Laserfiche WebLink
The next step that was taken by many scientists involved using these indices to anticipate, <br />or forecast, the sensible seasonable impacts in various regions based on the values (or <br />anticipated values) of these indices. <br />Figure 1. Generalized impacts of the ENSO phenomenon on North America for the January -March <br />time frame (courtesy of NOAA /Climate Prediction Center). <br />TYPICAL JANUARY -MARCH WEATHER ANOMALIES <br />AND ATMOSPHERIC CIRCULATION <br />DURING MODERATE TO STRONG <br />EL NINO & LA NINA <br />El Nina , <br />a <br />4 4. <br />a [ <br />off-. POLAR - -• <br />ET <br />S <br />. -'IOW PRESSURE. <br />r <br />PERSISTENT EXTENDED PACIFIC JET STREAM <br />& AMPLIFIED STORM TRACK •i„ <br />•. " <br />La Nina ISLE <br />n e C r <br />POLAR BLOCKING � et ` Y a r T <br />JET HIGH i ti <br />STREAM PRESSURE <br />Dry <br />VARIABLE PACIFIC JET STREAM <br />Ak `b <br />Climate Prediction Center/NCEP/NWS <br />It is this `forward' thinking of using climate indices as a potential prognostic tool <br />in assessing the future conditions in various river basins that acts as a prime motivator for <br />this project. However, it should be noted that this project is meant to be more than a <br />`regional' scale project as the focus is more on the lines of examining sub- basins (i.e. <br />Districts) of the larger river basins to examine the impacts that may exist on a more <br />detailed basis. <br />Other researchers have developed relationships between these climate indices and <br />various observations of hydrology and meteorology; thus the term hydro - climate indices <br />was developed to refer to them. A description of the analyses and results follows. <br />2 <br />