'Godzilla El Nino' predicted be with us well into 2016

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Even Australia's national fauna will struggle
to live with the predicted 'Godzilla El Nino'.
 

his year's rapid warming in the central and eastern Pacific has climate watchers comparing the event to the monster El Nino of 1997-98 that led to a spike in global temperatures.

William Patzert, a climatologist with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, told The New York Times that many of the factors were in place for a big event, with ocean warming "that rivals what we saw with the great Godzilla El Nino of 1997 and 1998." (See comparison below compiled by the Los Angeles Times).

The comments come as another US agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, overnight said the latest readings "reflect a significant and strengthening El Nino". There is an 85 per cent chance the event will last into the early northern spring of 2016, NOAA said.

Read the story by Peter Hannam in today’s Age - “'Great Godzilla' of an El Nino likely to linger well into 2016, agencies say.”

Even though the world is waming, you still need your groceries

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ost Australians believe climate change is happening, even if they don’t all believe it’s caused by human activity.

"Buying groceries in a warming world".

But they’re sometimes at a loss to know what their consumer choices should be in adapting to a warming world. And an inevitable range of competing demands means many consumers will, either through choice or necessity put other factors ahead of climate.

A research team at CSIRO, led by Dr Lilly Lim-Camacho, have looked at how people prioritise climate change adaptation, both as a social issue and as an influence on their consumption and purchasing of food products.

Read the report here: “Buying the groceries in a warming world”.