From Nature.com
RESEARCH HIGHLIGHT
Picture: Thunder clouds construct over a farm within the Midwestern United States, the place the chance of utmost storms could be predicted from sea-surface salinity. Credit score: Getty
Salinity measurements in far-flung oceans can be utilized to higher predict damaging rainfall throughout the Nice Plains of the USA1.
To date, seasonal forecasts for the nation’s Midwestern area have relied primarily on surface-temperature tendencies within the tropical Pacific Ocean and North Atlantic oceans. These tendencies have been linked with climate patterns throughout the entire of the the continental United States and past.
In search of to bolster forecasts for the agriculturally important Midwest, Laifang Li at Pennsylvania State College in College Park and her colleagues analysed seven many years of rainfall knowledge for the area, alongside information of sea-surface temperature and salinity in each oceans.
The authors discovered that ocean salinity within the western Pacific, in addition to alongside the east coast of North America, have been a extra dependable predictor of summer season climate patterns throughout the USA than have been ocean temperatures. By together with ocean salinity of their fashions, the authors have been capable of double the accuracy of their forecasts of utmost rainfall throughout the Midwest.
