical for the earth. Our means of feeding ourselves means massive changes in our farming and living arrangements. We can be pushed aside if we do not change and change fast.
