We Need These Trees - Standing

The Berlin .. Kongo er .. Oxford .. Conference of 2012

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The Ituri forest in the NE Congo basin October 2011 - a red river - in spate, yet the adjacent forest is '+/- untouched'

The African continent contains some 30% of the world’s tropical rainforest, so it is second only to the Amazon. 

"Scientists and conservationists" gathered in England at Oxford University to discuss what changes these African forests are likely to experience in the next hundred years.

Africa’s tropical forests are facing ever increasing threats. Indigenous destruction e.g. that resulting from traditional slash-and-burn deforestation to feed the rapidly expanded families to be seen in nearly all the "host nations" or the commercialisation of bush-meat hunting as disposable incomes increase with "Chinese cash and well-intended international development assistance". And internationally-driven ones, such as commercial logging for export and ravenous mineral extraction (especially open-cast mining - now termed "the mooning of Africa") largely to supply the production economies of the Far East. Add to this the hazards from above; atmospheric ones generated by an increasingly unavoidable climate chaos. Devils unknown, unleashed by industrialised nations, "richer people" and far away.

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Climate change will be a formidable challenge for much of the "developed world". For the essentially leaderless societies of much of sub-Saharan Africa it may be overwhelming. 

Consequently there’s supposedly "much interest and concern" about Africa’s forests. After all this is the second largest area of tropical forest in the world, after the Amazon forest, so there should be "some concern" about planning, for its retirement, if not its future. 

"And yet there’s been very little synthesis of the research that’s there." There’s much less known about both climate and forest and people and there interaction in Africa compared to many other regions of the world,” said Yadvinder Malhi, a professor of ecosystems science at Oxford University and director of the Oxford Centre for Tropical Forests.

Malhi said the January 2012 conference brought together experts in climate change, ecology, social sciences, economics, anthropology and archeology. They assembled to discuss Africa’s rainforest(s). Incidentally one wonders how many africans were there in Oxford last week.

The Congo forests in particular, are increasingly important "at a global level for a host of reasons. They store a huge amount of carbon. By absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, the trees of these great forests are significantly reducing the rate of climate change. 

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In the terms of the whole of Africa and its highly vulnerable water resources, the ecosystem communities of the Congo forests recycle water and deliver it both across the old continent and elsewhere. So truly they are vital. Water that falls in the Congo region gets taken up by the roots of trees. It is transpired up into the atmosphere, pumping-out the extensive cloudscapes of the ITCZ, moisture which descends to earth as the seasonal rains, maintaining life right across Africa. Even to her farthest corners.

In fact these clouds, especially those made by the forests of the Congo basin have very long range effects determining weather patterns and water supply in parts of Asia and even into North America.

There’s a massive difference between the forests of the Congo and those of Upper Guinea in West Africa. There’s been extensive deforestation in West Africa. Much of the primary forest has been felled and burned for subsistence agriculture during the past 30 years.

In the Congo Basin there's a very different situation. "That’s an area that is at the moment almost all intact forest and has had relatively low rates of deforestation. And the reasons why those rates have been low are varied from country to country. But in the largest area, the Democratic Republic, it’s been political instability and poor infrastructure linked to that instability that has meant that this large forest reserve has not currently really faced very heavy pressure, at least compared to forests of Asia or the Amazon,” Malhi said.

However, he said that could change with new investment and infrastructure and expansion of industrial scale plantations.

About 3,000 years ago, the Congo forests were affected by natural climate drying. Forests retreated and were replaced by grasslands.

“At the same time, around two and a half thousand years ago, Iron Age humans settled in much of the forest, cleared it with axes, with iron axes. And then they had a population collapse around a thousand years ago and the forest regrew. And this is quite a different history from the history we see in the Amazon rainforest". In the Amazon there’s been continuous forest cover during human history and earlier. "And also where there was human impact it was not with iron instruments. There was no Iron Age in the Amazon,” Malhi said.

The combination of natural climate drying and widespread human deforestation left fewer species of trees compared to the tropical forests of South America and South-east Asia. However, that’s not necessarily a bad thing (for our future).

“The species that are left seem to be relatively resilient to a large extent. They can recolonize disturbed areas quite quickly. They can spread quite quickly, regrow quite quickly. So if one area gets deforested, you can still find the species elsewhere,” he said.

Similarly these days tropical forest are cleared for "agriculture". Felled by the demands of a globalised agribusiness. Increasingly something the world really needs is being destroyed to provide land where we can produce tropical crops to satisfy the super markets of the "poleward global-consumer", someone who expects to get "fresh fruit and veg" in every season. 

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New road gnawing into the {untouched} forests of northern DRC October 2010

The U.N. suggests that by 2050 the world population will have risen to nine billion. Even without our obsessive consumptionism the global demand for food will go astronomic. But Malhi the Oxford professor hopes that there are ways of satisfying that demand which will not require widespread deforestation  (how much more can we take?). As one would expect the chief mechanism for this is to make existing agricultural land "much more productive". Another "Green Revolution" then?

“Much of agriculture in Africa is of very low productivity. Very low inputs of fertilizers and nutrients. You could have the current agricultural output of the Africa tropical forest region in 40 percent of its current agricultural land, leaving 60 percent of the land available for forests if the agriculture was intensified. So, it’s not a simple tradeoff between more food means more land and therefore less forests,” he said.

The information from the conference will be "analysed, recommendations will be made to governments, U.N. agencies and others." 

These are expected to include:

proposals for protecting remaining rainforests (watch this - currently rather empty - space) 

better land management for agriculture

and of course new research ... into the effects of climate change."

The Oxford conference ran from January 4-6 2012

New logging roads and an active camp (quality wood to make stuff for that fancy house and garden) in upper Congo Brazzaville - October 2010


from Wikipedia: "The Berlin Conference (GermanKongokonferenz or "Congo Conference") of 1884–85 regulated European colonization and trade in Africa during the New Imperialism period, and coincided with Germany's sudden emergence as an imperial power. Called for by Portugal and organized by Otto von Bismarck, first Chancellor of Germany, its outcome, the General Act of the Berlin Conference, can be seen as the formalisation of the Scramble for Africa. The conference ushered in a period of heightened colonial activity by European powers, while simultaneously eliminating most existing forms of African autonomy and self-governance."

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European claims in Africa, 1913

  Belgium   Germany   Spain   France
  Great Britain   Italy   Portugal   Independent

 

 

 

 

(download)

It's a Pallid New Year across darkest Africa

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A belated Pallid Harrier New Year to everyone from Ranong in deepest Thailand! 

In all the gloom and for many e.g. "our" raptors yes! the doom!

Seems to me we have (here below) an explanation for the heart warming increase in those exquisitely beautiful Pallid Harriers which we are seeing in savanna Africa. 

Pallid Harriers, like more steppe conditions, rather than open woodland or forests with extensive glades. Now such conditions appear to be spreading rapidly north and west across the Eurasian continent.

During the coming decades 

"as the Northern Hemisphere grows drier and hotter, researchers knew the forests would struggle. The surprise, Andrea Lloyd said, was finding such a sudden shift in the tree line: Across the north country, trees are dying back and being replaced with drought-tolerant grasslands in response to fairly minor changes in moisture." 

Sadly there must be grave doubt whether populations of the equally handsome Montagu's Harrier will be faring half as well - pitted as they are against the sterilisation wrought by the "profits-for-the-1%" whose agri-business eats ever deeper into the remaining healthy heartlands across the eastern half of this species' breeding range.

Anyway, wishing you good birding wherever on our much abused Earth you are just now,

James Birdman .... from a damp 'Rain-ong' in the Kra Isthmus.

From Doug Harebottle here's an extract from his email written on 24th May 2010

"There have been numerous recent postings about (potential) massive declines in raptors across Africa (e.g. Secretarybird, Hooded Vulture). 

But have there been any raptors that seem to show an increase. The SABAP2 team looked at the Pallid Harrier and the result is a news story and range change map on the SABAP2 websitehttp://sabap2.adu.org.za/index.php  which makes for fascinating debate.
Considering the comparison between SABAP1 and SABAP2 data on the map this seems to show an increase in the occurrence of Pallid Harrier in central South Africa.

We'd be interested to hear what other African or Eurasian birders or raptorphiles think, particularly regarding trends in breeding populations!

Project Manager: 

Southern African Bird Atlas Project 2

AFRING Coordinator
Animal Demography Unit
Department of Zoology
University of Cape Town
Rondebosch 7701 South Africa

The scientists at the American Geophysical Union meeting drilling ever deeper into the evidence – said, in broad terms, 'Change is worse than we thought.'


    "The planet is going through incredible change," said Jonathan Foley, director of the University of Minnesota's Institute of the Environment. 


    "Through rapid (barely thought through) uses of the environment, we are pushing our planet in extreme ways."

Now where was that (climate change) Joker when last I saw his grinning 'face'?

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Well he was here, as a sliver of cast away flotsam in a riverside bush, way out west, over in Upper Guinea.
The Earth's "New Resource Zone" aka Afreaka!

"Africa Hazards Outlook" - A Greening "Greater Horn" in 2012

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Climate Prediction Center’s "Africa Hazards" Outlook for USAID / FEWS-NET January 5, 2011 January 11, 2012 

The 2011 short rainy season's yield of moisture was far above average across much of the "Greater Horn" of Africa.  

 

Once seasonal precipitation had withdrawn from the Greater Horn during the last week of December, many parts of Tanzania, Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia had or 'might have posted', significant rainfall totals since the "short rains" season commenced in mid-October.  

A wide distribution of seasonal rainfall surpluses, often in excess of 200 mm., were observed across East Africa, accounting for more than twice the normal amount of seasonal rainfall in many areas.  

Although largely due to over-grazing by goats and sheep, excessive (and often technically illegal) commercial charcoal baking and injudicious agricultural clearances (either as subsistence or for profit), the above average 2011 "late year" rainy season resulted in several localised flooding events in many regions. Nevertheless the abundant seasonal moisture is expected to replenish water resources and improve many pastoral and agro-pastoral areas degraded by the long-term drought during the past two years.  

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Whilst Birdman was nearly lost - in oresome Upper Guinea

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In San Francisco, a massive meeting discussed climate science while in Durban, another huge gathering debated climate politics. Two roads, on opposite sides of the Earth, diverge – and send progress along at very different speeds

By Douglas Fischer

Daily Climate editor

"In San Francisco nearly 36,000 people gathered in ( the second ) week of December in two groups on opposite ends of the Earth to discuss the same thing: 

Our planet and our future. But their responses are starkly divergent.

We shouldn't kid ourselves that action is happening. The atmosphere isn't going to wait for the negotiators to get it right. 

One group – scientists at the American Geophysical Union meeting drilling ever deeper into the evidence – said, in broad terms, 'Change is worse than we thought.' 

The other group – delegates at the United Nations climate talks – countered, 'Mañana.'

I've been to both meetings, which happen annually in the fall. And I'll confess that I most enjoy the excitement infusing the onset of both gatherings: Two polyglot affairs, the atmosphere charged with creative energy. At AGU, it's a sense of discovery. At the UN talks, it's a potential to shape the globe's future.

Different values color each meeting. The AGU meeting now draws 20,000 scientists annually to parse the data, looking for science's cutting edge. The UN talks gather 16,000 delegates and others to hash and rehash negotiating texts, trying to find common ground. 

Both science and diplomacy are hard, intense endeavors. The limits of human knowledge do not yield easily. By the end of both meetings, the freshness in those cavernous halls grows stale; exhaustion fills the air.

But for all this work, these herculean efforts remain antipodal. Scientific findings barely grasped by the politicians are old news at AGU. And negotiating blocks that halt diplomats remain unfathomable to the scientists.

'Death is a marker'

.... disconnect hit me last week at AGU ( annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union ), midway through a talk on rapid transformation – in this case, of Alaska's boreal forest. "Death is a good marker of rapid change," said Andrea Lloyd, a biology professor at Middlebury College. 

And Lloyd has seen death.

As the Northern Hemisphere grows drier and hotter, researchers knew the forests would struggle. The surprise, Lloyd said, was finding such a sudden shift in the tree line: Across the north country, trees are dying back and being replaced with drought-tolerant grasslands in response to fairly minor changes in moisture. "There's this potential for small amounts of ... warming to produce large changes," she said. "As we move forward into novel climate regimes – things we haven't seen before – trees might surprise us."

We are now on a very different planet than anyone has ever seen before. We are going to be very, very surprised. 
- Jonathan Foley, University of Minnesota

Lloyd's observations are not unique. The discoveries revealed last week at AGU suggest physical change is happening faster than scientists' hypotheses and models predicted. 

    • Four years ago scientists thought the Arctic would not be ice-free in summer before 2100. Two years ago, the estimate was 2060. This year, scientists say the ice could be gone by 2030, possibly even 2020.
    • As Arctic ice melts and temperatures rise, vast stores of methane frozen under the Arctic Ocean are starting to thaw and vent to the atmosphere. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, 20 to 56 times as powerful as carbon dioxide. Researchers had seen small plumes. But a recent survey showed, to their shock, large areas of the ocean pocked with continuous, powerful plumes stretching a half-mile or more across.
    • In the Andes, conventional wisdom held that residents had 20 years to 40 years to find a replacement for the dwindling glaciers serving as key dry-season water reservoirs. That time is up, reported Michel Baraër, a researcher at McGill University in Montreal. The era of "peak water" is past, he said, and hundreds of thousands of people living downstream face an immediate future of diminished and more variable flows.

    "The planet is going through incredible change," said Jonathan Foley, director of the University of Minnesota's Institute on the Environment. "Through rapid uses of the environment, we are pushing our planet in extreme ways."

    Different realms

    The news from Durban makes clear, meanwhile, that political hurdles are only slowly eroding. Politics and science are still operating in different realms. 

    Case in point: The Durban talks concluded this year with participants touting as an "important milestone" the commitment to keep talking. The Kyoto Protocol, a questionably effective treaty requiring emissions cuts from much of the developed world (but not the United States and, soon, Canada), will be extended five years while those talks continue. Kyoto's replacement, delegates agreed over the weekend, should be in place by 2020.

    "We shouldn't kid ourselves that action is happening," said Lance Pierce, executive director of CERES, a nonprofit coalition of investors and environmentalists working with companies on climate change.


    DailyClimate.org is a foundation-funded news service that covers climate change. 

    Contact editor Douglas Fischer at dfischer [at] DailyClimate.org

    Find more Daily Climate stories in the TDC Newsroom

     This work by The Daily Climate is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

     Based on a work at www.dailyclimate.org 


The Daily Climate. 421 Park Street, Suite 4. Charlottesville, VA 22902 About | Contact News for a changing planet     

The Woes of Kilimanjaro

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The Unbelievable Equatorial ( now ... the dustings) Snows of Kilimanjaro:

Returning from my ecological work in Sierra Leone on Friday morning (October 28) I was in the back seat of the 0800 hrs Precision flight from Jomo Kenyatta International NBO to JRO.
So Big Brother was close on my left as we emerged from the heady turbulence of what, in a Boeing, would have necessitated a "Direct Access - Fasten Seat Belts Message"; the ride can often be rough in the 'steppe buzzard flyway' between Kilimanjaro and Mount Meru.

So, thanks to the internet, you can see how solemn and grey "Kili" is just now. 
I hear that there have been several widely scattered bouts of heavy rain across large patches of northern Tanzania during the last three weeks.

My Arusha garden, now much wilder than the wilderness, is simply leaping - chock full of singing birds, and at last it is suitable for the two "western pally" Luscinias to announce their return, any week now.
The Hadada Ibis are building again as I write.

Renowned Kenya birder Brian Finch reported to the "kenyabirdsnet" ( i.e. consider joining kenyabirdsnet@yahoogroups.com ) on October 17, 2011 as follows.

"It rained nearly every day I was away in Uganda throughout September.
Freak storms washed away bridges on the Ishasha Road, Queen Elizabeth National Park, and closed Kaajjaanse Airfield in Kampala just as we were about to land, so we had to
go all the way back to Soroti for the night.

There has been some steady rain on the west side of Nairobi (Langata), but hardly anything obvious to the southeast of the city at Athi River, this has been the situation for the past two weeks, although rain is sporadic. 

Northern half of Nairobi NP green and lush, dams are very healthy, southern portions remain in the grip of drought and look like semi-desert, and the largest dam will not see out (survive) another month.

Floods in the north west in Kitale, where there has been a serious volume of rain during much of this year; good rains in Rift Naivasha and Nakuru; flooding on the coast in Mombasa, Watamu and also Kibwezi, whilst parts of Makueni only sixty kilometres distant have not seen rain for three years

A storm over Kibwezi last week was so intense that it prevented small aircraft from going to the coast. 

That is just the jist of this crazy climate."

Good Birding is Good for Business, and it can make you healthy and wise.

Save the Birds Capitalism 

... or kiss your purse goodbye!

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Congo and the climate of Africa by brown-shrikes, books and bins

 
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Incoming! Into the arms of Canon, Swarovski & Zeiss. The red-brown shrikes of western Asia page in the best ID bird guide ever written. Mullarney, Svensson & Zetterstrom - my Princeton review copy!

Congo and the changing climate of Africa 

by Braunshrikes, Books and Bins

1] The latest sub-Saharan Africa climate news from USAID's Relief Web Maps.

From the eastern and western peripheries of the Guinea-Congo heartland:

"An erratic distribution of rainfall during the past 
two months has led to rainfall deficits throughout 
eastern Sudan, Eritrea, and northwestern Ethiopia. 
The late onset of the seasonal rains in Sudan had 
delayed planting in the region by more than thirty 
days and could negatively impact millet, sesame, 
and sunflower yields in the region. With the end of 
the rainy season near, additional relief is unlikely.   

After the end of a below-average Hagaa rainy 
season in the middle Shabelle and lower Juba 
regions of Somalia, dry conditions still persist along 
the southern Somalia and northern Kenya coast at 
the start of the short Deyr rainy season. With past 
failed rainy seasons, ground and livestock 
conditions remain poor. "  

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Go west young shrikes!

"Two weeks of heavy rains have strengthened 
thirty-day rainfall surpluses to greater than 100 mm 
over much of southern Ghana. Abundant rains 
during past weeks have caused flooding in the 
eastern region of Ghana which has resulted in 
fatalities, displacement of local populations and 
damages to infrastructure. A third week of moderate 
to heavy rain forecast could cause additional 
flooding across southern Ghana." 

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 Africa's pulmonary artery-  the divine river Congo, pictured here almost on "the Equator" (she's flowing southwards from left to right) September 30, 2011 from KQ 510 at 36,000 feet

Back in the Saddle with Merops and The Red Listers

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" Back in the Saddle - A Birder's Life is to Quest "

Rewarded with Merops at Last!

A fond hello to all you screening birders as we pass the Second Equinox of CE: 2011
I've just got home from three fine days of excellent birding at the best of my local patches.
It was my first 'proper birding' since before the hernia operation in mid-August, after I had been 'exploring' the titanium-bearing sand dunes of Kenya's south coast, back in mid-July.

So, proper birding, at this September Equinox, in our nearest rain-making forest, that of Arusha National Park.
198 species of birds in a lot less than three full days around the base of Mount Meru in Tanzania. Nearly two hundred species then, of which 188 were seen and seen well, as they say in the typical tour bumpf. Incidentally eight of these birds were recorded on Monday morning only, from within my increasingly suburbia-bound garden at 1,400 metres on the south-west flank of the mountain.

The Equinox is passing, and at last "Palearctic birds" are filtering farther south - 'beyond' equatorial Africa.
A pristine-fringes adult male Canadian Northern Wheatear, some of 'ours' allegedly breed in the Mackenzie Delta, was in Arusha National Park on Sunday 25. And at long last yesterday a flock of 22 European Bee-eaters came circling high over this Arusha garden at 1015hrs.

It seems to me that the first south-bound European Bee-eaters are passing Mount Meru nearly two weeks later than in any of the previous four Septembers.

We better watch those skies ....

From the Ark-lives - deep in this Macbook 13 and its Sent Items: 

30 September 2009

Since arriving back in Arusha from Ulaya (that's Europe in Kiswahili) on August 27, 2009 we have seen or heard remarkably few European Bee-eaters. Especially when compared with the moister years of 2006 and 2007; though 2008 was not so good either. Few lovely northern bee-eaters on what used to be a significant bee-eater flyway that passed around the shoulder of Mount Meru out across Arusha and the over the vast Maasai steppe between us and the southern mountains near to Zambia and Mozambique. 

Typically in September they are heard or seen here in Arusha daily, most often in the early evening. I think that in the main they are coming down to roost in well-timbered coffee plantations and relict riparian woodland around the western tatters of the Arusha urban area, that is before the brand new desert fringe.

By way of contrast Madagascar Bee-eaters have been passing through the "Monduli" gap, (also Arusha) in good numbers (also in 2011). This gap is the name I use to describe the rather dry cultivated corridor of 'lowland' between the western slopes of Mount Meru and the mountain block above Monduli.

This lack of European Bee-eaters is 'corroborated' by our African Morning Thrushes who at the appropriate season repeatedly imitate any highly vocal migrants; especially any fluty-sounding migrants; who might be passing overhead at that season. Even nocturnal ones are copied - e.g. Northern Greenshank a species which I still 'need' for the garden!

Thus we have: plenty of Madagscar "dree-dtreeeps" but very few European "pruup-pruups" from the African Morning Thrushes in these dusty September days.

Incidentally there were plenty of Madagascar Bee-eaters 'wired and foraging' over the lush green landscape of TPC Sugar Estate, 40km south of Kilimanjaro, during the Eidd holiday.

Also, thankfully, we are still seeing small groups (< 10 individuals in each) of White-fronted Bee-eater in the irrigated alfalfa and sports fields of Mringa-Kimemo-Burka estate; and in the adjacent Friedkin-Tanzania Game Trackers recreation grounds. Together these form a well-timbered 'green' wedge between the Nairobi and Dodoma roads on the dry west boundary of the town.

Honey Bee numbers generally seem to be holding-up quite well here; it's certainly buzzing around the exotic palms that are flowering in our wild garden just now.
Neverthelesst it's hardly the Itigi thicket - where it's said you will find the best honey in the world.

Good Birds 'n all,
James

PS: There were at least 15 European Bee-eaters today (30/9/09) at a site near Sanya Juu in West Kilimanjaro. Where also 2 Cinnamon-chested (yesterday) at 1,300m.

And whilst we are on the subject of change and Ark-life-ism here's another great photo I just found in my laptop here:

The place? On the way to Mu Goh Similan, in the Andaman Sea  off western peninsular Thailand. 
The time? Taken early in April, probably 1989 or was it already 1990?
The folk? Clegg Lobson, Faz Fallow, and a full frontal Iwo Jimo, plus a bemused and Beardless Tyrannulet - Jomo Ndege - with a truly scary resemblance to images of Heinrich Himmler. 
Images which are, I hope, worse than the heads-on Bins-Blazen-look which one may see today!

Thanks to Martin Goodey, and of course to Gaia, for documenting and sharing such lives with us.

Many thanks once again to another dear friend and renowned quest man Dr Derek Scott.

"We are documenting disaster"

Extinct is the same as Out of Danger - in truth that's our only Least Concern


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Will La Niña leave us? The latest ENSO advisory

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"La Niña conditions returned in August 2011 due to the strengthening of negative sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies across the eastern half of the equatorial Pacific Ocean.  With the exception of the far westernmost Niño-4 region, all of the latest weekly Niño index values were –0.5°C or less.  
Also supporting the return of La Niña conditions was the strengthening of the below-average subsurface oceanic heat content anomaly (average temperature anomalies in the upper 300m of 
the ocean, in response to increased upwelling and further shoaling of the thermocline across the eastern Pacific Ocean.  

The atmospheric circulation over the tropical Pacific continued to exhibit La Niña characteristics, but remained weaker and less canonical than the wintertime atmospheric patterns.  
For example, convection continued to be suppressed near the Date Line, but remained south of the equator, while convection was only weakly enhanced near Papua New Guinea.  In addition, anomalous low-level easterly and upper-level westerly winds persisted over the central tropical Pacific.  

Collectively, these oceanic and atmospheric patterns reflect the return of La Niña conditions.   

Over the last several months many models have predicted increasingly negative SST anomalies in the Nino-3.4 region during the upcoming Northern Hemisphere fall and winter. However, the majority of models continue to predict ENSO-neutral conditions for this period. The NCEP Climate Forecast System (CFS) has performed quite well over the past several months capturing the recent decrease in SST anomalies.  

The better model performance, combined with the historical tendency for significant La Nina episodes (as in 2010-11) to be followed by relatively weaker La Niña episodes, leads 
to increased confidence that La Niña will persist into the winter. While it is not yet clear what the ultimate strength of this La Niña will be, La Niña conditions have returned and are expected to gradually strengthen and continue into the Northern Hemisphere winter 2011-12. "

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