Study says El Ninos getting stronger; Global warming suspected in change

By the Associated Press Copyright 1998 Chicago Tribune August 21, 1998

Droughts and wet spells have been increasing worldwide in the last few decades, according to a study that could spur the debate over global warming.

There were increases in the drought-affected areas of Africa and Asia, while unusually wet and dry areas increased in Europe and the United States, though the overall trend was small.

The analysis, in a paper to be published in the Sept. 1 edition of Geophysical Research Letters, notes that the changes were largely in regions affected by the El Nino phenomenon, a periodic warming of the Pacific Ocean that can alter weather worldwide.

"There's no overall strong trends that you would really want to put down as a climate change," said Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., one of the report's authors.

"But some of the relationships seem to have changed, and in particular since about 1976 it seems as though . . . in El Nino you get a bigger response in some of the changes around the world than it used to have before then," Trenberth said.

A stronger El Nino response had been reported over Australia by researchers, Trenberth added, and the new paper found that was also the case elsewhere.

The findings, the researchers report, "could all result partly from the greenhouse gas-induced climate changes."

The greenhouse-warming theory holds that chemicals added to the atmosphere by industrial processes will trap some of the sun's heat that used to radiate back out to space, resulting in a rise in the Earth's temperature.

While there have been small increases in average temperature in recent decades, the changes have fallen short of predictions.

John Christy of the University of Alabama at Huntsville contended that the paper includes "little evidence to point to greenhouse gas-induced climate change."

"Extreme events, because of their rarity, do not typically behave in a statistically even fashion," he said. "Thus you should see a trend in them, up or down, over any 100-year period."

He noted that "the satellite temperatures of the troposphere that we produce here in Huntsville show no warming since 1979."

Christy's findings, however, have been challenged by researchers who argue that the slow decline in the orbit of the satellites used to measure temperature affects their readings.

That has led to debate on whether those temperatures should be revised and what the revisions mean.

In a warmer climate, the new study observes, droughts tend to be longer and more enhanced in drought-prone areas because of increased evaporation.

At the same time, this evaporation places more moisture in the atmosphere, leading to the possibility of more flooding in other areas.

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