PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

Warm oceans caused hottest Dust Bowl years in 1934/36

Ocean hot spots could help today's long-range weather forecasters predict extreme summers for Central US

Warm oceans caused hottest Dust Bowl years in 1934/36
2015-05-04
(Press-News.org) Two ocean hot spots have been found to be the potential drivers of the hottest summers on record for the Central US in 1934 and 1936. The research may also help modern forecasters predict particularly hot summers over the central United States many months out. The unusually hot summers of 1934/36 broke heat records that still stand today. They were part of the devastating dust bowl decade in the US when massive dust storms travelled as far as New York, Boston and Atlanta and silt covered the decks of ships 450km off the east coast. Research by Dr Markus Donat from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science and colleagues has revealed that unusually warm sea surface temperatures occurring at exactly the same time in two very specific locations were likely responsible for creating the record breaking heat. "In the Pacific, there were anomalously warm ocean temperatures along the coastline of the Gulf of Alaska stretching down as far as Los Angeles," said Dr Donat. "On the other side of the country in the Atlantic Ocean, in a relatively small area off the coast of Maine and Nova Scotia, the ocean surface was also unusually warm. Together they reduced spring rainfall and created perfect conditions for scorching hot temperatures to develop in the heart of the US." As part of their study, the researchers compared the large-scale climate conditions in 1934 and 1936 with those of the extensive recent hot drought years of 2011 and 2012 to see if there were any similarities to the dust bowl years. They found that in 2011 / 2012 while there were definitely warm ocean temperatures off the coast of Nova Scotia and Maine, the same was not true along the coastline of the Gulf of Alaska, where ocean temperatures were below normal. "The large scale ocean conditions in 2011 and 2012 were very different from 1934 and 1936, suggesting an event of a quite different nature," Dr Donat said. "Only very rarely have we seen these very specific ocean regions warm at the same time over the past century, but those combined warm anomalies were never as strong as during the two record breaking years of 1934 and 1936." This unusual ocean warming in two regions compounded the impacts on the atmosphere and pressure gradients across the continental US, profoundly changing the weather systems during the spring and summers. The Atlantic warming off Nova Scotia and Maine meant southerly winds shifted further north-east and the transport of moist air from the Gulf of Mexico northward into the Central US was weakened. At the same time, the Pacific Ocean warming expanded a large Pacific high that also contributed to reduced transport of moist air into the central US. "Not only did the warming amplify summer temperatures, it also reduced spring rainfall," Dr Donat said. "To make matter worse, past research has shown the atmospheric dust over Western North America once summer was underway had a positive feedback that intensified the high pressure system even further." "The US has been very fortunate that it has not seen a repeat of this coincident ocean warming at such a level. Should this ocean warming reoccur in exactly the same constellation, because of climate change it is likely the temperature impacts would be even more devastating and those old records may be surpassed."

INFORMATION:

Video explaining the research can be found at https://www.climatescience.org.au/content/868-warm-oceans-caused-hottest-dust-bowl-years


[Attachments] See images for this press release:
Warm oceans caused hottest Dust Bowl years in 1934/36

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

'Performance enhancing' drugs decrease performance

2015-05-04
Doping is damaging the image of sport without benefitting athletes' results, according to University of Adelaide research. Researchers from the University's School of Medical Sciences collated sporting records (including Olympic and world records) of male and female athletes across 26 sports, between 1886 and 2012. Comparisons were made between pre-1932 records (when steroids became available) and post, and it was found that the times, distances and other results did not improve as expected in the doping era. The findings were published in the Journal of Human Sport ...

Insight into how we protect ourselves from certain bacteria and fungi

2015-05-04
Australian scientists have shown that a specific gene determines the development and function of important cells that bridge the gap between our fast-acting 'innate', and slower-acting 'adaptive', immune systems. STAT3, as it's known, helps shield us against a variety of fungal and bacterial infections, and understanding its role may help in finding ways to boost our defenses. Most of us barely give our immune system a thought, unless we are struck down by disease, or are born with an immunodeficiency that leaves us susceptible to constant attack. 'Primary immunodeficiencies', ...

Discovered the sixth DNA base?

2015-05-04
DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) is the main component of our genetic material. It is formed by combining four parts: A, C, G and T (adenine, cytosine, guanine and thymine), called bases of DNA combine in thousands of possible sequences to provide the genetic variability that enables the wealth of aspects and functions of living beings. Two more bases: the Methyl- cytosine and Methyl-adenine In the early 80s, to these four "classic" bases of DNA was added a fifth: the methyl-cytosine (mC) derived from cytosine. And it was in the late 90's when mC was recognized as the main ...

Ocean currents disturb methane-eating bacteria

Ocean currents disturb methane-eating bacteria
2015-05-04
Offshore the Svalbard archipelago, methane gas is seeping out of the seabed at the depths of several hundred meters. These cold seeps are a home to communities of microorganisms that survive in a chemosynthetic environment - where the fuel for life is not the sun, but the carbon rich greenhouse gas. There is a large, and relatively poorly understood, community of methane-consuming bacteria in this environment. They gorge on the gas, control its concentration in the ocean, and stop it from reaching the ocean surface and released into the atmosphere. In the atmosphere ...

New study suggests prominent role for pharmacies in reducing asthma-related illness

2015-05-04
A new study shows how pharmacies might collaborate with physicians and families to reduce asthma-related illness. The Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center study found that pharmacies in neighborhoods with high rates of asthma-related emergency-room use and hospitalization filled fewer asthma controller medications compared to asthma rescue medications. Asthma-related illness is particularly common among people living in poverty or with limited access to medical care. Previous studies have shown that disparities in asthma rates are perpetuated by underuse of ...

Keeping legalized marijuana out of hands of kids

2015-05-04
As the realities of legalized marijuana take hold in four states and the District of Columbia, legislators and regulators could learn a lot from the successes -- and failures -- of the tobacco and alcohol industries in keeping their harmful products out of the hands of children and adolescents. So say three Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health researchers in a commentary published May 4 in the journal Pediatrics. "The early days of marijuana legalization present a unique window of opportunity to create a regulatory environment that minimizes youth access," ...

New gold standard established for open and reproducible research

2015-05-04
A group of Cambridge computer scientists have set a new gold standard for openness and reproducibility in research by sharing the more than 200GB of data and 20,000 lines of code behind their latest results - an unprecedented degree of openness in a peer-reviewed publication. The researchers hope that this new gold standard will be adopted by other fields, increasing the reliability of research results, especially for work which is publicly funded. The researchers are presenting their results at a talk today (4 May) at the 12th USENIX Symposium on Networked Systems Design ...

Gene therapy efficacy for LCA: Improvement is followed by decline in vision

2015-05-04
PHILADELPHIA - Gene therapy for Leber congenital amaurosis (LCA), an inherited disorder that causes loss of night- and day-vision starting in childhood, improved patients' eyesight within weeks of treatment in a clinical trial of 15 children and adults at the Scheie Eye Institute at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. New results involving a subset of patients from the ongoing trial show that these benefits peaked one to three years after treatment and then diminished. The findings are published today in The New England Journal of Medicine. In ...

Study shows where damaged DNA goes for repair

2015-05-04
MEDFORD/SOMERVILLE, Mass. (May 3, 2015) -- A Tufts University study sheds new light on the process by which DNA repair occurs within the cell. In research published in the May 15 edition of the journal Genes & Development and available May 4 online in advance of print, Tufts University biologist Catherine Freudenreich and her co-authors show that expanded repeats of the CAG/CTG trinucleotide (CAG) in yeast shift to the periphery of the cell nucleus for repair. This shift is important for preventing repeat instability and genetic disease. CAG expansions are significant ...

Young people think friends are more at risk of cyberbullying

2015-05-03
Young people are aware of the risks of cyberbullying but perceive others as being more at risk than themselves. Young women are more vulnerable to this perception than young men. This is the finding of a study by Dr Lucy Betts and Sondos Metwally from Nottingham Trent University (NTU) that will be presented as part of the poster presentation session at the British Psychological Society's Annual Conference next week (Thursday 7 May 2015) hosted in Liverpool. A survey, designed to measure how vulnerable young people felt to cyberbullying and how vulnerable they felt ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Pink skies

Monkeys are world’s best yodellers - new research

Key differences between visual- and memory-led Alzheimer’s discovered

% weight loss targets in obesity management – is this the wrong objective?

An app can change how you see yourself at work

NYC speed cameras take six months to change driver behavior, effects vary by neighborhood, new study reveals

New research shows that propaganda is on the rise in China

Even the richest Americans face shorter lifespans than their European counterparts, study finds

Novel genes linked to rare childhood diarrhea

New computer model reveals how Bronze Age Scandinavians could have crossed the sea

Novel point-of-care technology delivers accurate HIV results in minutes

Researchers reveal key brain differences to explain why Ritalin helps improve focus in some more than others

Study finds nearly five-fold increase in hospitalizations for common cause of stroke

Study reveals how alcohol abuse damages cognition

Medicinal cannabis is linked to long-term benefits in health-related quality of life

Microplastics detected in cat placentas and fetuses during early pregnancy

Ancient amphibians as big as alligators died in mass mortality event in Triassic Wyoming

Scientists uncover the first clear evidence of air sacs in the fossilized bones of alvarezsaurian dinosaurs: the "hollow bones" which help modern day birds to fly

Alcohol makes male flies sexy

TB patients globally often incur "catastrophic costs" of up to $11,329 USD, despite many countries offering free treatment, with predominant drivers of cost being hospitalization and loss of income

Study links teen girls’ screen time to sleep disruptions and depression

Scientists unveil starfish-inspired wearable tech for heart monitoring

Footprints reveal prehistoric Scottish lagoons were stomping grounds for giant Jurassic dinosaurs

AI effectively predicts dementia risk in American Indian/Alaska Native elders

First guideline on newborn screening for cystic fibrosis calls for changes in practice to improve outcomes

Existing international law can help secure peace and security in outer space, study shows

Pinning down the process of West Nile virus transmission

UTA-backed research tackles health challenges across ages

In pancreatic cancer, a race against time

Targeting FGFR2 may prevent or delay some KRAS-mutated pancreatic cancers

[Press-News.org] Warm oceans caused hottest Dust Bowl years in 1934/36
Ocean hot spots could help today's long-range weather forecasters predict extreme summers for Central US