You are also most likely correct about the PDO — but the Intertropical Convergence Zone is not following the polar equator as it should be doing. At this time of year, it should be much further north.

Looks like there will be a year-round rainy season this year.

There are over 300,000 flooded out in the tiny state of Maranhão.

The northeastern coastal cities of Bahia are being flooded out.

There are over 100,000 flooded out in the state of Minas Gerais.

I am not seeing any numbers on Amazonas state, but it must be well over 100,000.

Listen, it took over a month for the government to send 3 tiny helicopters to deliver aid to people in Maranhão — aid for at that time, 380,000 people.

The national TV networks don’t even mention the 500,000 Brazilian citizens flooded out of their homes, with no potable water, God only knows what kind of food, no electricity, schools closed, hospitals flooded out, no medicines, no doctors, no anything, and nothing on the way, except more rain.

Yet the federal government is allocating many billions for the construction of sports venues because they want Brazil to be considered for the 2016 Olympics!!!!!!!

Do you have any idea what it means to drink filthy contaminated river water for two months? What about all the people with diabetes and high blood pressure who have not been able to receive their meds for the past two months?

When the richer, whiter and more European Brazilians were flooded out of their homes in southern Brazil, earlier this year, the national TV networks showed the story every night on the news.

But for the 500,000 darker-skinned, more African and Indian Brazilians in the north and northeast, the national TV network, Globo, shows NOTHING!

Re the local report Susan forwarded, the attribution to the PDO (Pacific Decadal Oscillation) should be taken with a large grain of salt. I’m sensitive to seeing such claims made for the PDO since it’s a favorite denialist talking point.

The PDO is a rather subtle north Pacific phenomenon, and doesn’t drive much of anything. It would be more plausible to speak in terms of something affecting both Amazonian climate trends and the PDO, although I’m not aware of any basis for doing so.

Please don’t hand out President Lula’s kool aid. He does nothing but cut the current secretary for the environment off at the knees. The previous one resigned for this reason.

Lula is in the pocket of the lumber companies and is doing nothing to prevent further exploitation of the Amazon or to prevent deforestation.

He is all talk.

And do not forget the long reach of the industry-paid global warming denialists.

Patrick Michaels was down here last year giving lectures with every single denialist talking point, long debunked.

To my intense disgust, Veja Magazine (a bit like Time Magazine) interviewed Michaels and gave his interview premier placement in its first 3 pages (printed with a yellow background) where they place interviews with prominent and knowledgeable people.

Let us also not forget that Chilean indigenous people are fighting as I write, with deaths in the dozens, to prevent the dictatorial government there from clear-cutting the Amazon and putting in roads to allow the Brazilian hydroelectric company, Eletrobrás, to come in and build hydroelectric dams. Eletrobrás is 52% owned by the Brazilian federal government.

Let me state this again — Lula is the worst environmental president Brazil has ever had.

Brazil is stuck with him until January 1, 2011.

quote:
There are at least 500,000 people forced out of their homes by the flooding. The state of Maranhão appears to be almost completely under water. Ceara is getting to be the same. Salvador in Bahia, where it normally rains a lot anyway, is still getting so much rain that the houses are coming down from the hills almost every day.

In the coastal states south of the mouth of the Amazon, major highways and bridges are completely washed out (as you may know, their construction leaves a great deal to be desired in the first place ….

Early this year, there was an incredible amount of rain in southern Brazil, especially near Florianopolis. That area of Brazil has much better infrastructure ….

There appears to be some kind of stationary front sitting just over the Amazon, from the west to the east, keeping the rain on top of the affected areas. This has been going on for months with no end in sight.

Interestingly, at the same time, in the far south, the famous Foz do Iguaçu are nearly dry. I was down there 10 years ago, and the flow was greater than Niagara. In that spot there are now just trickles, you can see the bottom of the river …

Some of this is due to various dams upstream, but also to a lack of rain….

Here in northeastern Brazil, we should be in the dry season, but it has been raining like it normally would in November during the rainy season. As a result in Bahia, we have had ca. 60,000 cases of dengue fever registered since Jan. 1. Part of this is due to the incredible amount of trash that is lying around ….

For the past 18 months or so, we did not have the usual ENSO patterns along the equator in the Pacific. I would guess that the flipping of the PDO had a lot to do with this. The question is — how long will the PDO continue to cause this situation?

Then, there is the increased amount of water vapor in the atmosphere bringing the heavier rains.

I have lived here about 11.5 years. When I first arrived I was amazed not to hear thunder and lightning during the rainy season. … I am used to hearing a lot of thunder and lightning strikes. But, here in the interior of Bahia, for the first 8 years, I hardly saw lightning or heard thunder at all. In the last two years, it has been very noticeable that lightning and thunder has increased exponentially….

The expansion of the Hadley cells might also have something to do with the present problem of the stationary front hanging over the Amazon — I am certainly no expert in this so you would need to consult someone who really knows about these things. This expansion of the Hadley cells occurs both to the north and to the south of the equator. So much attention is being focused on the consequences of their northward expansion and pushing the jet stream further north over the North American continent, causing drought in the U.S. Southwest, that we often forget what effects may be occurring south of the equator. This expansion is pushing the southern winds further south as well.
….
While the PDO is called decadal, in fact, its periodicity is not so predictable and can have cycles of 10 to 40 years.
END quote

I know this material may go to Joe Romm more directly at some point, with more information from the continuation of this weather, but hope the author won’t mind my posting it here.

What Is Killing Chile’s Coastal Wildlife?
http://www.time.com/ time/ world/ article/ 0,8599,1902885,00.html

This seems to show a clear increase in maximum temps. for my area. Perhaps even if precipitation remains fairly constant (I haven’t had a chance to look at all the charts) maybe increased evaporation could be enough to strees the trees.

http://cdiac.ornl.gov/ cgi-bin/ broker?id=283029&_PROGRAM=prog.gplot_meanclim_mon_yr.sas&_SERVICE=default&param=TMAX&minyear=1879&maxyear=2006

Did you mean to post another link to the overall drought index?