"Red cape" has no meaning in English that I am aware of.
'Pears there are a number of things you are unaware of "El Toro"..
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DogB - you need to be careful about terms like " heat hidden" etc - the ocean and atmosphere have gradients and large circulation structures - thermohaline in the ocean, jet stream in the atmosphere both driven by the convection that are a result of those gradients.
That's what Alec was on about I think....
Originally Posted by
aleCcowaN
Could you expand about these dynamics? I mean, where is that heat "hidden", some general info about latitudes or depths (just to start looking through the intellectual stutter -the Internet-)
Just as eddies and still places form in a river there are slow moving ocean pools that can trap heat from say the Indian ocean and instead of mixing ( turn over ) with the very cold lower ocean the heat can build up as it did in 1998.
if you've ever done any diving you'll know how sharp a transition a thermocline can be - the same convective currents and pooling occurs in the atmosphere but at a far faster rate = weather. The same sudden temperature gradients occur at the top of convection columns....much fun to fly into on an already cold autumn day with good thermals but damn that transition can be sharp and very very chilly just at cloudbase..
Both distribute concentrated heat at the tropical band toward the poles and well as vertically through the various upper ocean, lower atmosphere where most of the activity takes place.
In a simple form if you watch a river that has an unstable formation, you'll see boils and eddies and whirlpools ( I used to hate crossing the eddy line in a kayak ) and sometimes in a rapid you'll see a fairly regular oscillation occurring due to unseen structures below and the interface with the eddy line and the main current.
The continental structures alter the flow of currents and formation of pools, there is a paper about the significance of the gap near Australia /Indonesia ( will try and find - there is a little here
http://oceanmotion.org/html/background/ocean-conveyor-belt.htm - good illustration that shows how critical that Indonesian gap is ) that indicates it may have a role to play in the geologically recent shift in ice age cycle patterns - if the ocean level drops it cuts circulation...yada yada yada and changes the heat transport.
That's one reason I think the Arctic is on a new trajectory - the current flow over the top has opened up changing many aspects of heat transport.
Both topography of the continents and the ocean basin structures in 3d alter how the currents in each transport energy and how much gradient can be maintained between the hottest portion of the respective geo-systems and the coldest - it would be a boring planet without that.
Some of those gradient structures oscillate in a long term pattern - multi-decadal that are still being teased out of our observations and reconstructions. NAO, ENSO
We've altered the land use and the heat capture - we don't know how that will impact on oscillations like the ENSO - will we get more La Nina's, more El Nino's and the Atlantic is still to be understood.
Here's a good article showing how the hot pools drive weather and local climate worldwide
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/WarmPool/
If you overlaid that with ocean currents and atmospheric currents PLUS topography under both above and below the ocean it's easy to see how complex the gradients and subsequent circulation in ocean and atmosphere become.
But it is all driven by the energy in that tropical warmth and we've turned up the heat a tad...each and every year.
More energy, steeper gradients, more consequences and perhaps even permanent changes in some local climates ie southern Atlantic hurricanes.....
Because of the scale something like the big Indonesia quake which lifted an enormous portion of the sea floor may have unforseen consequences on the circulation through those gaps between Australia and Asia - letting hot pools grow even hotter leading to more extremes......one can imagine the change in the ocean and atmosphere circlation when the open gap between North and South America closed off.
I think what you were getting at is the existence of these hot pools when you said "hidden".....they are fairly obvious with our new sensors in space but their potential to build gradients and the strength of the "release" ( you know that few hot days before building up a big storm is a similar process ) is hard for us to plot.
The longer and hotter it builds, the stronger the storm that follows as energy is released across the gradient.
The hotter the pools, the stronger the El Nino....and we've turned the burner up and keep doing so.
As for the PDO - the pools build in different locations...nicely shown here
http://jisao.washington.edu/pdo/
Very much terra incognita.
Bottom line tho - none of these are drivers as much as a few of the denier crowd are postulating lately

- they are consequences of heat build up at the equator in air and ocean. None add energy into the geo-sphere.
For that we have the sun and GHG to keep it there. Our activities play a role in both of those.
Reflecting some out, keeping more in. Stay tuned, consequences to follow.....
