NASA Observes La Niña: This 'Little Girl' Makes A Big Impression

ScienceDaily (Jan. 16, 2008) — Cool, wet conditions in the Northwest, frigid weather on the Plains, and record dry conditions in the Southeast, all signs that La Niña is in full swing.

With winter gearing up, a moderate La Niña is hitting its peak. And we are just beginning to see the full effects of this oceanographic phenomenon, as La Niña episodes are typically strongest in January.

A La Niña event occurs when cooler than normal sea surface temperatures form along the equator in the Pacific Ocean, specifically in the eastern to central Pacific. The La Niña we are experiencing now has a significant presence in the eastern part of the ocean.

The cooler water temperatures associated with La Niña are caused by an increase in easterly sea surface winds. Under normal conditions these winds force cooler water from below up to the surface of the ocean. When the winds increase in speed, more cold water from below is forced up, cooling the ocean surface.

“With this La Niña, the sea-surface temperatures are about two degrees colder than normal in the eastern Pacific and that’s a pretty significant difference,” says David Adamec of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. “I know it doesn’t sound like much, but remember this is water that probably covers an area the size of the United States. It’s like you put this big air conditioner out there -- and the atmosphere is going to feel it.”

While this “air conditioner” may be located in the equatorial Pacific Ocean, it has a great influence on the weather here in the United States and across the globe.

The cool water temperatures of a La Niña slow down cloud growth overhead, causing changes to the rainfall patterns from South American to Indonesia. These changes in rainfall affect the strength and location of the jet stream -- the strong winds that guide weather patterns over the United States. Since the jet stream regulates weather patterns, any changes to it will have a great impact on the United States.

Those changes can be felt throughout the country. The Northwest generally experiences cooler, wetter weather during a La Niña. On the Great Plains, residents normally see a colder than normal winter and southeastern states traditionally experience below average rainfall.

The cooler waters of a La Niña event also increase the growth of living organisms in this part of the ocean. La Niñas amplify the normal conditions in the Pacific. These typically cool and abundant waters experience an increase in phytoplankton growth when the water temperature drops even further.

The increased circulation that brings up cold water from below also brings up with it nutrients from the deeper waters. These nutrients feed the organisms at the bottom of the food chain, starting a reaction that increases life in the ocean. NASA’s SeaWiFS satellite documented this increase in phytoplankton during the last La Niña period in 1998.

La Niña and El Niño episodes tend to occur every three to five years. La Niñas are often preceded by an El Niño, however this cycle is not guaranteed.

The lengths of La Niña events vary as well. “We need to watch to see if this La Niña diminishes, because they can last for multiple years. And if it does last for multiple years, the southern tier of the United States, especially the Southeast, can expect dryer weather. That is not a good situation. If this La Niña behaves like a normal event, we should see signs that it is beginning to weaken by February,” says Adamec.

So far this La Niña is behaving like a textbook case: following the predicted weather patterns, strengthening throughout the winter, and peaking toward January. According to NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center, this La Niña episode is expected to continue until the spring of 2008, with a gradual weakening starting in February.

NASA will continue to monitor this phenomenon with several of its key Earth observing satellites.

Instruments on NASA’s Terra and Aqua satellites measure sea surface temperature and observe changes to life in the ocean, changes of great importance to the fishing industry. The MODIS instruments on these satellites detected the temperature drop that signaled this La Niña period, and SeaWiFS continues to monitor ocean life.

Scientists also look at sea surface height to understand La Niña. The cooler ocean water associated with a La Niña contracts, lowering sea-surface heights. Over the past year, NASA’s Jason satellite has observed a lower than normal sea level along the equatorial Pacific where this current La Niña episode is taking place.

NASA also looks at changes in wind and rain patterns to study La Niña. The QuikSCAT satellite measures changes in oceanic surface winds, while the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission satellite observes changes in rainfall. These observations add to a fuller understanding of this phenomenon.

The current La Niña episode has far many reaching effects. What some may see as just a small change in sea surface temperature has a much greater impact on our climate here in the U.S. and across the globe, as well as implications for the fishing industry and the global economy. With the help of NASA’s earth observing fleet, scientists are becoming better equipped to observe and understand this phenomenon.

Adapted from materials provided by National Aeronautics And Space Administration.

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Eco-Capitalists Save Mother Nature by Charging for Her Services

This past spring, David Brand went on a property-scouting trip to Malaysian Borneo. Deep in the rain forest, Brand — founder and director of a forestry investment business — met locals who just couldn’t grasp what this Westerner was doing there. They were mystified he did not want to build an illegal logging mill. One of them put his arm around Brand’s shoulder. “No one can see what we do here, my friend,” he said. “We can cut it all down for you.”

Brand sighed. He wasn’t there to clear-cut the rain forest. In fact, soon after scoping out that land, he hopped on a plane to London where, in a matter of weeks, he raised $200 million to buy tracts of forest like the one in Borneo — and he’s not going to raze those, either. They’re investments. The return will come from deals with companies shopping for pollution offsets or with NGOs and governments that will pay to protect the planet’s wild places — not because they’re pretty, but because they perform a service.

The eco-capitalists are coming, and they aren’t wielding Thoreauvian platitudes about the sanctity of nature. Their jargon is far less lyrical: ecological assets, environmental markets, ecosystem services, natural capital. For these guys, biofuels and long-lasting lightbulbs are fine but they’re nothing more than a short-term play. The real money is in nascent markets indexed to the health of Mother Nature.

People understand the economic value of nature’s goods because we constantly pay for them: seafood, timber, copper, cut flowers, natural gas. But nature also provides services that stabilize spaceship Earth. Insects pollinate crops, wooded hillsides purify water, trees sequester CO₂, and wetlands buffer cities against storm surges. How much are those services worth? Who knows. They’ve always been free, or treated as such. Nature has never submitted an invoice.

But they’re not free, of course. We can tell by the enormous price we pay when they decline or disappear. Think Hurricane Katrina, unpollinated crops, and deadly mudslides caused by deforestation. As the new age of environmental awareness dawns, people and governments are starting to put a dollar value on these services. In practice, that means paying to protect the land where services are most concentrated. And whoever owns the land can reap the profits.

It’s a twist on carbon cap-and-trade systems. In Europe, governments force companies that emit too much carbon to buy credits from those with excess credits (because they’ve cut back their own emissions). As the economy expands, the demand for — and thus the price of — carbon credits increases. Despite its growing pains, the European Emissions Trading Scheme has created a $4 billion-a-year carbon market, and no amount of cynicism about its efficacy can change the fact that skyrocketing public interest in carbon neutrality equals big money for carbon traders.

A similar setup in the US is wetland banking. Thanks to the Clean Water Act of 1972, developers must compensate the state for wetlands they pave over. Specialized businesses from Florida to California now buy up wetland areas and sell mitigation credits to developers.

Brand and others are betting that successful trading of carbon will kick-start the creation of other cap-and-trade systems for ecological services like watershed protection, biodiversity, and erosion control. But it’s more complicated than it sounds. Carbon disperses and has a global impact. A Latin American butterfly or a Myanmar riverbank? Not so much. “Those are local assets,” explains Jesse Fink, a cofounder of Priceline.com and a prominent eco- capitalist. The challenge is connecting global capital markets so that a butterfly matters as much, financially, to an investor in Chicago as it does to a farmer in Costa Rica. That will require the creation of a whole new financial transaction infrastructure, combining local businesses that can authenticate commodities on the ground with international registries, remote sensing, canopy monitoring, and other mechanisms to monitor and standardize trades.

Tough? Sure. But many experts see these kinds of deals as inevitable. When carbon cap-and-trade comes online in the US, there will be no shortage of demand, because most of corporate America will be shopping for mitigation credits. Build a cap-and-trade framework for other eco-assets and firms will profit not just from the sale of carbon offsets but from quantifiable gains in soil conservation, biodiversity, and watershed protection.

Still, the world’s investment institutions haven’t bought in just yet. As one former Goldman Sachs strategist explains: “First there needs to be 50 or 100 funds out there like Brand’s. People need to invest in it to make it real.” The big banks “are on board conceptually,” Fink adds, “but they’re not going to be first in line to make this investment. The first people in are people like me. I’m willing to take a chance that I will get the return, but I’m also trying to get the market started.” In emerging markets, the first investors reap the benefits. And in an eco-market, you reap what you don’t sow.

David Wolman wrote about high-speed railroads in issue 15.07. Original article from http://www.wired.com/