Distant seas might predict Colorado River droughts

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/10/distant-seas-might-predict-colorado-river-droughts

Source: By Warren Cornwall, Science Magazine. 

Excerpt: ...scientists say they may have come up with a potential early warning system for the Colorado’s water levels—by watching temperature patterns in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, thousands of kilometers away. ...Scientists have long recognized links between ocean temperatures and continental weather patterns. Most famously, the central Pacific’s El Niño—a periodic warming of ocean waters—has been tied to drought in Africa, torrential rains on the Pacific coast of North America, and wildfires in South America. ...The scientists found that in the seven most extreme drought years over the past 6 decades, including 2012, the downturn nearly always happened on the heels of a multiyear pattern of global ocean temperatures, they report this month in Communications Earth & Environment. Those patterns started with unusual warm spells in the tropical Atlantic 3 to 4 years before the drought, and continued with warming in the northern Pacific and cooling in the central Pacific 1 to 2 years before the drought....