The drought of 2007 looks like it will plague us again this summer, because La Niña just won't go away.

Everyone knows that the Earth's climate is more complex than just one thing. That is surely true now. A major insight came in 1997, when meteorologists discovered that the Pacific Ocean has two kinds of temperature regimes, now called the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. One phase has a warm equatorial ocean (the warm, or positive, phase); the other has a cool equatorial ocean (the cool, or negative, phase).

The PDO veered toward positive from about 1920 to about 1950, then toward negative from about 1950 to about 1980, then back toward positive since about 1980. The positive oscillations tend toward El Niño, with visible warming globally (the Pacific Ocean is quite large, therefore quite influential). The negative oscillations tend toward La Niña, with noticeable global cooling (and often enough, drought in the eastern parts of the U.S.).

The PDO turned positive about 1980, so something is due to happen, and that "something" is global cooling. The record verifies this: following the great El Niño of 1998, the PDO has tended toward the negative phase, bringing the current strong La Niña, drought in the Southeast and zero global warming.

The Atlantic undergoes a similar temperature oscillation, called the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation. The Atlantic oscillation tends to be about 70 years long, rather than the 30 years typical for the PDO.
We should pay attention to these relatively recent discoveries for a couple of reasons. One is that the two oscillations look like they may "resonate" this year. Specifically, the cooling La Niña effect in the Pacific produces quieter winds across the U.S., allowing more hurricanes to arrive on the coast. This La Niña matches up with a relatively warm Atlantic, which helps tropical storms form off Africa.

The warm AMO phase is weakening at the moment, but because it has been in the warm phase for only a dozen years, it still is warm. Thus, hurricane specialists like Bill Gray of Colorado State University reckon that strong hurricanes affecting the East Coast are likely this year.

This might be a two-sided effect. If more hurricanes make landfall on the U.S. coast this summer, damage could be considerable, but drought impacts on Lake Lanier and Georgia in general might be ameliorated somewhat.

Note, too, that carbon dioxide has zero influence on these oscillations. These hurricanes, large or small, have nothing to do with Al Gore and his contingent of scare mongers. Somebody should tell Congress and the presidential candidates.

W.T. "Ted" Hines
Gainesville

Boo to choo-choo redo
The train engine display at the corner of Jesse Jewell and West Academy in Gainesville was recently repainted.

The problem is that whoever did the paint repair on flaked off-areas did it with a shiny black paint, while other surface areas of the trains engine are painted with a dull-flat paint. So the engine display appearance went from a poor, paint-flaking look to a messy look with glossy black spots integrated with dull paint surfaces.

Glenn Woll
Gaineville

Honest folks do exist
I would like to thank three ladies who turned in my pocketbook at Wal-Mart. I don't know who they are, but I sure would like to thank them. I left it in a buggy.

Betty Brannon
Lula