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.
watssupwiththat says:
Hmmm. Bob, I’ll admit I was taken in by the language in this paper produced by NCEP. Why did they produce it in the first place if conditions are neutral? And why make a statement saying these three points in two places, beginning and end?
This is updated weekly.
Look at this page:
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/MJO/enso.shtml
about halfway down the page under
“Expert Discussions/Assessments”
find the link
“Weekly ENSO Evolution, Status, and Prediction Presentation”
leading to the document you cite.
They have attempted to define the language they are using, right in the document (I assume for the lay observer such as myself). Also, the NCEP is defining El Nino/La Nina conditions as ONI of +0.5/-0.5, not 0.8 as Mary Hinge suggests. It’s right in the paper on page 21.
Lyman Horne
I am confused about one thing: they state that a Kelvin wave is starting, and it sure appears to be, but they also state that La Nina conditions are expeced to continue through “Spring 2009”. These seem to contradict to me.
This La Nina seems to have plateaued over the last few weeks.
I think it’s going to fizzle out rather soon. Other barometers point to more continued cooling though. Sea ice is up, solar activity is zilch, meaning we may be entering a GORE MINIMUM,
Or maybe we ought to call it the MESSIAH MINIMUM!
I still like The Gore Minimum.
So, it’s a mini-Nina, or “La Ninette”? Darn, this will make it that much harder for the warmists to find a fall guy for the fact it isn’t warming. Guess they’ll have to fall back on aerosols again.
Squidly,
Who believes the MSM?
Have they made the data of their survey public?
You’re asking the right question: “Who did they survey?”
“…The strongest consensus on the causes of global warming came from climatologists…”
And CNN never thought to mention that the biggest recipient of government funding for combating man-made climate change are those same climatologists who are 97% certain that its man-made.
If I were a climatologist, I’d be at least 97% sure that I want that funding to continue.
Evanjones
I read somewhere that 7 of the last 11 ENSO incidents have been La Ninas. This pretty much confirms what scientists have been saying: We have enetered a negative PDO.
Might want to sell that beachfront property in Greenland. I’ve got a whole list of suckers who’d buy it.
I’m tired of chroma bias. If were are going to quartile, quintile or even dodecatile spectral data such as temperature or precipitation we need standards. And the one standard IMO that needs remain inviolate is that the plots be centered on zero variance with a neutral color and deviations be perceptually scaled for symmetry. For example the precipitation chart above. 0 to +25% is white but 0 to -25% is medium brown.
Squidly:
If you read the fine print You’ll find that only 3164 geoscientists out of 10200 responded. Can you think of any other branch of science where anyone would even think of publishing a Gallup where 69% did not answer?
What will be interesting is if a negative PDO cycle will cause temperatures to reach the lows experienced during the late 1960’s and early 1970’s in North America.
tty
Maybe only 3164 respondents were counted!
Re: NCEP ‘report’
This report is simply a weekly update document. It doesn’t usually change too much but it does give the weekly anomalies for the NINO regions (see page 5). I’m guessing these anomalies are now in La Nina territory (i.e. at or below -0.5). In fact they have probably been in La Nina territory for a couple of weeks but the official definition of La Nina is based on a much longer period. Mary Hinge has something which talks about “5 consecutive over-lapping seasons”. Basically the ONI index uses 3-monthly readings (See Pages 24, 25 & 26) e.g. Oct-Nov-Dec (OND). OND is the most recent reading at -0.3, i.e. not yet La Nina. NDJ probably will go under the La Nina threshold but this needs to be maintained for further periods – though 5 seems a lot. I wonder if they really mean 3 which would cover 5 months.
Anyway MH is right, we might have La Nina conditions but not for sufficient time for the ENSO status to be categorised as La Nina. Also, as someone else has already remarked, I too think that conditions have weakened recently so I’m not sure where that leaves us. JH could be ‘on the money’ we could have the beginning of an El Nino by the end of the year.
crosspatch (09:26:28) :
“And if it is still frozen as snow, none of it is getting into the water table. The problem comes if it all blows away or evaporates (sublimation) before it has a chance to thaw. It isn’t so important that precipitation falls, it is important that it gets into the ground. Snow falling on frozen ground is not charging the ground water table (yet).”
In my patch of Wisconsin, we had the entire years worth of snow by mid December, and most of that has already melted. I have to agree with Jeff Naujok, Something is not correct with the map.
wattsupwiththat (09:55:24) :
Odd, very odd.
Could this simply be sensationalism ?. “Nothing happened today” does not have the same tone as “Earth ending ‘like’ conditions existed today”.
I think you might be right, it would make more sense considering the normal time frame for an ENSO event. The NOAA’s language is confusing and as Anthony said it is all very odd. The only thing I can think of is that they are trying to ‘support’ their model forecast back in September/October. There’s, then shortly afterwards the UKMet, predicted cool ENSO conditions whilst four other models including the Australian and Japanese predicted neutral conditions. This generated lively debates here between Kim and myself!
I think this report is a way out, they are saying the ENSO ‘conditions’ ‘reflect’ La NIna instead of saying that ENSO remains at neutral for the time being. They should take a leaf out of the Aussies book!
Well Anthony I guess we are in agreement about NOAA fudging for once, I hope someone from NOAA can explain what they actually meant to say.
But Hansen says an El Nino is coming within two years and the warming from that will prove his AGW is true.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/jan/18/jim-hansen-obama
and of course from his website:
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2009/20090113_Temperature.pdf
Hansen & co. don’t need no stinkin’ facts, man!
Such sloppiness in the way CPC put together their report.
It’s clear from the report that a La Niña episode has not begun, yet the summary states that “La Niña conditions are likely to continue.” However, CPC’s standard for La Niña conditions are that SST departures meet or exceed -0.5°C for 3 consecutive months. For the current 3-month season (OND), the SST departure is only -0.3°C. We won’t know the status of the next 3-month season (NDJ) till mid-February.
At best, CPC can say that conditions are shifting from neutral to La Niña-like conditions.
In the above map, how can precipitation be 150 percent below normal? Once it’s 100 percent below normal isn’t it at zero? Where does the extra 50 percent come from?
“Mary [snip]:
Also the NOOA have not said that there is now a La Nina, rather that the conditions ‘reflect’ La Nina”
Thanks for the laugh!…you can bob and weave better than Mohamud Ali or a Wallstreet banker ;*)
“We didn’t actually LOSE money, rather our financial statements ‘reflect’ a loss.”
JimB
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’m sorry, but I don’t believe a thing they [NOAA] says.
There is no confusion over the language about the predictions.
“La Nina *Conditions*” are a combination of low SSTs and wind weather patterns (easterly winds) that indicate La Nina and which only need to occur for a single week or month. If you watched the week-to-week predictions there was also a couple weeks where the forecasters hedged their bets and were claiming something like “La-Nina-Like” conditions before the SSTs and wind patterns definitively changed to La Nina.
A “La Nina *Event*” needs to have a trailing 3-month record of low SSTs. So we are probably about 1.5 months into a La Nina event which we won’t know for sure for another 1.5 months sometime in March after the Dec-Jan-Feb ONI numbers come out.
This is kind of similar to the formal economic definition of a recession, which always comes long after 90% of people and economists have figured out that we’ve been in a recession.
The weekly NOAA ENSO diagnostic discussion can be found here:
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/lanina/enso_evolution-status-fcsts-web.pdf
It comes out every Monday. They clearly define what “conditions” and “events” are if you read closely.
Also note that a new warm phase of a Kelvin wave is starting and the current La Nina conditions should weaken over the next month or two (although it may then restrengthen, who knows…)
OT: Al Gore ice sculpture unveiled in Fairbanks as invitation to discuss global warming
“Compeau used Monday’s unveiling to publicly invite the Nobel-winner to visit Interior Alaska — specifically, Tetlin Junction, where reports indicated temperatures earlier this month bottomed out at close to 80 degrees below zero — and explain, first-hand, global warming theories. “
If the NDJ value is -0.5 or less(-0.6, etc.), and continues that way for 4 more periods(DJF, JFM, FMA, MAM), it’ll get the official “La Nina” designation for the books (5 consecutive, overlapping 3 month periods). The weekly anomalies are averaged over these 3 month periods to obtain the value for the period. OND of -0.3 is the average anomaly for that 3 month period. You can have La Nina conditions, and still have fallen short of the official designation. Sometimes these events are short lived.
Regarding:
“The strongest consensus on the causes of global warming came from climatologists who are active in climate research, with 97 percent agreeing humans play a role.”
I believe it would be proper to ratchet down cynicism. Most likely, even most skeptical scientists in the AGW debate would agree that “humans play a role.” If we deforest eastern Africa, that will affect precipitation around Kilimanjaro and elsewhere. If we irrigate valleys in the West, that will affect temperature. If we built cities and change prairies to farmland, we will increase nocturnal temperatures. If we build roads and houses, we will decrease the albedo effect. (I believe that we have over 2.5 million square kilometers of blacktop in the United States – that is larger than the loss of Artic Ice under discussion and probably is impactful that the ice loss.) . . . Oh, I have not mentioned CO2 yet, and that subject has potential. Perhaps in the real world, CO2 has only 50 to 100% of the laboratory impact on temperature, but that is still more than zero. And we could also look at secondary socioeconomic impacts – increased CO2 has increased crop production which has enabled more humans to “thrive” and produce more heat through transportation, cooking, and HVAC activities.
Tony B
For most of the Australian continent, the recorded history of droughts only goes back to around the 1840’s.
Australia was first settled in 1788 at Sydney cove, principally for use as a convict settlement by the british.
So we are a very young country with only a short historical record to draw from.
There is evidence of a 20 year long drought starting in about 1640 in the Great Barrier Reef coral cores.
“I read somewhere that 7 of the last 11 ENSO incidents have been La Ninas. This pretty much confirms what scientists have been saying: We have enetered a negative PDO.
Might want to sell that beachfront property in Greenland. I’ve got a whole list of suckers who’d buy it.”
5 out of the last 11 are La Ninas.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/ensostuff/ensoyears.shtml
going back 12 years, there’s 38 months of la nina events and 39 months of el nino events.