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...according to a study published in the July 3 Science, El Niño is changing - and that could mean more hurricanes for the already battered western Atlantic coast. Climatologists led by Peter Webster at Georgia Tech found that in some El Niño years, the ocean warming associated with the event is moving thousands of miles west, to the center of the Pacific Ocean. Called El Niño Modoki (after the Japanese term meaning "similar, but different"), the new El Niño seems to shift Atlantic cyclones to the west, resulting in more frequent storms...
...turned out to be an El Niño Modoki, and overall hurricane activity was 2½ times as severe as normal, with 15 named storms and six major hurricanes. Florida was repeatedly battered. "We had a lot more storms than we expected, and that got us thinking," says Webster...
...Webster explains it, the thousands of miles of westward shift of Pacific Ocean warming seen during an El Niño Modoki essentially shifts the Atlantic hurricanes westward as well. "It's as if you had a big aquarium with a Bunsen burner below it," he says. "The heat causes a rising and sinking motion in the water. If you shift the position of the burner, you shift the motion of the water too." The El Niño Modokis also result in reduced vertical wind shear and therefore promote the creation of hurricanes. (When vertical wind shear...
...clear why the Pacific warming seen in El Niño events is shifting west. It's possibly part of a long-term but natural oscillation, like the decades-long cycles that already affect hurricanes. "The second possibility is that it's an impact of global warming," says Webster, who will continue exploring the question at Georgia Tech. Either way, with the climate warming and El Niño changing, the future is likely to be stormy for the western Atlantic - which is bad news for everyone but hurricane researchers with a new puzzle to solve. "Those are the games...
...considered more options and deliberated more over the issues, that jurist will have made the "wiser, more informed" decision. Sotomayor's background will automatically strengthen her consideration of legal issues - something that will escape some other jurist who has not had the experience of being a minority. Kerman Bharucha, webster...