Droughts plaguing the western coast of U.S. along with a drying out that began during the turn of the century are apparently caused by winds from the Pacific Ocean.

Researchers believe ocean winds have natural cycles that involve waxing and waning and the last 15 to 20 years produced strong trade winds that forced heat deep into the ocean.

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This phenomenon forced surface heat to get trapped in the ocean depths and resulted in a temporary slowdown that causes warming over the surrounding land surfaces.

Many scientists have been debating over this warming hiatus and what it means for climate change while others focused their attention on the effects of ocean wind patterns that could have been causing the severe droughts in the western U.S.

Researchers have now concluded this lack of rainfall that's been the driving force of the drought in the region that began in the early 2000s is caused by changing ocean wind patterns from the Pacific region.

There's plenty of natural variability in the climate system, according to Tom Delworth from the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in Princeton, New Jersey.

The team suggests that 92 percent of the drought conditions in the western U.S. can be ultimately linked to trade wind shifts from the Pacific Ocean while the rest is apparently produced by human made greenhouse gas emissions.

Researchers also reveal the storms that should have brought much needed rain to the West Coast were actually deflected to the north into Canada due to a resilient ridge generated from ocean conditions.

This study is among the many conducted in recent years that focus on the Pacific Ocean and its impact on the widespread drought and also global warming.

According to Shang-Ping Xie, a scientist from the Scripps Institute for Oceanography who also conducted a similar study, this new study provides significant advances in understanding how these events are linked to one another.

He adds this new study further provides evidence about how important are tropical Pacific conditions are to western U.S. droughts. This also presents the need for more accurate and longer range predictions of tropical Pacific anomalies in climate.

This study was published in the Journal of Climate.  

TagsStudy: Pacific Ocean Winds Causing Ongoing Drought in Western U.S., pacific ocean winds drought US, US, Pacific Ocean, drought in western US, global warming, NOAA