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 –
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
crosspatch
Morocco is a very mountainous country, and so I don’t believe somw there would be all that unusual. It’s also very poor, and hence the roof may not have been very well constructed.
DR
Thanks for the Met link and great heads up!
Wow! Look at what they are admitting!
1) Their models are crap (yet continue to have faith in climate models!)
2) Natural cooling actually does exist
3) The natural cooling is dominating AGW
4. Ocean cycles do matter!
Talk about a 180!
We have a history of global cooling & ice in concert with grand solar minima.
We have a history of long productive times in concert with grand solar maxima.
What we don’t have is any history of rapid sea-level rises in a century that drown whole cities and coastlines.
Makes the 3rd case sound like Sci-Fi doomsday flicks.
Is this what we are being preached at for, Sci-Fi nightmare hallucinations?
I’d say there are little boys in high places who are still afraid of the dark.
DR’s link
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/weather/4534358/Snow-Britain-Further-snow-and-ice-forecast-for-rest-of-the-winter.html
On the basis of observations and basic physical principles I’ve tried to apply logic to the whole global energy budget to see what comes out.
Essentially the air seems to be a buffer for ocean induced variations in the background energy flow and I would guess that somehow the varying temperatures at different levels in the air are a reflection of that buffer in operation.
See here:
http://co2sceptics.com/attachments/database/Balancing%20the%20Earths%20Energy%20Budget__0__0__1233774754.pdf
I doubt that I’ve got very aspect right but it certainly presents a new way of looking at it all which might help to break the current lack of progress in determining how the whole climate syatem works as a single process.
The suggestion that the internal systems of the air and ocean go in opposite thermal directions is noteworthy.
Phil’s Dad
re the Daily Mail article, these polemics are becoming more common by the week in the UK MSM, exempt BBC. Christopher Booker has been banging on about the AGM voodoo for years and, one by one, other commentators are catching on too. It’s probably all too late to stop the taxation/control that the AGM scare was designed to usher in, but then again, maybe not, especially with the recession, and all.
DR
I saw that article in the Telegraph at breakfast and nearly choked on my bacon sandwich. From soup to nuts it is the most unutterable drivel I’ve seen in a long time, and I read RealClimate!
‘New Alert System for La Niña and El Niño’
Makes sense to me. It brings into the public perception ‘scientific’ terms that can be employed whenever ‘weather-events’ appear to buck climate predictions. We’re already getting the message, loud and clear, that Global Warming is being masked, albeit temporarily, by the natural fluctuations that ‘All good Scientists know have happened throughout the History of Gaia!’
Once people have been ‘properly propogandacated’, weather will be seen as something that the Earth does today while climate will be what will happen tomorrow- or the day after tomorrow!
Climate Chaos will cease to exist- Weather Chaos will supplant it- as the younger and less smart sibling of AGW Climate!
‘New Alert System for La Niña and El Niño’ – Malignant maybe- Genius certainly!
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/weather/4534358/Snow-Britain-Further-snow-and-ice-forecast-for-rest-of-the-winter.html
and see my forecast issued in October:
“On balance I think the coming winter will be colder and drier than the long term average, possibly by a surprising margin but too much depends on the winter jet stream which can be very unpredictable in Western Europe.
Last winter was, as they say, warmer than the average here and in W Europe. However that was during a colder than average N Hemisphere winter overall.
What happened was that the plunges of cold air over N America distorted the jet stream which then approached us persistently from the South West bringing frequent flows of mild air.
Since the recent global cooling trend has intensified since last winter I suspect that the jet stream will this year push more often into the Mediterranean thus cutting off the supply of warm air to us. IF that happens (no guarantee) then the Greenland and Scandinavian high pressure cells will affect us more than for many years past and give us persistent cold.”
I suppose it could be luck but since I included my reasoning I believe skill is more likely.
In the Met Office article it is interesting to see an admission that they already build the anticipated background warming from AGW into the seasonal forecasts. I suspect that that may be a bad idea.
I see that they are now suggesting a resumption of warming in 2014. I assume they now disown the Hadley expectation of resumed warming in 2010.
Can we believe them ?
My reference to the outlier being NINO 4, comes from comparing the behaviour of the respective areas, as seen on the Australian data here http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/indices.shtml
Bob Tisdale has observed that PDO is driven by ENSO 3.4 . It appears that for now, ENSO 3.4 is driven by NINO 4. PDO drives climate to some extent. Hence to this simple minded observer, it boils down to NINO4.
I see that they are now suggesting a resumption of warming in 2014. I assume they now disown the Hadley expectation of resumed warming in 2010.
Re: the Telegraph article.
I think the Met Office spokesman may have got things wrong. The Met Office have released nothig which suggests cooling or flatlining until 2014. I believe whoever did the press release is mixing up 2 separate studies, i.e the Keenlyside et al study and the Smith et al (??) study.
Stephen Wilde,
You’ve pretty much hit it right on the money.
Care to tell us what your forecast is for the spring and summer 2009?
lichanos (09:33:13) :
The McKitrock, Andresen, Essex paper makes sense to me.
It certainly seems to make a nonsense of the very concept of a global ‘temperature’ having any relevance.
DaveE.
It seems that big ninos happen during wider orbits of the sun around barycenter.
See: http://www.giurfa.com/nino_bary.jpg
That’s an interesting fit. It implies we may face another one around 2022-23. Also, if one extrapolates back from 1960 where the graph ends, one would have expected one around 1957. From the NOAA report we see there was in fact a reasonable El Nino in 1957/58, although not as large.
JAS 1951 -NDJ 1951/52 0.8
MAM 1957 –MJJ 1958 1.7
JJA 1963 –DJF 1963/64 1.0
MJJ 1965 –MAM 1966 1.6
OND 1968 –MJJ 1969 1.0
ASO 1969 –DJF 1969/70 0.8
AMJ 1972 –FMA 1973 2.1
ASO 1976 –JFM 1977 0.8
ASO 1977 -DJF 1977/78 0.8
AMJ 1982 –MJJ 1983 2.3
JAS 1986 –JFM 1988 1.6
AMJ 1991 –JJA 1992 1.8
AMJ 1994 –FMA 1995 1.3
AMJ 1997 –AMJ 1998 2.5
MJJ 2004 –JFM 2005 0.9
However, the 1972/73 one is hard to explain, as it coincides with a very close orbit indeed. Something to think about though.
Fernando (16:02:20) :Photos of the event are featured on today’s edition of http://spaceweather.com.
Nice site. Thanks! The present top page mentions an ice crystal moon halo with 10 to 20 micron ice particles. About a week ago we had a similar (though very feint) halo in near-coastal California. It is possible we are getting more micron sized ice crystals at altitude? How are such high altitude ice crystals handled in the models?
Ed Scott (16:20:22) :
David Ball
David you are welcome. Judi McLeod deserves the utmost credit for her journalistic courage and integrity in publishing the news that the cowardly, sycophant journalists in the USofA will not publish. To paraphrase GWB, “Judy McLeod, doing the journalistic work that American journalists will not do.”
Just a ‘pile on’ here here! I enjoy the occasional mental jaunt north of the border and find it pleasant to be reminded that Canada has more diversity in it than the MSM shows. Keep it up!
I wonder how long it will be before the gatekeepers at ‘journals’ realize that in the internet age they are now gatekeepers on the sidewalks next to the freeway…
Frank Mosher: you wrote, “Bob Tisdale has observed that PDO is driven by ENSO 3.4 . It appears that for now, ENSO 3.4 is driven by NINO 4. PDO drives climate to some extent. Hence to this simple minded observer, it boils down to NINO4.”
Frank: The NINO3.4 region includes the eastern portion of the NINO4 region. The other half of the NINO3.4 region is the western portion of the NINO3 region. So I fail to see how one could drive the other. During an El Nino event, as the water from the Pacific Warm Pool comes “sloshing” eastward (sloshing is a technical term), the NINO4 region would warm before the NINO3.4; I’ll grant you that; but it’s a weakening of the trade winds in the western Pacific that causes the water to move eastward.
If you’re interested, William Kessler of NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory has a great description of El Nino events here:
http://faculty.washington.edu/kessler/occasionally-asked-questions.html#q1
And here’s a NASA video (~25MB) that shows the 1997/98 El Nino from different perspectives:
http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a000000/a000200/a000287/a000287.mpg
Refer also to comparisons of NINO1&2, NINO3, and NINO4 I provided yesterday at 14:33:18.
Adolfo Giurfa you wrote, “It seems that big ninos happen during wider orbits of the sun around barycenter.”
Adolfo, if annual NINO3.4 data is smoothed with a 2-year filter or monthly NINO3.4 data is smoothed with a 24-month filter, it changes the perspective of El Nino event size. It reduces the apparent size of the El Ninos that are immediately followed by a La Nina, and increases the apparent size of the multiyear El Ninos that don’t reach the same temperatures (but don’t have a La Nina between them). It’s just a different way to look at the data. Refer to:
http://i33.tinypic.com/2cmp7ck.jpg
I discussed it here:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2008/11/different-way-to-look-at-nino34-data.html
Does that help or hurt your analysis?
Fernando (16:02:20) :
Comet Lulin (C/2007 N3) is approaching Earth and putting on a good show for amateur astronomers. Yesterday, Feb. 4th, observers witnessed a “disconnection event.”
This happens regularly when the heliospheric current sheet sweeps over the comet, and has been observed for centuries.
M White (04:58:08) :
OT “Cosmic ray detector reveals sudden atmospheric warming”
http://planetearth.nerc.ac.uk/news/story.aspx?id=300
Nice story. Makes me wonder, though: What does Sudden Stratospheric Warming do? And how is it handled in the GCM computer models?
Adolfo Giurfa (13:49:05) : It seems that big ninos happen during wider orbits of the sun around barycenter.
Fascinating… I would also note the anecdotal point that in the early ’70s it snowed in the Central Valley of California (a very very rare event. 3 x in 50 years that I know of on 70 mile line from Sacramento north). IIRC it was about 73-74 which is right in the middle of a ‘small orbit’ … In ~1989-90 it snowed freakishly near San Jose (lots of news coverage, including front page San Jose
MercuryMurky News) again right in the middle of a ‘small orbit’ …So we have a history of warm events in wide / large orbits and cold events in tight / small orbits. Hmmm…. How to plot formal data and statistically test??…
DaveE (13:45:53) : It certainly seems to make a nonsense of the very concept of a global ‘temperature’ having any relevance.
My take on it is this:
The Global Average Temperature is about as meaningful as the average illumination of pixels on your screen. You can tell something happens as the average pixel changes hue and brightness, but it doesn’t mean anything… All the information has been ‘averaged out’.
I wonder if Leif has any comments on this
http://www.cdejager.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/2009-forecasting-jastp-71-239.pdf
E.M.Smith (23:19:43) :
‘My take on it is this:
The Global Average Temperature is about as meaningful as the average illumination of pixels on your screen. You can tell something happens as the average pixel changes hue and brightness, but it doesn’t mean anything… All the information has been ‘averaged out’.’
As you’re looking into GISSTemp code, is there any reference to pressure or humidity in the code?
If the answer is no to either or both, then GISSTemp is totally meaningless anyway as it bears no relationship to heat content at all. I’m sure their are other things that should be included too but they’re the two most obvious.
DaveE.