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New research confirms El Niño can have major economic impacts for California

Major storms during an El Niño event can have drastic increase in flood claims, says new research.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — The core findings by Thomas W. Corringham and Daniel R. Cayan from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California San Diego, confirm when it comes to flood claims and damages, El Niño is a force to be reckoned with.

Wading through 40 years of ocean temperatures confirmation of El Niño and La Niña events, the authors discovered flood damage claims can be ten times higher during an El Niño year.

El Niño is a phenomena that occurs far from California in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. A change in wind direction can send warmer water from the Western Pacific to the usually cooler Eastern Pacific. As it moves to the center, storms can tap into deeper moisture and, statistically, there is some connection to weather patterns changing during the California winter.  

There is not a 100 percent connection between El Niño conditions and a wet/dry winter, but more often than not wetter, winters can be found for Southern California during El Niño.

The study takes a new approach and bypasses direct rain totals with El Niño or La Niña. Instead, it looked at flood claims and damage that occurs during these years. The research found a very large increase in flooding during El Niño years compared to La Niña. It also found that 1 percent of storms during El Niño caused more than 66 percent of flood claims.

Credit: NOAA, KXTV

The research also acknowledges that large flood events have occurred outside of these events.

This research can be helpful for long term planning for officials who may need to make decisions months before the traditional rainy season, and maybe homeowners in flood prone areas, as well. It also states that flood insurance along the West Coast is not widely used, but used the data to help with their research and conclusions.

Current model projections have us in a Neutral Stage with the consensus of staying there until at least the end of 2019.

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