UPDATE: There’s some question about NCEP’s communications intent with this paper. While they cite “La Niña conditions” in the language, and the visual imagery lends itself to that, the numerical threshold of ONI hasn’t been reached, as has been pointed out in comments. Yet NCEP made no mention in the summary that the threshold had not been reached. I’ll see if I can locate the authors and get a clarification. – Anthony
In a document published January 19th, NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center (NCEP) has officially put the stamp on the cold water conditions we’ve seen growing in the equatorial mid and eastern Pacific. I first reported on this on December 4th, 2008. This does not bode well for California’s drought conditions, which are likely to continue due to this renewed La Niña event.
Sea Surface Temperatures as of January 5th, 2009. Click for a larger image
In the document, which you can see here, NCEP says:
•Atmospheric and oceanic conditions reflect La Niña.
•Negative equatorial SST anomalies persist across the central and eastern Pacific Ocean.
•Based on recent trends in the observations and model forecasts,La Niña conditions are likely to continue into Northern Hemisphere Spring 2009.
Here is a map provided that shows the precipitation departure for the last 90 days. Note that while the Pacific northwest (notably Seattle) is taking a bath, California gets nearly nothing. The jet stream pattern has been pushed far north this past year.
I also found this time series graph of equatorial Pacific ocean heat content anomaly for 180 to 100 degrees west of particular interest:
They also say that:
A majority of ENSO forecasts indicate below-average SSTs in the central equatorial Pacific through Northern Hemisphere Summer 2009, with about half of the models suggesting La Niña conditions will continue through February-March-April 2009.
Place your bets now.
There is also a wealth of information in the PDF document NCEP has prepared. I’m sure our readers can draw some interesting conclusions and analyses from it.
A hat tip to WUWT reader Alan Wilkinson for bringing the NCEP document to my attention.
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Mary called the cattle home.
=================
Ahh, the ocean condition that can contribute to cooling but not warming. Using met office logic of course 😉
What does this mean? According to the Australian BOM site, they say Pacific Ocean cooling may have peeked. They also have the quasi disclaimer that cooler conditions in Pacific may not persist during summer (SH) 2009. So has it peeked or just starting?
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/
things could get even more interesting in 2009……
Kim,
Where DID Mary go?
Trolls come, trolls go…but she was a good one 😉
JimB
And in Australia we will be rejoicing if La Nina is back in 2009.
Despite the fact that the 2008 La Nina did not break our worst ever recorded eleven year long drought in south eastern Australia, the odds are high that a 2009 La Nina together with changes in the Indian Ocean Dipole to a negative phase will ensure that this eleven year long ongoing drought that has decimated so much of south eastern and inland Australia will finally be over.
I have a question, how much did we know about the effects of El Nino and La Nina on global climate back in 1988 when Hansen testified to congress about AGW? I know we’ve been aware El Nino for a long time, but is our understanding of their affect on global climate fairly recent?
Viva, la Nina for eastern South Africa!
No drought for us, it’s starting to look like a jungle here since the la nina of jan 08 and now the rain and cold has returned, unfortunately summer hasn’t happened but still good news for farmers here.
In “2008 Global Surface Temperature in GISS Analysis” at:
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2009/20090113_Temperature.pdf,Dr. Hansen et al wrote, “It is conceivable that this tropical cycle could dip back into a strong La Nina, as happened, e.g., in 1975. However, for the tropical Pacific to stay in that mode for both 2009 and 2010 would require a longer La Nina phase than has existed in the past half century, so it is unlikely. Indeed, subsurface and surface tropical ocean temperatures suggest that the system is “recharged”, i.e., poised, for the next El Nino, so there is a good chance that one may occur in 2009. Global temperature anomalies tend to lag tropical anomalies by 3-6 months….
Given our expectation of the next El Nino beginning in 2009 or 2010, it still seems likely that a new global temperature record will be set within the next 1-2 years, despite the moderate negative effect of the reduced solar irradiance.”
Based upon the lag time for global temperature anomalies to arise and NCEP report, it appears expectation for the next El Nino may deferred to 2010 and Dr. Hansen should now be giving odds on a new record within the next 1-2 years.
Dan Lee (04:58:26) wrote: “I have a question, how much did we know about the effects of El Nino and La Nina on global climate back in 1988 when Hansen testified to congress about AGW? I know we’ve been aware El Nino for a long time, but is our understanding of their affect on global climate fairly recent?”
The answer is very little. In fact, the “Warm Pool,” which pretty much spawns the ENSO (ElNino Southern Oscillation) events, wasn’t really “discovered” until 1996. For more info see http://www.epwp.com. To be honest, even in 2009, there is much to be learned about the teleconnections between the Warm Pool, the PDO, the AMO, the AMDO, and other cliate events.
Jack Koenig, Editor
The Mysterious Climate Project
http://www.climateclinic.com
I have a question. El Nino and La Nina are SST. How far down from the surface do these temperature occur, and, how far down is the PDO temperatures from the surface?
Thanks for your answer.
ROM
When do your reliable drought records go back to?
TonyB
I note that the CPC says their Historical ONI page was updated Jan. 14. I checked on the 16th, 15th, 14th,…and found..nada.
Moreover, they modified SON, changing it from -0.1 to 0.0, which leaves a highly unusual triad of zeroes. How does one cross zero an even number of times and end up negative?
It means we’re still guessing about the bogeyman called “global climate”.
Office logic indeed says that La Nina will absorb heat, as does El Nino release. Lower water vapor, more drought on western half and more hurricanes on the eastern half. So, a 3 way bad thing, for underlying, the planet keeps covertly sucking in energy whilst doubtlessly as it has been doing for decades now the inexorable rise of CO2 in the atmosphere. Office logic is like the credit bubble. It will burst and than we’ll really learn what global frying is.
This is good news for California grapes and Florida oranges. Sun is good! Not so good for all the other states that thought they could grow grapes and oranges. We could see wine prices going back up and oranges getting scarce again. When I was a child and we were freezing in bitter cold, we drank home-made wine and one of our Christmas gifts was a family box of oranges. It was the only time Safeway had any oranges.
I’m happy: It’s Official…
Sir Anthony said:
REPLY: We’ll see …
Right: My champ.
AMSU channel 5, means very active MJO?
If the answer is yes, we have a hot January 2009 (entropy). Similar to the increase of ice in October 2008 (entropy).
….Thermal inertia…
http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/
After reading the NOAA paper noted above it seems that there could be some discrepancies in regional averages. I know that the South east U.S. has been wetter than noted and the temperatures have been cooler than noted. Of course that could be only in a small area but I do know that December 08 and Jan 09 thus far have been below average temps and above average precipitation especially since we have finally broken the drought that began in 2005 with the precip that has occoured in Jan 09.
Just the perspective from the deep south.
Bill Derryberry
But wait, WAIT!!! GISS said in December:
“Indeed, subsurface and surface tropical ocean temperatures suggest that the system is “recharged”, i.e., poised, for the next El Niño, so there is a good chance that one may occur in 2009.”
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2008/
LOL!!!!
Sea ice is also currently doing better that 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005, and a tiny bit better than 2004 🙂
http://i410.photobucket.com/albums/pp183/kiwistonewall/2009x.jpg
Odd, I looked at the latest SSTs and it looked to me the region around the equator wasn’t showing as much blue as it was a few weeks ago.
Shows what I know.
2 La Ninas in a row. Starting to make up for all the back-to-back-to-back-to-ect. El Ninos.
Maybe Archibald it right. Maybe we’ll be .6C cooler by May..
Anthony, here’s the latest image from yesterday: http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/PSB/EPS/SST/data/anomnight.1.19.2009.gif
I don’t think it’s quite as impressive as the one from the 5th. Looks weaker to me.
According to the scale on the second map above it appears that some areas like Eastern Texas and Oklahoma as well as Northern California are more than 100% below average for precipitation! How can that be?
REPLY:The map depicts in millimeters, I have no idea why they have % in the caption. – Anthony
On http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/ it seems like temperatures for January are running much above normal until now. Is there someone who knows where the heat is coming from?
I know Alaska is quite above normal for a few days now, but shouldn’t temperatures be lower with La Nina like last year happened?
well, it looks like the dry weather will continue for those of us in Texas 🙁
Dan Lee: It’s been known about since 1923.