PHOENIX — The extreme winds blamed for putting the brakes on global warming may also have contributed to the record-setting drought currently parching the southwestern United States, suggests new research presented January 5 at the American Meteorological Society’s annual meeting.
Unusually strong winds blowing east-to-west over the tropical Pacific draw up cold water from the deep ocean along North America’s west coast, a process that scientists believe is partially responsible for the recent stall in global warming. This cold water causes atmospheric changes that push rainstorms away from the region, proposes Thomas Delworth, a climate scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in Princeton, N.J. The winds boosted the likelihood of a dry decade in the region to nearly 50 percent, Delworth estimates.