University and Community College System of Nevada
P.O. Box 60220 Reno, Nevada 89506
Public Information Office
Reno (702) 673-7313
Las Vegas (702) 862-5414
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Desert Research Institute University and Community College System of Nevada P.O. Box 60220 Reno, Nevada 89506 |
Contact: John Doherty Public Information Office Reno (702) 673-7313 Las Vegas (702) 862-5414 |
Dr. Tim P. Barnett, the scientist who predicted the current El Niņo condition, will present public lectures on his research and give his global climate predictions for the rest of this winter at the University of Nevada campuses in Reno and Las Vegas in January.
Barnett, a research marine geophysicist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, will present "El Niņo: The Mystery Revealed," in Room 103 of UNR's Education Building at 4 p.m., Thursday, January 29. The UNLV lecture will be held at 4 p.m., Jan. 30 in the auditorium of the Marjorie Barrick Museum of Natural History. The lecture series is a joint presentation by the Desert Research Institute, UNR and UNLV.
El Niņo is the dramatic warming of the ocean surface off the west coast of South America due to a drop in westerly trade winds that usually push warm water into the western Pacific. The relatively sudden temperature build-up in the eastern Pacific can influence weather worldwide.
Barnett's talk will include a description of El Niņo, illustration of the unusual droughts and floods that have accompanied this year's event, and discussion of the unusual biologicalconsequences of El Niņo, involving some of the most bizarre translocation of fishes ever observed.
"An even more important consequence of the El Niņo prediction process are an entire sequence of subsequent predictions to be made," Barnett said. "These forecasts go from impacts on global climate to regional climate impacts, eventually ending up with forecasts of water flow in major California rivers, for instance."
Working from conclusions drawn from a complex study of the interaction of winds and ocean surface temperatures, Barnett and his colleagues went public in November 1996 with the prediction of a major El Niņo this winter. Their projections included significant weather disruptions affecting Southeast Asia, South America and the western United States.
Barnett recently noted that most computer models are predicting the possibility of the reverse of El Niņo known as "La Nina"--a cold event--next summer or fall, but he cautions that "it's too early to tell." His presentation will include an illustration for the previous El Niņo of this century that occurred in 1982-83.
Barnett investigates the physics of climate change and long-range climate forecasting and was the organizer of the Experimental Climate Forecast Center at Scripps, part of the University of California, San Diego. He is the principal investigator for the International Research Institute for Global Climate Prediction, and is internationally recognized for developing methods for seasonal climate prediction and detection of global warming signals.
This El Niņo is the most intense on record, driving temperature nearly ten degrees above normal along the U.S. Pacific Coast, accompanied by the northern migration of water marine life from warmer waters and alterations of local marine ecosystems.