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El Niño Arrives; Expected to Persist through Winter 2009-10
NOAA scientists today announced the arrival of El Niño, a climate phenomenon with a significant influence on global weather, ocean conditions and marine fisheries. El Niño, the periodic warming of central and eastern tropical Pacific waters, occurs on average every two to five years and typically lasts about 12 months.
NOAA expects this El Niño to continue developing during the next several months, with further strengthening possible. The event is expected to last through winter 2009-10.
“Advanced climate science allows us to alert industries, governments and emergency managers about the weather conditions El Niño may bring so these can be factored into decision-making and ultimately protect life, property and the economy,” said Jane Lubchenco, Ph.D., under secretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere and NOAA administrator.
El Niño’s impacts depend on a variety of factors, such as intensity and extent of ocean warming, and the time of year. Contrary to popular belief, not all effects are negative. On the positive side, El Niño can help to suppress Atlantic hurricane activity. In the United States, it typically brings beneficial winter precipitation to the arid Southwest, less wintry weather across the North, and a reduced risk of Florida wildfires.
El Niño’s negative impacts have included damaging winter storms in California and increased storminess across the southern United States. Some past El Niño’s have also produced severe flooding and mudslides in Central and South America, and drought in Indonesia.
An El Niño event may significantly diminish ocean productivity off the west coast by limiting weather patterns that cause upwelling, or nutrient circulation in the ocean. These nutrients are the foundation of a vibrant marine food web and could negatively impact food sources for several types of birds, fish and marine mammals.
In its monthly El Niño diagnostics discussion today, scientists with the NOAA National Weather Service Climate Prediction Center noted weekly eastern equatorial Pacific sea surface temperatures were at least 1.0 degree C above average at the end of June. The most recent El Niño occurred in 2006.
El Niño includes weaker trade winds, increased rainfall over the central tropical Pacific, and decreased rainfall in Indonesia. These vast rainfall patterns in the tropics are responsible for many of El Niño’s global effects on weather patterns.
NOAA will continue to monitor the rapidly evolving situation in the tropical Pacific, and will provide more detailed information on possible Atlantic hurricane impacts in its updated Seasonal Hurricane Outlook scheduled for release on August 6, 2009.
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. Visit http://www.noaa.gov.
On the Web:
Forecast: http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/enso_advisory/ensodisc.html
NOAA’s El Niño site: http://www.elnino.noaa.gov
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While I moved to the skeptic camp over a year ago, I would caution, as does AGWer Lamont, that premature and/or rash predictions on our part serve to undermine our case against AGW if they don’t come true.
Stick to the facts and the science. Senators don’t want to lose their positions of power and the tide is turning in our favor. Don’t make baseless predictions that make skeptics look as loony as the alarmists. Isn’t it much better to continue to let the AGWers undermine their own credibility with alarmist predictions of ice-free arctic, etc? The more loony predictions you make, the less likely you are to be listened to.
lamont: your
I’ve heard people make predictions on this blog that El Ninos will never happen again which has pretty convincingly fallen now.
I don’t recall seeing any such predictions. Proof please. But, that said, several studies on paleo-ENSO events, indicate a lessening or even a stoppage of el Nino during warming events.
During the middle of the Holocene, when it was considerably warmer than it is today, Overpeck and Webb (2000) report that data from corals suggest that “interannual ENSO variability, as we now know it, was substantially reduced, or perhaps even absent.”
Overpeck, J. and Webb, R. 2000. Nonglacial rapid climate events: Past and future. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 97: 1335-1338.
These authors say it appears there are fewer and weaker ENSO events during warm periods, and more and stronger ENSO events during cold periods.
Riedinger, M.A., Steinitz-Kannan, M., Last, W.M. and Brenner, M. 2002. A ~6100 14C yr record of El Niño activity from the Galapagos Islands. Journal of Paleolimnology 27: 1-7.
The authors compared proxies with their model. In the words of the authors, the model simulations showed “little change in … ENSO, in agreement with proxies.” They also note that other studies “indicate an ENSO shutdown as recently as ~6000 years ago, a period only slightly warmer than the present.”
Huber, M. and Caballero, R. 2003. Eocene El Niño: Evidence for robust tropical dynamics in the “Hothouse.” Science 299: 877-881.
What happens when we simply have a substantially normal El Nino that lasts into next spring and doesn’t “collapse” in late fall? What happens when we beat the 1998 record and the whole “cooling for a decade” argument is no longer valid? What happens when solar cycle 24 heats up and that shows up in the ocean temperature measurements and the whole “flat since 2005″ argument totally collapses? What happens when we set a new record low in arctic sea ice? If all those happen in the next 5 years, will you all admit that AGW is correct?
If all these events occurred, I would, once again, consider AGHG as a primary cause of climate change. I have twice been a doubter, and once a believer, of AGHG as a primary forcing.
The question, is: Would you become a doubter of AGW, if all the questions you posed, returned as a null event? Yes, or no, please.
Lamont:
Lamont, me boy, you need to get up to speed on the scientific method.
It is not the duty or responsibility of scientific skeptics to admit or prove anything. It is the job of those promoting the CO2=AGW hypothesis to show that their new hypothesis better explains reality than the existing theory of natural climate change.
The AGW hypothesis has been repeatedly falsified. Now, it is only a political question. You need to work on the problem of your failed hypothesis before you start demanding that we accept your belief that a minor trace gas will cause runaway global warming.
Can you say El Nino 14 times? The article does.
Do I detect competition between NCDC and NOAA?
NCDC is saying much the opposite, with La Nina making El Nino’s highly improbable.
Competition is good.
Lets all just not predict anything. On the subject of weather and long temr predictions you wil always have the odds against you to make a right prediction. Just like all those warm and dry summer predictions.
Is this typical of El Nino?
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/cgi-tao/cover.cgi?P1=/tao/jsdisplay/plots/gif/sst_wind_anom_5day_ps32.gif&P2=900&P3=456&script=jsdisplay/scripts/biggif_startup.csh
The warm 1.0 and above anomaly areas is being tied off by cooler water to the east to become shaped like a balloon at the right end of the map, the yellow shaded area was the first to drift westward and lose its hold on the eastern edge. It seems to indicate we have some cooler water sneaking into the eastern edge of the Nino region and seems to make it more likely it could be weaker than the ones in 1998 and 2006.
Basil (08:48:36) :
Following on what Chuck L wrote, Ed Berry (link below) is cautious about an El Nino “false alarm” and considers the ENSO situation “uncertain.”
http://weatherclimatelink.blogspot.com/
Plus, we have to have five months of consecutive overlapping 3-month seasons with an ONI of +5 or more before officially declaring an “El Nino,” as opposed to “El Nino conditions.” I looked for the latter in the above press release, and didn’t really see a waffle here. The closest is “NOAA expects this El Niño to continue developing during the next several months…” But that treats the El Nino as already “here.”
Here’s the official distinction:
—————————
NOAA Operational Definitions for El Niño and La Niña
El Niño:characterized by a positive ONI greater than or equal to +0.5°C.
La Niña:characterized by a negative ONI less than or equal to -0.5°C.
By historical standards, to be classified as a full-fledged El Niño or La Niña episode,these thresholds must be exceeded for a period of at least 5 consecutive overlapping 3-month seasons.
CPC considers El Niño or La Niña conditions to occur when the monthly Niño3.4 SST departures meet or exceed +/-0.5°C along with consistent atmospheric features. These anomalies must also be forecasted to persist for 3 consecutive months.
———————————-
We do not even have the first month of data in, yet, to qualify for the run of five months needed here. The latest three months of averaged data, April to June, is +0.2.
But let’s give NOAA some rope here, and see if they do better with this “forecast” than they have with the last two or three official US winter forecasts.
Basil
Well Basil, they have made the news again with a subject directly related to AGW
150 days before the Copenhagen Summit.
This El Ninjo will be vanished before it meets the NOAA Operational Directives which officially make it an EL Ninjo three months from now.
In the mean time the commercial air traffic passing the ITCZ should be prepared for enhanced turbulence and strong storms as violent convection sucks up the ocean heat into the cold upper atmosphere.
It will be an early and cold winter.
If we get warming from a strong El Nino and/or an active solar cycle 24 how does that support the theory that the recent observed warming was caused by CO2 ?
It would just confirm that the two warming periods that occurred during the 20th Century were most likely caused entirely by solar and oceanic behaviour and that any effect from extra CO2 is at a lower, undefined and possibly insignificant level.
To substantiate AGW theory it needs to be shown that there is indeed a background level of warming independent of much more powerful solar and oceanic influences. Without being able to allocate any warming or cooling trend accurately to individual forcing agents it simply cannot be assumed that CO2 has any effect at all.
Even if it does have a measurable effect all it will do is make natural warming peaks a tiny bit higher and natural cooling troughs a tiny bit shallower and so will be beneficial overall given that cold is worse than heat for all plant and animal life.
Bear in mind that the peaks and troughs in the natural cycles are themselves only short lived phenomena and the effect of extra specifically human sourced CO2 if any is truly insignificant.
One can argue that given enough time and enough emissions the effect could theoretically be significant but that gives us centuries to solve our energy and population problems which means there should be no panicky ill judged responses now.
But as my regular readers know my view is that the air circulation systems shift latitudinally poleward and equatorward to adjust the rate of energy flow from surface to space and thereby maintain global temperature stability for aeons at a time despite disruptions in the energy flow caused by variable solar input to the oceans and air, variable oceanic energy emissions to the air and indeed swings in the power of the greenhouse effect from changes in global humidity and/or CO2 and other lesser GHGs.
If we get a strong El Nino then it will indeed warm the air for a while but it will deplete the oceanic energy store in doing so.
At present solar input is likely to fall short of what is needed for full replacement whereas from 1975 to 2000 the high level of solar input seems to have been enough to continue to increase the oceanic energy store despite the run of strong El Nino events. We are not in that position now.
The temperature of the air around the globe is ultimately at the mercy of solar power which is then rationed to the air at the whim of the oceans. That combination sets a naturally varying equilibrium temperature with changes in the composition of the air of no significance in the face of those solar and oceanic forcings.
Tyndall et al made perfectly correct findings about the effect of different gases in the air but those findings do not appear to translate into a climate effect because of the behaviour over time of the entire climate system which involves sun, OCEANS and air, not just sun and air alone.
Essentially their findings have been misapplied.
Bill Illis (09:06:46) :
Bill,
I think the traditional definition makes some sense. As climate phenomena, El Nino and La Nina are meaningless unless they represent a persistent state of some kind. Otherwise, we’re just talking about “noise” when SST’s go above or below some number.
You wrote:
“When the equatorial ocean temps get to +/-0.7C, it is an El Nino or a La Nina.
The ocean surface in this region doesn’t flip back and forth between warm and cool. It always takes a few months at least for temps to ramp up and/or cool down. “
Often, maybe even most of the time, when the monthly average (of three months) gets to ±0.7C, it persists long enough to qualify under the traditional definition.
But not always.
Your other points actually support the traditional definition, I think.
“Only 1 of the 4 main indicators is saying this will be a long event. Three of the four indicators, the Trade Winds, Atmospheric Angular Momemtum and the Southern Oscillation Index are not pointing to a large El Nino right now so that might indicate it will be short-lived (several months anyway as noted above).”
SST’s in this region are only relevant as climate parameters to the extent that they affect …. climate. Summer time El Nino’s typically have only modest climate effects. The dramatic climate effects we associate with El Nino’s come with winter season El Nino’s. If this turns out to be a “short-lived” phenomenon, and weakens as we get into the winter season, then calling attention to it now only serves to hype it unnecessarily. The fact that other indicators are “mixed,” and that this is a summer season event, for now, further support not calling this an El Nino until the traditional criterion is met. I have no problem with referring to what we’re seeing as “El Nino conditions,” but unless they persist through winter, we’re not going to see the traditional climate impact from them, so why trumpet this non-climatic (so far) event as if it were one?
In the June IRI report, the monthly three-month average, beginning with JJA, and continuing through FMA of 2010, of the IRI’s spaghetti graph of models, looks like this:
Average, statistical models 0.3 0.4 0.4 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.4 0.3 0.2
Average, all models 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 0.9 0.7 0.6 0.5
If the dynamical models pan out, this will qualify as an El Nino, but it will likely have only a modest climate impact. If the statistical models are right, it will not even qualify as a traditional El Nino, and there will probably be no traditional El Nino winter time climate impact from it.
Basil
Lamont…
All the money grabing and Law projects are based on one little trace gas molecule that is the fundation of life on this planet… CO2.
The concentration of CO2 has been rising constantly since the LIA (it happened to correspond to the industrialisation age). Yet we had regular and cycling cooling and warming cycles during that same period up to today. Nothing seems to show that it is different now. So all of that shows that there is no link between the CO2 concentration and global temperature… even less to that little portion of CO2 from our industrial activities.
It does not matter what you can say about the cause of global climate change… the science clearly and without any reasonable doubt shows us that we are not the cause and that the CO2 in the atmosphere is not the cause.
It looks like NCDC is only publishing the statistical forecast models, not the dynamical models. I could be wrong but this could be where the NOAA panel gets the statistical models. So no competition. Just a data source within the umbrella organization. NCDC is a part of NOAA.
Frank Mosher (10:14:11) :
I sincerely hope we have an El Nino, as those of us in California need the rain to make up for a three year deficit.
And you will not get that rain with a few summer time months of “El Nino conditions.” You need a solid El Nino through the winter time months to get the rain you want.
Lost in some of this discussion is the fact that warming is GOOD. I like warm – more arable land, longer growing seasons, more habitable land. All of this at the price of a little beach erosion. It would be good if the earth could go back to the warmth that let Vikings live comfortably on Greenland several hundred years ago. It is regrettable that such warmth seems to cause alarm among so many, and even worse that it is seen to be caused by man. Bring on the (natural and good) El Nino!!
I know that many of you agree with me in principle on this, but you just want to stick it to the AGW’ers so bad that you wish for cold. Just remember, cold – bad, warm – good.
Bob Tisdale,
As you follow SST quite stringently, what does it say about the overall heat content of the oceans? If the oceans are not retaining more heat than is being released, wouldn’t that eventually lead to an overall cooling trend over land regardless of El Nino? Isn’t OHC the real story?
“I think we should abandon the need for a consecutive 3 month or 5 month period. When the equatorial ocean temps get to +/-0.7C, it is an El Nino or a La Nina.
The ocean surface in this region doesn’t flip back and forth between warm and cool. It always takes a few months at least for temps to ramp up and/or cool down. ”
That is why NOAA distinguishes between “El Nino/La Nina conditions” and an “El Nino/La Nina Event”
What you are asking for is simply what NOAA calls “El Nino conditions” which is what they announced exist today. You might argue that they’re a couple of weeks late, maybe, and declaring what has been obvious for a little while now, but they’re not trying to “time the market” perfectly to the day, they’re interested in giving climate forecasts about what is likely to expect in the next 1-6 months.
When it comes to declaring “Events” they’re interested in climactically significant events, which you can only know after the event is over. They admit that they don’t know if this is going to be a weak, moderate or strong El Nino. They’re pretty damn 100% certain its going to at least be a weak El Nino, but it might fail to be climactically significant, and in this blog you’ve got people calling for the El Nino to “fizzle by this winter”. That could, concievably happen, and certainly the last El Nino conditions were incredibly weak. If NOAA announced an El Nino Event today, that would be predicting something 5+ months out, and this blog would be full of people HOWLING about how NOAA can’t accurate predict the future and that its all unreliable models.
NOAA is merely announcing what the weather is today. Today it is partially cloudy in Seattle and there’s El Nino *conditions* in the Pacific, which are growing. That is simply a statement of what we know. Since you all beat up models and predictions incessantly on this blog you all should be happy with such a conservative statement about what simply *exists*.
Attention all skeptics:
Please do not be led down the garden path by arguments that are irrelevant;to illogical conclusions.
Please remember that there are “sufficient conditions”, and “necessary conditions” and scientists have to be able to discriminate between the two.
If for the next ten years the temperature drops another 0.5 degrees, that alone is sufficient to discredit CO2 as responsible for global warming (it would also discredit other anthropogenic influences, like black soot, irrigation, etc. etc). BUT it does not mean that if this does not happen, necessarily CO2 or something else anthropogenic creates the warming.
A condition that is is sufficient does not mean it is also necessary.
If the temperatures go up by 0.5 degrees in the next ten years, the ballpark is open to see what causes it, by positive proof and not conjectures. In my opinion we have to see what has taken us out of the Little Ice Age, to have any handle in the situation.
I agree that it would be good if the temperatures keep dropping, because the whole CO2 mess will be reduced to absurdity.
“The question, is: Would you become a doubter of AGW, if all the questions you posed, returned as a null event? Yes, or no, please.”
Sure.
Show me a decadal cooling trend which is apples-to-apples.
I want to see cooling during an El Nino event during a ramp up to a solar maximum. I won’t even complain about SC24 being moderately weak or El Nino events not living up to 1998.
Show me that ocean heat content declines even as SC24 starts up.
And during conditions like that show me that sea ice is increasing, show me advancing glaciers, show me permafrost no retreating, etc. But do it over a decadal period. I’m not interested in data since 2005-2006 showing a pause while the solar minimum has removed about 1.5 W/m^2 or so which is roughly equal to the AGW solar forcing. Yes, the sun does matter. Cyclical flattening of GW while the sun is in a minimum does not falsify CO2/GHG AGW.
Chuck L (08:16:53) :
I will go with JB on this as well. He has been far more accurate on evolution of longer term patterns than NOAA has even dreamed of.
Dave D, good reply to Lamont, but you got the physicist’s age wrong-he would be 63 or 64.
Pamela Gray (09:55:22) :
This is not an El Nino folks. It is an El Nino condition ADVISORY and only just barely. The month average has to be .5 or above and then predicted to stay that way for 3 months or longer in order for the condition to stay current. If the prediction holds true, after that it can be called an El Nino condition and not just an ADVISORY. And then after 5 months it can be called an El Nino Event. Or something like that. It is expected that temps right now would continue to be cool (no need to laugh) and warm a bit into possibly an Indian Summer. But that’s it folks. The show will be over come November. IMHO.
—-
Other than the fact of it being short lived, Why just barely ? The atmosphere was clearly tilting + AAM wise up until recently and the weekly readings were +0.9 which is hardly barely. And this peak is no different then any negative weekly peak during this past winter. And everyone, NOAA included, was calling that a La Nina event. So where is the scientific consistency?
Mind you I’m all for using the ONI but I have seen people waver back and forth with what to use. And some like to strongly consider Wolter’s MEI, which was tilted El Nino last month also. And stronger than June 2002, and 2006 .
And can I assume that you feel that this is going to be a no show, or unoffical, since you mentioned that it will be done come November ? If so why ? Because of the models ? I hope not.
Being additive to a negative PDO I would imagine its impact will be weak. I am hoping, however, for a normal to above normal amount of precip here for the 2009 – 2010 rainfall year, that’s all I ask.
OMG the end of the world
BTW, how is the Met Office’s prediction for the British heatwave coming along? It’s bloody cold and raining all week.
They have a 50/50 chance of being right. It’s like winning the lottery. The odds are 50/50. You either win or you don’t.
Bill Illis:
My last check showed the Southern Oscillation index is currently very slightly positive. This, in fact, does not point to an El Nino at all, but to neutral conditions. Now, I am perfectly willing to accept that an El Nino -weak or otherwise – is in the offing, but how can NOAA say it has arrived without a very negative SOI? Isn’t the pressure gradient across the South Pacific (and the resulting trade wind fluctuations) the very essence of an El Nino, or has thinking about that feature of ENSO changed in the 10 years I have spent away from global climate science?
see, e.g.:
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/
Regarding the up thread discussion of predictions, this quote comes to mind:
“Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.”
Niels Bohr
Danish physicist (1885 – 1962)
And may I add; especially if it is based on mere conjecture.