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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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.
The latter half of the 20th century’s oddness stands out. The first half has no oddities, with the second half rising to a rate of 57% oddness.
“” Robert A Cook PE (16:59:56) :
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. “”
Heck you’re scaring me to death.
Somebody actually made measurments and concluded that these wild assumptions are valid ones to put into a model.
I’ve spent a lot of time laying on my back out in the open looking up at clouds (it’s good for the soul) and I can assure you that the clouds don’t stay the same for 100 years; or even 100 minutes.
It would be very nice if the UN required that the complete specification of these (six you say) climate models, was available on line somewhere or even one of them so everybody could play with them.
As far as I am concerned, and purported model of climate that does not properly account for clouds according to the laws of Physics, is not worth the disk space it is occupying, since clouds seem to be the obvious regulator of the global net energy flow into or out of planet earth.
From Robert A Cook PE (16:59:56) :
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.
-end quote
Leaving aside the problem of 500 km being way too large (It can be 105 F in San Jose, California when it is 65 F and foggy in San Francisco 50 miles away… so what temp / cloudiness is right?)… The lack of accounting for clouds and the inaccuracy of aerosols are the two biggest OMG WTFrack structural issues I see in the models. Add in some imaginary positive feedback loops, leave out some negative ones, stir at a rate 4 time reality and Viola! a fictional crisis Right Now!!! …
Clouds are everything to weather (and thus to climate) yet they are ignored. Beyond shameful.
OTOH, maybe there is something to the notion of a GHG… Bear with me, this is rampant speculation 8={)
from http://www.ghgonline.org/otherstropozone.htm
Tropospheric ozone can act both as a direct greenhouse gas and as an indirect controller of greenhouse gas lifetimes. As a direct greenhouse gas, it is thought to have caused around one third of all the direct greenhouse gas induced warming seen since the industrial revolution.
[…]
The largest net source of tropospheric ozone is influx from the stratosphere.
-end quote
Ignoring where that stratospheric ozone came from and how it can be caused by the industrial revolution …
So has anyone looked at what happens at the poles when a long winter night comes, the sun is quiet, and there is little to no UV to make ozone up there? Supposedly we had a significant ozone hole over antarctica this last year; so if the GHG theory has merit (a big if…): Would that not argue for a quiet sun opening an ozone hole and thus a nice big heat radiation portal? Might that explain the coolness of the poles now that the sun has gone quiet? Ozone reduced. Freezing cold takes water out of the air. CO2 dissolving into very cold water … repeat until Ice Ball Earth 😎 We Must Burn ALL the COAL NOW!!!!!!
I’ve also wondered if the lack of aurora activity would allow more heat to leave / less to enter… and if the aurora make ozone … but that’s another speculation…
At any rate, all these and more are missing from the models. And I’m pretty sure all the rOS (h/t George 😉 are missing as well.
From George
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.
-end quote
I think you are spot on. What’s regulating the clouds is speculative, but that they are critical is clear, and that they are left out of the models is criminal.
Are clouds variable with El Nino / La Nina cycles?
The ENSO 3.4 index is a poor measure of the forces driving change in the easterly wind in the tropics. You are looking at results not causes. It is atmospheric phenomena that drives sea surface temperature. Gilbert Walker realised that 100 years ago. Atmospheric pressure over Tahiti at 17 S Lat. depends upon upper troposphere (200hPa) temperature that is driven by the interaction between short wave solar radiation and ozone. Lower 200hPa temperature accentuates the downdraught in the high pressure cells and higher temperatures weakens the dowdraught. If the dowdraught is weakened the easterlies at the surface falter.
If we really want to assess the forces that drive the strength of the easterly winds that relate to the distribution of the waters in the warm pool we must look to the traditional Southern Oscillation Index.
More about ENSO causation at http://climatechange1.wordpress.com/2008/11/21/the-enso-driver/ Look at ‘The ENSO Driver’ and ‘How ENSO rules the oceans’.
EH: Be thee an engineer? The rigor astounds!
I just have just started reading the comments on this site. Great read. I have been reading like crazy on the sun spots effect on the earths temp latley. A person I think everyone might want to read is Timo Niroma. In 1998 he predicted the solar cycle 24 would be much reduced than the ones we have been having. He then updated it in 2007 and 2008. He is saying, we look to be entering a Dalton minimum. How could he know this so far in advance. He is now looking for the next cycle 24 to begin in mid 2009. He looking pretty prescient. No body else seem to have seen this coming. Especially all the government payed for solar folks. A search of of solar cycle predictions for cycle 24 all are wrong. You would think that they would smart enough to get them off the web. Read his stuff and his reason for the the 88 yr (Gleissberg) cycle.
Jupiter has a very off centered orbit. 11.8 years. It will be hanging around in close to the sun when it wants go active for a long long time. It has been just the opposite
for most of our lives. In close at solar minimum.
Tell me what you think. If he is still right 3 years from now. i would say that he has the only know forecasting model that works in the world.
We have a natural gas industry set up to supply gas for very warm winters. The degree heating days are blowing out in the country’s mid section right now. If this keeps up this winter the gas in storage a going to be joke. Its about average for the last 5 years. Guess were I am putting my hard earned money.
John Finn, you are playing semantics. But I believe your statement there is no cooling trend is wrong. The trend is definitely a cooling one.
Which trend? and over what period?
John Finn (01:44:59)
By cherry-picking timescales, you can demonstrate almost any degree of heating or cooling you desire, as John Philips so cleverly did on another thread. But if you take the UAH and RSS record for this century, a slight downtrend is manifest. More important, in my estimation, is that the Argos buoys also demonstrate a slight cooling of the ocean for the last four years, at least to two miles deep. The recent stasis in sea level rise is evidence to me that ‘extra heat’ is not accumulating deeper in the ocean. It is ocean heat content that rules. The climate is the continuation of the ocean by other means.
======================================
John the trend over the last 7yrs-10yrs–almost 1/3 of the only source to be trusted–satellite data–surface temp data are all crap and not to be trusted
I have had Timo’s site in my favourites list for about two years now.
He gains credibility daily.
Link here:
http://personal.inet.fi/tiede/tilmari/sunspots.html#intro
Note that he only claims it to be a statistical exercise which is an honourable stance to take.
Forgive my shameful joy in this case but the Argos/Argo measurements are to 2KM not 2 miles as you so incorrectly stated. The reason this is important is that the average depth of the oceans is 3.5 km and we know for certain that the currents at the bottom of the Atlantic, all part of the ocean conveyor belt are 3km down.
if you look at the latest Uni Colorado graph (link above) you see that the latest sea levels have ecovered sharply from the strong La Nina (as I pointed out to you earlier the Pacific is cooled by increased evaporation) and is now following the long term rising trend.
Mary Hinge (11:47:13)
I may be mistaken, but it is my understanding that the Argos buoys dive to 3,000 meters, which is 3km, or approximately two miles. And if you look at the sea level graph shown in another thread here on Watt’s Up, you’ll see that the stasis in sea levels persists.
==================================
OK, Mary, two different references I’ve found claim the Argos buoys drift at 6,000 feet, barely over a mile down, and surface periodically to transmit data. I’ve read otherwise elsewhere, but can’t find it now. I imagine they are programmable for varying tasks. Does anyone know, authoritatively, what they are doing? I don’t.
================================
Six thousand feet is less than 2km, but more than a bit more than a mile deep. It encourages your point. I’d like to encourage a greater appreciation for the importance of ocean temperatures in this whole discussion, because of the much greater heat capacity in the oceans compared to the atmosphere. Obviously, we need data over an even greater range of depths. I’d also read that temperatures are also measured while the buoys are rising and falling. It seems that the buoys are subject to varying conditions.
=============================================
Bob
John the trend over the last 7yrs-10yrs–almost 1/3 of the only source to be trusted–satellite data–surface temp data are all crap and not to be trusted
The trend over the last 10 years (120 months) is positive whichever data is used. The trend (for all data) is in, all probability, not statistically significant but none of the records show cooling which link in nicely to Kim’s post.
The recent stasis in sea level rise is evidence to me that ‘extra heat’ is not accumulating deeper in the ocean. It is ocean heat content that rules.
No argument on this. I never said it was warming just that it isn’t cooling.
We have just hit 20 spotless days…the sun remains quiet. If the sun does drive ENSO, La Nina is looking ever so more likely.
Leon Brozyna (09:00:36) :
Buck up Leon – way too pessimistic there.
Remember that the AGW Crowd is proposing a massive shift in industrial infrastructure – a herculean task requiring an enormous investment of technical knowhow and excellence in project management to carry it all off.
I suspect that incompetance will hamper their efforts and slow the whole process down and allow for other more sensible options to become more viable as the costs start to come home and the benefits are not seen.
“” E.M.Smith (19:29:09) :
From George
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.
-end quote
I think you are spot on. What’s regulating the clouds is speculative, but that they are critical is clear, and that they are left out of the models is criminal.
Are clouds variable with El Nino / La Nina cycles? “”
E. M. I’m not a Meteorologist, and I don’t know much about the different cloud types and what physical conditions determine what kind of clouds form; but I do know that to get clouds, you first have to get water droplets to form, or ice crystals depending on how cold the air mass is. Water evaporates quite readily, but it is not in any great hurry to condense back into water droplets. A drop of water has an internal pressure that is higher than the ambient air pressure around it; because of surface tension. Surface tension in water arises because the water molecule is a polar molecule because of that 104 degree bend betweein two two Hydrogen atoms. The Oxygen end is negative because of it borrowing the electron from the hydrogen, and the hydrogen ends are positive becasue the electrons spend a lot of time with the Oxygen. So the molecule is a little electric dipole, and they attract each other nose to tail so to speak. At the surface you are missing the molecules above pulling, so the surface sees a net downward force that results in the surface area shrinking to the smallest area, which creates an excess pressure inside. It is a trivial exercise using what is called the principle of virtual work, to calculate just what the excess pressur is, and it comes out to 2t/r, where r is the radius of the droplet, and t is the surface tension in Newtons per meter. in a soap bubble with an inner and outer surface the excessinternal (vapor) pressure would be 4t/r.
Now droplets have to start off small, and the smaller r is the higher is the internal pressure. The same thing occurs in boiling water, where bubbles form inside the bulk of the water, and the internal vapor pressure has to exceed ambient by 2t/r, so it has to get hotter than 100C to form a bubble, unless there is some “core” for the bubble (or water droplet to nucleate on. Dust or microbes or even charged particles can act as nucleation centers, and if that happens to superheated water, you can get explosive bubble formation, which is why the pot bangs on the stove when you are boiling clean water
So the process fo droplet, and hence cloud formation is strongly dependent on the presence of nucleation sites for water droplets to grow on; and this is the activator of the Cosmic ray effect. Water droplets can form high in the atmosphere when high energy charged particles either from the sun, or cosmic rays strike the atmospheric gases and create heavy ionisation tracks. This is the principle of the Wilson Cloud chamber that was used to image charged particle tracks and reactions in the early days of nuclear physics.
So dust, aerosols, bacteria, charged particles; anything that goives water a core to grow on, aids in the formation of clouds so clouds will form at a lower humidity than in the absence of nucleation sites.
Water as a vapor, is a positive feedback warming mechanism, but water as a liquid or solid, forms clouds, and they always act as a negative feedback cooling influence, because they reflect sunlight to space (albedo), and they block additional sunlight from the surface, which results in cooling the surface. Now the cloud will be warmer due to the extra solar absorption, and also IR warming from the ground, but the warmed cloud rises, and transports that energy to higher altitudes, where eventually iyt will be radiated to space.
The cooling effect of volcanic eruptions is NOT the scattering and blockage of incoming solar radiation, but the dust froms nucleation sites for cloud droplets, and it is the cloud increase that cools the surface; and incidently helps remove that dust from the atmosphere..
Increase in CO2 creates a small surface warming which evaporates more moisture from the top few microns of the oceans and lakes, and that leads to more clouds, which lower the ground level sunlight so the surface doesn’t get as warm as the AGW modellers claim it should.
Water is the ONLY GHG that exists in the atmosphere in all three phases, to provide this self regulating temperature control. Anything that inhibits cloud formation, will allow surface temperatures to rise, and anything that enhances cloud formation, will allow temperature to adjust downward.
Kim:
the link to the Argo home page is here http://www.argo.net/.
There are 3,000 bouys and the diagram shows how long they stay at particular depths. They drift for 8-10 days at 1km before descending to a maximum depth 0f 2km. They then acend to the surface recording details.
he Colorado graph is the latest updated version we have available. the sea level graph you mention is I’m sure the older version of this graph as linked above http://sealevel.colorado.edu/. That graph only went up to February and the sea level was depressed due to the strong La Nina.
I would wholeheartedly agree with this. SST’s give a good indication but are affected by cloud, winds and currents. Using the sea level data in conjuction with SST’s gives more accurate results but we really need to be able to measure ocean conditions over a wide area of the sea bed, especially the lower ‘conveyor belt’ currents.
The general consensus is for NINO 3 temperatures to be 0.8C below normal. Temperatures are average at the moment.
Not splitting hairs, just telling as it is ;-). CSIRO will update you in a couple of days, if you can wait that long!
NOAA ….. 12/08/2008
Niño 4………..-0.4ºC
Niño 3.4…… -0.5ºC
Niño 3 ………-0.3ºC
Niño1+2 ……-0.9ºC
FM
George E. Smith (00:02:06) :
“”E.M.Smith (19:29:09) :
From George
So to me it is self evident; the exact mechanism may be quite complex
-end quote
I think you are spot on. […]
Are clouds variable with El Nino / La Nina cycles? “”
Thanks for the details. yes, quite complex. I was hoping for a general statistical yes/no, but maybe that’s too simplistic…
IF reduced solar gave reduced sst AND more clouds (via cosmic rays or…) then there would be a correlation and that would be valuable to know. Then again, with so many moving parts and long time delay effects maybe it was too much to hope for…
Just in case this hasn’t already been pointed out, according to the latest NOAA update, La Nina really does appear to be back now.
“Atmospheric and oceanic features are consistent with La Niña conditions………. Based on recent trends in the observations and some model forecasts, La Niña conditions are likely through early 2009.”
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/lanina/enso_evolution-status-fcsts-web.pdf