Scientists from the United States have determined that the La Niña phenomenon, which is responsible for the abnormal temperature drop and heavy rainfall in the Northern Hemisphere (including in Russia) this winter and early spring, is probably associated with the end of the 22-year solar cycle and the beginning of a new …
The work was published in the journal Earth and Space Science. La Niña and El Niño are natural phenomena in which the waters in the tropical Pacific Ocean change temperature. With El Niño, they become warmer, and with La Niña, they get colder. In fact, these are two sides of the same weather anomaly. It is the strong La Niña that is responsible for the cold snap in the Northern Hemisphere this winter and early spring. This phenomenon occurs when strong winds blow off the surface warm layer of water in the ocean and carry it away from South America towards Indonesia. Cold waters rise to the place of warm waters - from the depths.
At the same time, both La Niña and El Niño are poorly studied, and they began to be observed not so long ago - just a few years ago. It is only known that these phenomena appear with a certain frequency and each time they behave differently. Scientists from the University of Maryland and the National Center for Atmospheric Research (USA) conducted their own analysis and linked the La Niña phenomenon to changes in solar activity. Specifically, with the end of the 22-year solar cycle.
This cycle begins when oppositely charged ultraviolet magnetic stripes move from the poles of the Sun to its equator, meeting in the middle and neutralizing each other. These neutralization events are called "terminators": they mark the end of one solar cycle and the beginning of another.
Researchers in the United States have compared these phenomena to changes in surface temperature in the tropical Pacific since 1960. It turned out that all the events of the "terminator" that took place up to 2010-2011 correlate with changes in the temperature of the water in the ocean and the phenomena of El Niño and La Niña.
The end of the solar cycle, which we are seeing now, is also, according to the authors, associated with La Niña. Scientists emphasize that the idea of the relationship between solar cycles and the above-mentioned climatic changes is not new. Other researchers also made similar analogies, but experts from the United States - the first to connect the 22-year cycle with El Niño and La Niña - because 11-year cycles of solar activity are much more difficult to rely on: they are far from so clearly defined.
Scientists also conducted a series of statistical analyzes to find out the probability of how random such a correlation is. It turned out that there is only one chance in five thousand (and less, depending on the testing method) that all five events of the "terminator" accidentally coincide with a change in ocean temperature. Since the current - the sixth event of the "terminator" - again coincided with La Niña, then such a chance is even more unlikely. But how exactly solar activity affects the change in water temperature in the tropical Pacific Ocean, scientists do not yet know for sure.