El Nino could bring further drought not rain to parched California
Contrary to previous reports, weather experts this week are warning that the El Nino, a weather system that Californians are hoping will bring an end to a destructive four years of drought, will bring instead more dry weather to the northern regions with devastating floods to the south. The current El Nino weather phenomenon is expected to peak between October and January, and may be one of the strongest on record, the World Meteorological Organisation warns.

El Nino has been hailed as the saviour that will end California's four-year drought.

But a group of weather experts this week warned the weather system may still behave erratically, with one scenario bringing even more dryness to the region.

They claim the much-anticipated El Nino will add another year of drought in the north while bringing devastating floods to the south.

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The much-anticipated El Nino will add another year of drought in the north while bringing devastating floods to the south, experts have warned. This NOAA satellite image taken Thursday, September 10, 2015 shows a cold front over the Intermountain West and northern Plains moving southward with scattered rain showers

WHAT IS EL NIÑO El Niño is caused by a shift in the distribution of warm water in the Pacific Ocean around the equator. Usually the wind blows strongly from east to west, due to the rotation of the Earth, causing water to pile up in the western part of the Pacific. This pulls up colder water from the deep ocean in the eastern Pacific. However, in an El Niño, the winds pushing the water get weaker and cause the warmer water to shift back towards the east. This causes the eastern Pacific to get warmer. But as the ocean temperature is linked to the wind currents, this causes the winds to grow weaker still and so the ocean grows warmer, meaning the El Niño grows. This change in air and ocean currents around the equator can have a major impact on the weather patterns around the globe by creating pressure anomalies in the atmosphere.

El Niño is caused by a shift in the distribution of warm water in the Pacific Ocean around the equator.

In the U.S., this can cause milder winters to the northern states and create storms in the south.

But according to a detailed report in Bloomberg, this may spell trouble for California.

One potential scenario is that flooding rains sweep across the south, causing mudslides which damage infrastructure.

Meanwhile, in the north where most of California's reservoirs are located, almost no rain will fall at all.

'What do you say when the governor asks you what to do?' asked Mike Anderson, state climatologist.

'You prepare for flood and drought because there is a possibility you can get both.'

The comments were made on Tuesday at a workshop on drought and assessment tools at the University of California at Irvine.

According to Bloomerg, the participants said that not enough people know about El Nino's dark side and have heard only of the positives.

'We torture the data until it tells us what we want to hear,' said Alan Haynes, service coordination hydrologist at the California Nevada River Forecast Center.

'Hopefully, it is wet everywhere.'

The CPC/IRI ENSO forecast says there's an approximately 95 per cent chance that El Niño will continue through Northern Hemisphere winter 2015-16, gradually weakening through spring 2016

Mike Halpert, deputy director of the federal Climate Prediction Center, said the current worldwide weather shifting event doesn't match the monster El Nino of 1997-1998, nor is it likely to.

With even warmer waters in the central Pacific in August, the hottest in more than 17 years, the prediction center moved the El Nino up from moderate status.

So far the El Nino is the third strongest on record, behind 1997-98 and a weird one in 1987-88 that peaked early.

With even warmer waters in the central Pacific in August, the hottest in more than 17 years, the NOAA last week upgraded El Nino up from moderate status

El Nino has been hailed as the saviour that will end California's four-year drought. But a group of weather experts this week warned the weather system may still behave erratically, with one scenario bringing even more dryness to the region

To compare the two, researchers created a side by side animation to show the development of both, and say they are 'shocked' by how similar they are.

The current El Nino weather phenomenon is expected to peak between October and January and could turn into one of the strongest on record, experts from the World Meteorological Organization have warned.

The video animation was created by Matt Rehme at NCAR's Visualization Lab, part of the Computational & Information Systems Lab.

'I was a little shocked just how closely 2015 resembles 1997 visually,' Rehme said.

Climate scientists are better prepared than ever with prediction models and data on El Nino patterns, but the impact of this El Nino in the northern hemisphere is hard to forecast because there is also an Arctic warming effect at work on the Atlantic jetstream current.

'The truth is we don't know what will happen. Will the two patterns reinforce each other? Will they cancel each other? Are they going to act in sequence? Are they going to be regional?

'We really don't know,' said David Carlson, the director of the World Climate Research Programme.

Scientists from Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Center and other institutions recently found that California has accumulated a 'rain debt' of about 50 centimeters (20 inches) between 2012 and 2015.

That is the amount that would normally fall in an entire year in the state.

And even if the rains come, they do not necessarily solve drought problems in areas that rely on snow pack for summer supplies.

El Niño is caused by a shift in the distribution of warm water in the Pacific Ocean around the equator. Pictured is a comparison of sea surface height in the Pacific as measured at the end of July in 1997 and 2015