UMD-Led Research Yields Key to Better Predictions of El Nino
COLLEGE PARK, Md. –– A University of Maryland scientist and an undergraduate Indian student he mentored in India have uncovered a major new finding about El Nino — the cyclical climate event that appears every 2-7 years, sometimes with major global weather impacts such as massive flooding in some regions and severe droughts in others and resulting major economic impacts.
Just published in Nature Climate Change, their research reveals a previously unrecognized sign of a looming El Nino that can be detected up to 18 months in advance, nine months earlier than current forecasting models allow. Raghu Murtugudde, a UMD professor of atmospheric and oceanic science, and Nandini Ramesh, who was an undergraduate student at the Divecha Centre for Climate Change, Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore India when this research was performed, say their new clue to the beginning of an El Nino lies in the discharge of massive volumes of sub-surface warm water from the equatorial western Pacific Ocean north of Australia. (more…)