February 12, 2003 The word California invokes many images: miles
of sunny beaches, streets lined with swaying palm trees,
mountains that touch the great blue sky and cold nights filled
with thick, dense fog. What was that? Cold? Fog? Since the
"beachgoer's dream" summers that preceded 1998, California has
experienced consistently cooler and foggier summers than usual -
not exactly grade-A performance for the coast that's supposed to
have the most. The question many sun worshipers may be asking
is, "Why?" "History seems to be repeating itself every 50
years," said Dr. William Patzert, an oceanographer at NASA's Jet
Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "The weather switches
from warmer temperatures, wetter winters and less fog to cooler
temperatures, drier winters and more fog, and back and forth."
Patzert and colleagues Dr. Steve LaDochy and Jeff Brown from
California State University, Los Angeles, studied the factors
responsible for variable coastal temperatures and fog
frequencies along the southern Cal