Can’t you just see this scrolling across your TV during an EAS alert?”…. If this had been an actual El Niño, you would have been instructed on where to complain to your nearest modeler turned forecaster….” I wonder what kind of graphical icon TWC will come up with for an El Niño Watch? – Anthony
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Feb. 5, 2009
Contact: Linda Joy
301 713-0622, ext. 127
NOAA Unveils New Alert System for La Niña and El Niño
La Niña Likely to Continue into Spring
NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center today issued the first La Niña advisory under its new El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) Alert System. Forecasters expect La Niña to influence weather patterns across the United States during the remainder of the winter and into the early spring.
Defined as cooler than normal sea surface temperatures in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean, La Niña impacts the weather globally. La Niña’s opposite is El Niño, or warmer than normal ocean temperatures. These changes in ocean temperatures alter the tropical wind and rainfall patterns with far reaching implications.
“The typical weather patterns associated with La Niña and El Niño affect many industries including agriculture, transportation, energy, shipping and construction,” said Michael S. Halpert, deputy director of the Climate Prediction Center. “The ENSO Alert System will succinctly inform industry, government agencies, academia and the public about the onset and status of La Niña and El Niño. This system will also help decision makers plan for the potential effects presented by these conditions.”
La Niña conditions have been present since late December, but it is too early to say exactly how strong the event will be and precisely how long it will last. However, for the next few months La Niña is expected to bring milder and drier than average conditions to the southeastern and southwestern states. It is also expected to bring wetter-than-average conditions to the Ohio and Tennessee valleys, and cooler than average temperatures to the Pacific Northwest.
The new ENSO alert system includes La Niña and El Niño watches and advisories which the Climate Prediction Center will issue when specific conditions exist.
- La Niña or El Niño Watch: conditions in the equatorial Pacific are favorable for the development of La Niña or El Niño conditions in the next three months.
- La Niña or El Niño Advisory: La Niña or El Niño conditions have developed and are expected to continue.
These watches and advisories are now part of the ENSO Diagnostic Discussion, which is issued by the Climate Prediction Center on the Thursday falling between the 5th and 11th of every month. It is available online at http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/enso_advisory.
NOAA understands and predicts changes in the Earth’s environment, from the depths of the ocean to the surface of the sun, and conserves and manages our coastal and marine resources.
– 30 –
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What!? No carbon dioxide watch????
So what do you prepare for with succinct ‘information’ such as “but it is too early to say exactly how strong the event will be and precisely how long it will last”
Sort of makes a joke of their statement that “NOAA understands and predicts changes in the Earth’s environment…”
Apologies. Typo on my email address. Corrected now.
No matter how bad the economy, idiocy is still thriving in the bureaucracy. How about reminding the fine folk at NOAA that the existence/condition of La Niña or El Niño is the business of NOAA and should be used by them in adjusting their short and long range forecasts. Telling the general populace that La Niña or El Niño conditions exists is a waste of time and tax dollars; or is that how they plan on spending their stimulus dollars?
La Nina continuing into spring – bad news for California farmers needing rain and the state economy.
Well, duh. It was clearly cooler than the year before last year, and it’s even cooler this winter here in No. Ca. And the La Nina is in it’s 3rd year, so where exactly has NOAA been?
NOAA understands and predicts changes in the Earth’s environment, from the depths of the ocean to the surface of the sun, and conserves and manages our coastal and marine resources
Oh, please, spare me.
We had our El Nino in 2005. After the system wrings out enough water in due course, it ALWAYS turns drier, on account of the precip being overdrawn.
Did it to us in 1975. Again in 1982. And 1986 . And 1996.
If you try to stop a hurricane with seeding, they will continue to get bigger until they smash what they are supposed to smash. If you try to suck water out of the system to gain on precip, the storms will avoid the area next month or next year. Mind of it’s own. So what gives with the sudden flash of light in thier heads over El Nino/La Nina?
3 La Nina’s in a row. That’s what gives.
You see, a La Nina can do just about anything, and anyone who looks back on the record of La Ninas will discover just how unpredictable they really are when it comes to precipitation.
Did we learn nothing from Katrina ? I blame George W Bush for not having this warning system in place. With this new administration in place (once everyone gets his back taxes paid up, anyway), FEMA will be prepared to spring into action for the next ENSO emergency.
It’s too late to stick out a bulletin warning of something impending when it has already happened. Tell me how many more storms are lined up in the Pacific for the next 3 months, while I sit here listening to Storm #1 in a series of 4 pounding on my tin roof.
Hint: The 1909 and 1938 La Ninas were severe floods in No. Calif.
Leon Brozyna (23:48:04) :
La Nina and El Nino statements are something that they have a better than 50 /50 chance of being correct about. Hence, an occasional ‘correct’ statement enhances their perceived credibility for when they want to make outrageous severe anthropogenic global warming statements.
Slightly off topic
Im very interested in the deep ocean temperature records, back of the envolope stuff but 90 % of the oceans volume is below the thermocline where the tempersture is somewhere between 0 and 3 degrees c. Does anyone have accurate information on deep ocean temperature changes?
The area of the World Ocean is 361 million square kilometers (139 million sq mi), its volume is approximately 1.3 billion cubic kilometers (310 million cu mi). Its average depth is 3,790 meters (12,430 ft). Nearly half of the world’s marine waters are over 3,000 meters (9,800 ft) deep. The vast expanses of deep ocean (anything below 200m) cover about 66% of the Earth’s surface.
In terms of the planets thermal balance the surface waters of the oceans represent a small part of the picture, yet we have little knowledge of the deep oceans.
As we discussed last month NOAA’s definition of a La Nina has not been reached or exceeded for one month, let alone the five in their definition. (see this WUWT post from December http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/01/20/its-official-la-nina-is-back/
This is the NOAA’s definition Historical Pacific warm (red) and cold (blue) episodes based on a threshold of +/-0.5 oCfor the Oceanic Nino Index (ONI) [3 month running mean of ERSST.v3b SST anomalies in the Nino 3.4 region (5N-5S, 120-170W)], calculated with respect to the 1971-2000 base period. For historical purposes El Niño and La Niña episodes are defined when the threshold is met for a minimum of 5 consecutive over-lapping seasons.
This threshold has not been reached once since late spring/early summer. The value is currently -0.3, still below the threshold. The latest report is here http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/lanina/enso_evolution-status-fcsts-web.pdf
I know Anthony was trying to seek clarification from the authors on this discrepancy, presumably they haven’t taken any notice.
Perhaps after a few years of study someone (singular) will be able to inform the world at large the following facts of El Nino-La Nina;
the time spans
the extent (area)
the height
the depth
the movement
the temperatures at various levels
the species of life contained in
the effect of the sun and moon
etc, etc, etc,
all the above without exaggeration, modeling, AGW or political influence
Possible ?
Going by NOAA track records, to answer just one of the above today, truthfully, would seem highly unlikely.
New NOAA alerts just in:
*** Ursine defecation “very likely” in arboreal locations
*** Fundamental Catholic beliefs held by old German living in Vatican “with a high degree of probability”
*** Conference of optometrists confirm hindsight has excellent vision.
*** Climatic reports involving Dr Michael Mann “very very very likely” to have data quality issues
*** NOAA confirms “bleeding obvious needs to be stated, electrons must be sacrificed for the sake of the environment”
Lets see… oscillation … constantly changing from one state to the other… and they are issuing ‘watches’ when the condition doesn’t even match their own thresholds… So almost always time for a ‘watch’ or ‘warning’…
You don’t think it might be because they want to be more in the public eye by constantly issuing one kind of ‘important warning’ or another, right when big buckets of money are to be handed out to ‘important’ weather related agencies?
So, what am I supposed to do when it’s La Nina? Bomb shelter? Helmut? Gas Mask? Chardonnay? Brei? Business Casual? Enquiring minds want to know!!!
Interesting article on Icecap from Joe D’Aleo see pdf below
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/Super_Strong_Stratospheric_Mid.pdf
I know Piers Corbyn focusses on Sudden Stratospheric Warming as well for his forecasts see also
http://www.weatheraction.com/
and
http://www.lowefo.com/pdf/News090130.pdf
D’Aleo notes at the end of his post “if the sun stays quiet, La Nina may not disappear. It tends to dominate near solar minima.”
Mary Hinge (02:09:04) :
I suspect it’s the difference between La Nina conditions and episodes. The current anomaly running mean (ONI) in the report is -0.9, which qualifies as La Nina conditions (<-0.5). However, the last complete 3-month recorded ONI (for Oct-Dec) was -0.3 (not La Nina conditions at all).
Does anyone know why the NDJ index isn’t included in the report, which is dated 2 Feb? I suspect it will show La Nina conditions, and will then count as #1 in the possible 5-season episode count. Maybe it takes a while to check the data before they publish it.
These are the articles that make this site worthwhile! Thanks, Anthony.
Mike McMillan:
Bush had another system in place: clicky
The ENSO MEI was listed as -0.695 for january so that makes 5 months in a row for below -0.5.
Just for grins I extended my four factor best fit model (see website for details) into the future. My predictions are for the UAH numbers, global temperature anomaly. The slow cooling predicted is mostly due to the ENSO numbers and the fact I do not know the sunspot or CO2 numbers yet. The Jan sunspot average was 1.5, up a bit from December.
Jan 0.27
Feb 0.22
Mar 0.17
Apr 0.15
May 0.18
June 0.18
July 0.19
But wait, WAIT!!! GISS SAID:
“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.”
Originally posted Dec. 16, 2008, … Updated Jan. 13, 2009
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2008/
:p
E.M.Smith (03:03:26) :
Lets see… oscillation … constantly changing from one state to the other… and they are issuing ‘watches’ when the condition doesn’t even match their own thresholds… So almost always time for a ‘watch’ or ‘warning’…
You don’t think it might be because they want to be more in the public eye by constantly issuing one kind of ‘important warning’ or another, right when big buckets of money are to be handed out to ‘important’ weather related agencies?
So, what am I supposed to do when it’s La Nina? Bomb shelter? Helmut? Gas Mask? Chardonnay? Brei? Business Casual? Enquiring minds want to know!!!
They could just put out a daily “warning” – then we can have a fresh alarm every day – just so that we know that they are doing something useful with the taxpayers money.
PaulHClark (03:06:27) :
Interesting article on Icecap from Joe D’Aleo see pdf below
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/Super_Strong_Stratospheric_Mid.pdf
I know Piers Corbyn focusses on Sudden Stratospheric Warming as well for his forecasts see also
http://www.weatheraction.com/
and
http://www.lowefo.com/pdf/News090130.pdf
D’Aleo notes at the end of his post “if the sun stays quiet, La Nina may not disappear. It tends to dominate near solar minima.”
Is this “Super strong stratosphere” the recent RSS Jump?
Weather report from UK: Snow in Devon said by locals to be the worst they’ve ever experienced. One foot (30cms) fell in two hours. Whole of UK affected. Lots of minor road accidents and we’re running out of road salt.
In 2006 the useless Met Office told us to replace our garden flowers and roses with cactus plants and drought-tolerant, sun-loving shrubs. Lucky most of us didn’t then!
John A (02:50:52) :
Now, now, you know and I know that no electrons were destroyed in spreading this confused information. They were batted back and forth, energized to thousands of EVs, smashed into phosphors, crammed into tiny, suffocating wires, and forced into increasing the entropy of the universe. No, not destroyed, just abused. I predict that this cycle of abuse will continue into the indefinite future.
OT, but that snake story is just snake oil. From:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/02/090204112217.htm
The largest snake the world has ever known — as long as a school bus and as heavy as a small car — ruled tropical ecosystems only 6 million years after the demise of the fearsome Tyrannosaurus rex, according to a new discovery published in the journal Nature.
This look like the real reason that snake evolved. The asteroid strike at the KT boundary wiped out all land creatures larger than about 15kg, clearing the way for surviving species to grow their body size and fill the empty ecological niches. T rex wasn’t around to eat it. As for the temperature estimate:
“If you look at cold-blooded animals and their distribution on the planet today, the large ones are in the tropics, where it’s hottest, and they become smaller the farther away they are from the equator,” he said.
Based on the snake’s size, the team was able to calculate that the mean annual temperature at equatorial South America 60 million years ago would have been about 91 degrees Fahrenheit, about 10 degrees warmer than today, Bloch said.
This is just extrapolation (size/temperature) and is naive in the extreme. Ask yourself the following questions:
1. Do all snakes curl up and die when the temperate steps outside their temperature ‘range’?
2. How does a snake ever survive from birth to full size without dying?
3. Is the relationship linear? For baby or adult snakes? Who knows.
4. Is temperature that only thing that determines snake size? Probably not. How about predation and food supply.
The only proof here is that a story about scary creatures seasoned with a bit of climate sauce gets you into the newspapers. Works every time.