ACM TechNews

Software Predicts Where El Nino Will Strike Next

New Scientist (08/05/08)

Researchers have developed software that will make it easier to determine where El Nino events are having an influence other than in the Pacific Ocean, and ultimately help in forecasting the weather. The software is designed to map temperature around the world as an interconnected network. Temperature measurements for several locations are plotted daily to nodes of the network, and links between nodes are calculated if their measurements change in the same way. The researchers entered climate records from 1979 to 2005 into the application, and most of the links are stable and form a "skeleton" to the world's climate. Some links occasionally break and then re-form under normal climate conditions, but during an El Nino event they "blink" on and off every few weeks, revealing where it is having an effect, says Avi Gozolchiani from Bar-Ilan University in Ramat-Gan, Israel. "Their behavior becomes much more erratic," says Gozolchiani, the leader of the team behind the software.

full paper

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