Image from NOAA, dated 12/04/08 – click for larger image h/t to Fernando
It will be interesting to see what November UAH and RSS satellite data brings forth.
La Niñas occurred in 1904, 1908, 1910, 1916, 1924, 1928, 1938, 1950, 1955, 1964, 1970, 1973, 1975, 1988, 1995, and in 2007. It looks as if that 2007 event is hanging on.
Here are some FAQs on the subject:
Typically, a La Niña is preceded by a buildup of cooler-than-normal subsurface waters in the tropical Pacific. Eastward-moving atmospheric and oceanic waves help bring the cold water to the surface through a complex series of events still being studied. In time, the easterly trade winds strengthen, cold upwelling off Peru and Ecuador intensifies, and sea-surface temperatures (SSTs) drop below normal. During the 1988- 89 La Niña, SSTs fell to as much as 4 degrees C (7 degrees F) below normal. Both La Niña and El Niño tend to peak during the Northern Hemisphere winter.
What’s the difference between La Niña and El Niño?*
Both terms refer to large-scale changes in sea-surface temperature across the central and eastern tropical Pacific. Usually, sea-surface readings off South America’s west coast range from the 60s to 70s F, while they exceed 80 degrees F in the “warm pool” located in the central and western Pacific. This warm pool expands to cover the tropics during El Niño but shrinks to the west during La Niña. The El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is the coupled ocean-atmosphere process that includes both El Niño and La Niña.
What are the global impacts of La Niña?
Both El Niño and La Niña impact global and U.S. climate patterns. In many locations, especially in the tropics, La Niña (or cold episodes) produces the opposite climate variations from El Niño. For instance, parts of Australia and Indonesia are prone to drought during El Niño, but are typically wetter than normal during La Niña.
What are the U.S. impacts of La Niña?
La Niña often features drier than normal conditions in the Southwest in late summer through the subsequent winter. Drier than normal conditions also typically occur in the Central Plains in the fall and in the Southeast in the winter. In contrast, the Pacific Northwest is more likely to be wetter than normal in the late fall and early winter with the presence of a well-established La Niña. Additionally, on average La Niña winters are warmer than normal in the Southeast and colder than normal in the Northwest.
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David Jones – wondering about the UK summers –
If you click on to the whole world animation at weather-action, following the link on the right of the site – you get the last 2 or 3 days cloud and storm tracks – it is very interesting to follow the standing waves of the jetstream – Charles Perry at USGS says there is a sense among oceanographers that the surface temperature of the northern Pacific feedsback via high -pressure warm air systems to affect the jetstream – and the shift to colder air in 2007 off Alaska did that – shifting the loop eastward so that instead of looping north over the UK (and coming down in Norway), it came straight up from the SW bringing the torrents and floods – same in 2008. The winter pattern is different because the polar vortex is affected by the polar night’s cold – and the wave now seems compressed – the Alaskan loop is depressed, the stream comes into the US further south, and then upwards off massachusetts and then loops across iceland before coming DOWN into the UK, bringing all the arctic cold and snow of the last week here.
The jetstream may also be affected by the status of the solar cycle – with a long-term shift during the Maunder type minimum (and we are in some kind of minimum 2007-2008).
In the summer I asked Hadley if they had anyone working on this – the hadn’t, and referred me to a US commercial aviation website! When I get the time, I would like to track these changes through the transition of 2006-2007 in Pacific ocean temperatures. The storm tracks show us where heat is being extracted from the oceans and where it is dumped as precipitation or cloud radiative energy on land (or ice). We should now watch the SSTs in the North Atlantic.
Anthony-I was working fires out of Chico,Chester and Redding that summer.
Read in the San Fran Comical a statement to the effect-by a Sierra Club Drone,
“Due to Global Warming-this is an indication that Northern California is becoming more like the Sonoran Desert!!” then on Labor Day the skies opened, and we went home.-Proving to me that God has a sense of humor…
oops-Summer of ’89
Children of the Tropics: El Niño and La Niña
http://www.ucar.edu/communications/factsheets/elnino/
Definitions of El Nino, La Nina, and ENSO
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/tao/proj_over/ensodefs.html
Distributed information on El Nino
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/tao/elnino/nino-home.html
La Niña is back — PDO in its negative phase — SC24 still looking rather anemic. Looks like a recipe for renewed PETA activism. Have to save the animals from mankind’s predation in the face of a cooler world.
*sigh*
No matter what happens, it’s mankind’s fault. If the world gets warmer, the AGW crowd will get you. If it gets colder, PETA will nail you. Let’s all crawl back into our caves and wait to die.
edward @08:27:42
Good information, and it’s always worth reminding everyone that the Senate passed a Sense of the Senate resolution 95 – 0, stating that the U.S. will not seriously damage our economy with AGW policies. And that any such policies must apply across the board, not just to the industrialized countries.
But I think hunter @05:41:15 was being sarcastic.
The sad thing is, the AGW/CO2 runaway global warming climate catastrophe contingent often sounds just like hunter’s post.
“” Basil (05:41:54) :
Speaking of the SOI:
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/121542494/abstract
Exploratory Analysis of Similarities in Solar Cycle Magnetic Phases with Southern Oscillation Index Fluctuations in Eastern Australia “”
So why is it that people continue to deny any solar earth climate link via the magnetic fields; and their resultant effect on cosmic rays and solar charged particle flux on earth, wehich affect water droplet nucleation and hece cloud formation.
And as to the Kyoto thing which the Senate rejected by 95-0 during the Clinton Administration; by what sort of Political machination would anybody imagine a new incoming President to champion a cause (Kyoto) which the only legal authority on susch treaties (the US Senate) had unanimously rejected; that would be political suicide. The Bush bashers must think the American Public are just stupid to think they can hang the Kyoto situation of Bush. It was a non starter from the beginning of his Presidency.
OK now we have a vote for “Change we can believe in” which is simply a return to the Clinton years, and management team. So now they have a chance all over again to prove how green they are, and ratify this nonsense treaty. Well the only way there is any green there, is in the new chairman of the board who has exactly zero management experience. So let’s see how he makes out, while he still has pretty muich the same opposition to such a treaty in the same Senate.
Al Gore is still about the only friend that Kyoto has. Both India and China have already told the Europeans (and us) what we can do with our carbon nonsense. Just try to find any “scientific concensus” among the scientists of those two countries that contain nearly half the world population.
But what I am curious about is this La Nina question. When it left town last year, it was supposedly replaced by the PDo moving to a cold phase, and the pretty Pacific Ocean chart above shows the Eastern Pacific (US west coast) nice and blue.
So how does PDO factor into this ENSO saga. Some of us non climatologists would like to understand some of this.
I’m with Smokey…I was chuckling at the sarcasm.
OTOH…if it WASN’T sarcasm?…well…there’s a host of problems there then 😉
JimB
Mary Hinge (04:17:33)
I defy you to show where I’m predicting a new Ice Age. What I’ve said repeatedly is that the globe is cooling, for how long even kim doesn’t know. Now let’s go back to talking about the multiple model runs that show a high likelihood of a La Nina developing this winter and deepening into next summer. Weren’t you the one who tried to palm off two weird data points about sea level on us a while back, too.
Please, if you can’t engage in honest rhetoric, at least cease misrepresenting what I say. Better idea; keep it up. You only indict yourself and your arguments. This we see a lot from the alarmists.
My goodness, what ever happened to the spirit of scientific wonder, curiosity, and rigourous attention to data? As I mentioned to someone else, how about joining the community of the curious and not the flock of the fearful?
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However, Mary, I’m honored that you remember me. Must have hurt you a little for you to snark inaccurately. So, keep it up. Schadenfreude is an inelegant emotion, but you keep dragging me back in.
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[Inappropriate taunting, let’s all try and behave shall we? ~ charles the moderator]
Hunter (05:41:15)
Heh, you can’t fool me. Your facetiousness is subtle, and funny.
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Pofarmer (06:11:43)
Yo, Bro. So what is it, natural born cooling or not?
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Pofarmer, also, no acorns this year. Not the natural grown oaken ones, anyway.
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But Teach, she started it. Waaahhh.
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[Be that as it may, I’m a hit and run admin, and don’t have the time to necessarily analyze an exchange in its entirety. When I note inappropriate behavior, I want both sides to stop without assessing blame to either–or to put it in the vernacular you used: I don’t care who started it! ~ charles the moderator]
John Finn: “RSS is up (+0.22) according to Steve Milloy, but temperatures tend to lag ENSO by a couple of months. Nevertheless, Hadley/GISS/RSS/UAH have risen all steadily over the past few months despite NINO index anomalies being zero at best. I’ve said it before on here – there is no long term cooling trend. A lack of warming, maybe, but definitely not cooling.”
You may be right, but you cannot draw that conclusion based on a couple month small temperature increase while the ENSO index turns slightly negative. There are simply too many other variables to consider in the short term.
So, let’s look at longer term averages. Last month, I too noticed the ENSO index truning negative and posted on the subject. As part of my look at it, I collapsed ENSO into 5-year averages to see what the chart looks like.
The collapsed chart, coincidentally I’m sure, just happens to show that persistent La Nina conditions over the longer term occur during times of cooling and persistent El Nino conditions occur during times of warming.
Then Anthony posted the study that showed the contribution of ENSO and AMO that demonstrated significantly high correclation in temperature to these indexes.
There may be some overall warming trend that is slight, but the more extreme slopes sure seem to be driven by non-AGW sources, if you look at what happens to the charts when you look at all these things:
ENSO: http://digitaldiatribes.wordpress.com/2008/11/21/a-quick-look-at-the-enso-index/
PDO: http://digitaldiatribes.wordpress.com/2008/12/04/pacific-decadal-oscillation-pdo-index-back-into-the-negative/
Sunspots: http://digitaldiatribes.wordpress.com/2008/10/02/some-fun-stats-with-sunspots-and-how-the-current-activity-stacks-up-against-recent-history/
and http://digitaldiatribes.wordpress.com/2008/10/07/solar-cycle-length-sunspot-count-and-temperature-an-insurance-pricing-analysis/
Sure, charles, you’re the boss. I was joking with you anyway. I very much admire the job you and all the other moderators do with a difficult task. How did Anthony get so lucky? By the way, haven’t seen Dee Norris, lately.
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LOOK AT THE BIRTH:
http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/map/clim/sst_olr/sst_anim.shtml
FM
Kim,
Quit suckin’ up 😉
Jim
It looks to me like we can now see one way that glaciations can occur. Henrik Svensmark and Eigil Friis-Christensen cosmic ray theory looks to be valid. I have been observing the following conditions:
1. There has been more cloud cover of the planet for the past year and it seems to be present most of the time from 30 degrees North to the North Pole, and from 30 degrees South to the South Pole.
2. Air temperatures away from water have been cold and sometimes colder than the means especially in mid to higher latitudes. For example temperatures in Siberia have been very low for the past month and I notice today that the temperature in Verhojansk, Russia is -54C. This must be a cold temp for early December even in this region.
3. Air temperatures influenced by oceans have been slower to cool. The North American West coast has been influenced by pacific air and in Canada we have had consistent jetstream from the Pacific into BC and Western Canada. In Eastern Canada the influence of Hudson Bay and the Atlantic seem to be temporarily moderating temperatures there.
3. The solar wind has been generally quieter except for the occasional sunspot or coronal hole.
4. Humidity appears to be higher than normal everywhere. I don’t recall past humidity levels being as consistently high as they have been here in Northern BC. At any rate, precipitation seems to be up as well all over the planet.
The cloud layers seem to be reducing the solar insolation striking the earth surface and I am seeing constant reductions of up to 90% measured in Watts/M^2 on my weather station. The same cloud cover and humidity that is cooling areas away from the oceans seems to be retarding the heat loss of the oceans in the far North and South because of the greenhouse effect. I notice that except for the UK, Europe seems to be slightly warmer as does Canada’s North around open water. The Arctic ice formed very rapidly, but even the energy given off by the change in state appears to retard the further ice growth for a while. I also noticed in past records that some of the warmest years like 1998 and 2002 had some very cold early temperatures in the arctic. The sun was more active then and the cloud cover was not as prevalent which allowed heat to escape much more quickly.
The cooling of the planet should definitely continue, but not as fast as I thought it would a few months ago. If this is how glaciations occur, it is certainly a fascinating time to be alive to observe this. I hope the sun remains quiet long enough to verify these things.
We might just learn to appreciate CO2 as a plant fertilizer for ever diminishing agricultural land areas.
Cheers
Kim, nice to see you posting with passion. How are things at dot earth? You know how people wear radiation detectors on their shirts to see how much exposure from radiation they might get at a nuke plant? That is how I feel about posting at Dot earth. I had way too much exposure. Maybe I will post again after I recover.
From Pofarmer (06:11:43) :
I dunno, it might be dull and warm somewhere, but right now we’re running 12-14 degree’s F below “normal” and it looks to be that way for next 10 days at least and has been for the last several days. That is in the U.S. mid section. This is the coolest year that I can remember taken in the aggregate.
-end quote
Yup. Look north. Alaska went cold first, then the cold started moving south. You can see the same thing in the S.H. This cold phase started at the poles and is running out from there. Moved the jet stream (which I would speculate might be influencing the La Nina developing)
The folks who are holding up global averages to try and show there is no cooling are unclear on the concept of change spreading over time and space. It’s an inflection point. Smoothing and averages hide them.
Same fault frequently happens in stock traders. They see a trend and predict it with smoothing and averages and quant models into the indefinite future. Works great right up to an inflection point. Most of my work has been spent on inflection detection. So far I’ve done rather well (called the last top). Right now I’m calling a bottom in the stock markets AND I’m calling an inflection in the weather / climate to a cold phase for a decade or three. We’ll see if I’m right. (Hey, when you’re betting real money on it, public embarrassment is nothing 😉
FWIW, this fascination with both markets and weather has a long history. Look at the work of William Stanley Jevons on crops, sunspots, and economic crisis. (There is a creepy correlation between sunspot minima and financial crisis that is very annoying. I’d like to think we were more rational than that…)
BTW, on one of these threads someone said it would be up to the climatologists et. al. to decide if we were entering a cold phase. I’d argue that it is up to the sun and earth… We’re just along for the ride, folks…
Pofarmer, I’d also suggest that you look at the Old Farmers Almanac, they do a good job of calling weather for farmers. I’d also suggest that you look at what crops grew well 500 miles or so north of you. That’s likely to be what will work for you in a cold phase (if one is developing). At a minimum, I’d be looking at ‘catch crops’ that do well in short cold seasons if you have a crop failure. Buckwheat and Sorghum are your friends… And millet… If you are a very small farmer, consider Amaranth. It’s a specialized niche market, but amaranth is more flexible on moisture and cold than other grains. Harder to harvest, though. Lentils are faster than soybeans and need less heat, if your a legume farmer.
Hmm… Rather a lot of money is riding on the weather… I’d expect that might ague for folks willing to contribute to a Linux like collaborative weather modeling program (as discussed on another of the threads here)…
Anthony: When you get a chance this summer, go take a dip in the creek above Bidwell park for me… Alligator hole… the rock slide… Sigh…
RH,
I’m a great fan of Henrik Svensmark and Eigil Friis-Christensen cosmic ray theory , and it ties in nicely with sunspots cycles.
Since sunspot magnetic fields reverse between cycles, the net magnetic field influence on cosmic rays should affect the earth temperaturew ith a 22 year periodicity.
The sunspot peak of 1957/58, the IGY year was the highets sunspot count ever recorded in all of sunspot history (around 190), and the three immediately preceeding peaks, ahd shown successive step ups from a lot lower level.
Then since 1958, the sunspot peaks have been consistently in the vicinity of 140-150, much higher than any previous history of sunspot cycles, and not surprisingly we had a period of warmer temperatures on earth, that evidently ended with susnpot cycle 23. Well we still don’t know what cycle 24 has planned for our entertainment; but this is one physicist who finds the Cosmic ray thesis to be very credible
Cosmic and solar charged particles get trapped or at least manouvered by the net loacl magnetic field, and with stronger fields, the particles get selectively steered towards the magnetic poles, which happen to be regions of low atmospheric water vapor, so not much cloud nucleation can occur; but when the magnetic fields are weaker, there is a larger cosmic ray flux in the tropics where ther is plenty of water vapor, and more clouds form cooling the planet.
So to me it is self evident; the exact mechanism may be quite complex, but I am convinced that cloud modulation is regulating the temperature of this planet, and CO2 has virtually nothing to do with it.
More CO2 simply means we get s light bit warmer and get more water vapor and more clouds to block more sunlight.
All of which has nothing to do with ENSOs or PDOs or AMOs or any othe rOs which I am sure are germane to the local climate of the planet; but the gross question of net energy gain or loss, is all a result of cloud modulation IMHO, and I admit to knowing virtually nothing about all those ocean oscillations; but I’m glad a lot of other people do know.
Bob B (14:58:42)
Thanks, I had a lot of fun over there on DotEarth starting with the mammoth 1200 comment AGU thread and running until Andy Revkin required registration in order to comment. I came to believe in Andy’s honesty and curiosity, but I failed to convince him of my skeptical message and don’t think I dented the beliefs of any other commenters there. Nonetheless, if I turn out right, the message is all there for anyone to review. There is still a skeptical presence over there, and sometimes I read a thread, but the echo chamber is deafening and boring. Just in case anyone missed it, my message was:
We are cooling, folks; for how long even kim doesn’t know.
====================================
A basic question, but one I’ve seen addressed before: Please correct my (assumed) facts below.
There are six global climate computer models that hold the earth’s economy/energy future in their projected grasp.
The classic definition of these six computer models is that they calculate the radiation energy into a 500 km square area of the earth, then the energy and (I assume) the water vapor and heat lost to the adjacent 500 km squares, then iterate the exchanges between all squares until some stable output results. One assumes that these 500 km squares do properly show the radiated solar energy “into” the atmosphere as a function of latitude, but I know they all assume one single unvarying factor for cloud cover (which affects re-radiation), and that cloud cover factor does not ever change with time of the simulation (days, months, years, centuries ahead.
The re-radiation coefficient for water vapor (from their evil greenhouse gass CO2) is a (10x multiplied factor of the amount of CO2 present, but I don’t know what other assumptions are made for water vapor. I have read that they (Hansen) increases significantly the amount of water vapor assumed to be present in the air – but just how much more a 1.0 degree change in temperature changes the relative humidity is certainly open to speculation, since there is no where (even in tropical wetlands) where the atmosphere is completely saturated all the time. Water vapor in the atmosphere over land is limited – not by temperature but by the amount of available water to evaporate. And, as shown, over sea (as measured at islands or seacoasts) water vapor is never at 100% relative humidity all the time.
Does Hansen include:
Coriollas effect?
Jet streams?
Coastlines and the Ocean boundaries themselves?
El Nino or La Nina event?
Just how basic are these simulations, and who has written about them – in terms of exactly what simplifying assumptions are being made?
It is only a 1.3 trillion dollar question. 8<)
do these
A basic question, but one I’ve NEVER seen addressed before: Please correct my (assumed) facts below.
Memo to self – Re-read your posts a third time before posting. 8<)