writeaboutwarming

July 5, 2009 – Have you ever heard of something called El Nino Modoki? I learned about it for the first time this week. El Nino is the weather phenomenon which, in the United States, causes us to have very wet summers. (La Nina causes them to be cool and dry.) In Peru, where this climatological aberration was first observed, the waters of the Pacific coast of Peru become warmer than usual. This aberration, astonishingly enough, affects weather all over the world. One effect of El Nino is a calmer-than-usual hurricane season. This year, however, has been – and, according to some experts, will be - different. I’ve written about the weather this year from time to time. It’s been an exceptionally rainy year. Much of the rain seems to fall in torrents, the result of violent storms. Temperatures in much of the Midwest were lower than normal during most of the spring. Lately, they’ve become much higher, accompanied by very high humidity. But this is El Nino with a twist. We’re now ...