La Nina's presence felt this winter

TAMPA - LA NINA -  Here we are in the second month of 2012 and our major weather patterns continue to be controlled by a La Nina pattern (a significant cooling of waters in the eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean) that has been in force since 2010.  

La Nina, as well as its notorious sibling El Nino, affects different parts of the U.S. in different ways.  In Florida, a continuing winter La Nina means less rain than normal with temperatures near normal. 

And this La Nina, one of the strongest in recent decades, is being credited with lowering global mean sea levels.  (Resist the urge to go check the water level in Tampa Bay right now, just keep reading) 

NASA is reporting this La Nina, in 2011, absorbed so much moisture from the oceans and dropped it as precipitation over northern parts of Australia and South America that global means sea levels fell by about half a centimeter (that’s about 1/5th of an inch)!  

Now that may not sound like much, but it reversed a steady trend.  According to NASA, the drop in sea level happened in 2011 despite the background rate of global mean sea level rise, which has been fairly steady at 3.2 millimeters (over 1/10th of an inch) per year since the early 1990s.
 
TROUBLE IN RIVER CITY - There IS trouble in river city.  The river is the Florida Everglades and the trouble is the giant Burmese python.  Here is the story.  Since getting started in the 1990s, by either escaping their cages or being released, the above mentioned snake, which is native to Southeast Asia, has established breeding colonies across thousands of square miles of the River of Grass.

  There have been reported reductions in animals such as muskrats and marsh rabbits.  Officials are especially concerned about endangered species, of which there are 31 in Florida whose size make them vulnerable to the pythons.  Up until recently Florida wildlife officials thought that bays, inlets and open seas would form a natural barrier, keeping these non-native snakes from spreading south into the keys or north into other parts of the sunshine state.

  Research published in January found that even newly-hatched pythons can survive in seawater for up to a month.  The U.S. Geological Survey tested the ability of 24 hatchling Burmese pythons, caught in the Everglades, to survive given different types of water (fresh, brackish & seawater) to drink.  

The hatchlings given brackish water survived an average of five months, but two lived more than 200 days.  The hatchlings given full-strength seawater survived an average of one month, but one lived for 200 days, until the experiment was stopped.  So what does this mean?  Well, unless the pythons can be eradicated, or at least contained in the Everglades, we may eventually see them in parts of the Tampa Bay area.  

These snakes, that can grow up to 20 feet and 250 pounds, are not normally considered a threat to humans, but have been know to eat dogs, cats and even deer.  Just remember to keep a tight reign on Fluffy.

DOOMSDAY CLOCK MOVES - Those wacky guys behind the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists have moved the Doomsday Clock one minute closer to midnight.  

In a statement last month citing ongoing threats from nuclear proliferation, climate change and the need to find sustainable and safe sources of energy, the group, which has published its Bulletin since 1947, moved the clock from six to five minutes to midnight.  

The clock has been closer, and it has been farther away.  It came closest to midnight, just two minutes away, in 1953 after the successful test of a hydrogen bomb by the United States.  It has also been as far away as 17 minutes, set there in 1991 following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

BUT THAT’S NOT ALL -  More than half of the coastline of the entire United States is in Alaska.

For the latest weather information go to ABCACTIONNEWS.COM/WEATHER