Yippee, the Bitch Is Dead!

La Nina, ugly stepsister of El Nino, seems to have run her course.   A commercial weather forecasting service reports that sea surface temperatures, winds and clouds over the Pacific have returned to long-term averages.

  The [Australian] Bureau of Meteorology was reluctant to call the end of La Nina just yet, but a senior climate scientist at the bureau, Grant Beard said: ''If it's not dead yet, it's darn close.'' 

Neutral conditions should prevail for the rest of the year, Mr Beard said.
He warned that extreme short-term weather events, such as heat waves, cold snaps and big storms, were still possible. 

The present La Nina will go down as one of the most deadly and expensive ever. 

Persistent and heavy rainfall led to record flooding across eastern Australia, leading to the deaths of at least 35 people.

The Southern Ocean Oscillation is one of the most powerful influences on weather around the globe.   Scientists still haven't sorted out how these weather events interact with climate change influences.

Earthquakes & Tsunamis - Is the Pacific Ocean to Blame?

For years scientists have pondered the possible connection between spikes in the El Nino-Southern Oscillation [ENSO] and Pacific sea bed seismicity.  We're just about at the end of what has been a massive La Nina event.  Has this had some bearing on the devastating earthquakes that hit New Zealand and Japan?

Britain's prestigious Royal Society believes the link is statistically made out.

We observe a significant (95% confidence level) positive influence of SOI [Southern Oscillation Index] on seismicity: positive SOI values trigger more earthquakes over the following 2 to 6 months than negative SOI values.  
There is a significant negative influence of absolute sea levels on seismicity (at 6 months lag). We propose that increased seismicity is associated with ENSO-driven sea-surface gradients (rising from east to west) in the equatorial Pacific, leading to a reduction in ocean-bottom pressure over the EPR [East Pacific Rise] by a few kilopascal. This relationship is opposite to reservoir-triggered seismicity and suggests that EPR fault activity may be triggered by plate flexure associated with the reduced pressure.

The Royal Society has a collection of fascinating research papers exploring links between climate change and other events including gas hydrates, volcanology, geospheric and geomorphological responses and more.  You can find links and abstracts here.