Be prepared for more cold winters, says AccuWeather´s Chief Long Range forecaster Joe Bastardi, whose predictions usually have been very reliable:
Bastardi thinks that not only will the next few winters be colder than normal for much of the U.S., but that the long-term climate will turn colder over the next 20 to 30 years.
"What's interesting about what we're seeing here is that [the current La Niña] is starting so cold," said Bastardi, "and it's coinciding with bigger things that are pushing the overall weather patterns and climate in the Northern Hemisphere and, in fact, globally over the next 20 to 30 years that we have not really dealt with, nor can we really quantify."
"That ties into a lot of this arguing over climate change," he added.
Bastardi has pointed out that the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), which is a pattern of Pacific climate variability that shifts phases usually about every 20 to 30 years, has shifted into a "cold" or "negative" phase.
Over the past 30 years or so, according to Bastardi, the PDO has been "warm" or "positive."
This change to a cold PDO over the next 20 to 30 years, he says, will cause La Niñas to be stronger and longer than El Niños. Bastardi adds that when El Niños do kick in, if they try to come on strong like they did last year, they will get "beaten back" pretty quickly.
"When you have a cold PDO and lots of La Niñas, when El Niños do come on, you generally tend to have cold, snowy weather patterns across the U.S.," Bastardi said. "That's what we saw in the 1960s and 1970s."
Read the entire story here.
PS
Weather Services International, another long range forecaster, is saying the same thing, as pointed out in an earlier post.
(image by antiqueprints.com)
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