Four Seasons In One Day
The La Niña event moving into New Zealand could mean an unusually warm summer for some areas of the country and increased rainfall in other parts.
Oscar Wilde may have said “conversation about the weather is the last refuge of the unimaginative” but we politely disagree. Weather affects our lives in such a myriad of ways that it is completely understandable why we have a fascination with the subject. For those who live on the land, the weather can make or break their livelihood. For others, it can influence their mood and behaviour. Seasonal affective disorder (SAD) is a type of depression that’s related to changes in seasons. Most people with SAD feel more ‘down’ in autumn and winter, experiencing lower energy levels and ‘bluer’ moods.
As well as climate change, it’s the current change in weather patterns that is the hot topic of conversation. Weather is influenced by many climate drivers, but El Niño and La Niña have a particularly strong influence on climate variability. They are part of a natural cycle known as the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), which describes ocean and atmospheric circulations over the Pacific Ocean. While their frequency can be quite irregular, El Niño and La Niña events occur on average every two to seven years, with neutral conditions in between.
La Niña occurs when equatorial trade winds become stronger, changing ocean surface currents and drawing cooler deep water up from below. Having just moved into a La Niña cycle, New Zealand can expect more north-easterly winds bringing storms and moist, rainy conditions to the north-east of the North Island, and reduced rainfall to the south and south-west of the South Island. Average temperatures usually increase over much of the country during La Niña, although there are regional and seasonal exceptions.
La Niña also has extensive effects on the weather across the globe, causing intense storms and floods in some places and droughts in others. In the US, La Niña delivers drier, warmer weather from California to Florida, which increases the risk of wildfires in the region. The great US Dust Bowl drought of the 1930s and the severe drought in the American Midwest in 1988 has been linked to La Niña. Likewise, the 2011 East Africa drought that threatened the livelihoods of 9.5 million people was also attributed to La Niña. In contrast, other regions are more likely to be wetter than normal, with the possibility of flooding and cyclones. The last La Niña event stretched from 2010 to 2012 and resulted in one of Australia’s wettest two-year periods. The 2010 Pakistan floods that affected about 20 million people, and the damaging 2010 Queensland floods were both attributed to La Niña. So get your umbrella and sunscreen ready, at least it will give you plenty to talk about.
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Do you find it harder to get up on rainy days, or suffer from a lack of motivation when the sun isn’t shining? Here’s how to avoid letting the weather dictate your mood too much.