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| Contact: Christopher Vaccaro FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
202-536-8911 (cellular) July 9, 2009 |
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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Looking at the TAO there may be other signs that do not bode well for even a moderate El Nino event
The eastern subsurface warm pocket is not as warm this year as this date last year, and last year was not an El Nino year
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/tao/jsdisplay/plots/gif/Dep_Sec_EQ_5d_anom_comp.gif
The warm pocket in the 20C Depth is also not quite as strong, 2009 shows a smaller and cooler warm pocket that’s farther from the edge.
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/tao/jsdisplay/plots/gif/iso20_iso20_anom_5day_comp.gif
There’s plenty other plots on that site too but these relating to SST’s stick out as they compare against last year. Look at them and see if you can guess where things are going to go.
Lamont 11:21:01
Well, you are getting better. But don’t you see how your points argue against the kind of climate sensitivity to CO2 that we’re being sold?
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“NOAA understands and predicts changes in the Earth’s environment, from the depths of the ocean to the surface of the sun”
Well, well I learn something new everyday. I didn’t know that everything “from depths of the ocean TO THE SURFACE OF THE SUN” was part of the Earth’s environment. I stand corrected.
Continuing my last train of thought. If I may be so bold, I suggest a new acronym that is more descriptive of what the debate over climate really is. AC3 (Anthropogenic Climate Change Conjecture ). I feel this is a more accurate description since there is presently no proof, which puts it firmly in the “Conjecture” category.
I’m sure everyone is acquainted with the generally recognized definition of conjecture, but to make it easy:
From Webster – 2 a: inference from defective or presumptive evidence;
b: a conclusion deduced by surmise or guesswork;
c: a proposition (as in mathematics) before it has been proved or disproved.
By the way, Lamont, I think you’ll get to see all those things; continued cooling while the sun gets more active and all. Tsonis et al showed that the coupling and uncoupling of natural cycles, particularly the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, best explain the temperature graph for the last century. And we’ve just entered the cooling phase of the PDO. So, yes, I expect you’ll see continued cooling for the next few years, no matter what the sun does, and despite the interjection of some Los Ninos. This natural cycle theory makes far more sense than the great climate models, based on the incorrrect assumption that water vapor is a large positive feedback to minimal CO2 forcing.
And please clue me in to how the sun directs climate; I’m dying for the answer.
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By another way, Lamont, I think you’ll find your conditions satisfied sometime in the 1940-1970 period, a decadal long cooling trend with increasing polar ice, a sun actively peaking in its cycle, and episodic El Nino conditions. We are there again in that cooling phase of the PDO. But, why wait so long to be convinced? Observe the historical record.
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Lamont (11:21:01):
Lamont, you still don’t get it. [Or you do get it, so you constantly move the goal posts and re-frame the argument.]
Once again: it is not the job of scientific skeptics to prove anything. Believers in the CO2=AGW hypothesis have the burden of showing that their hypothesis explains reality better than the long-accepted theory of natural climate change — which posits a gradual trend of global warming, with decadal oscillations above and below trend.
No one has falsified the theory that the observed temperature changes are a consequence of natural variability. If you can falsify that theory, you will be the first — and in line for a Nobel prize. The AGW contingent would love to have anyone be able to falsify the theory of natural climate variability.
The conjecture that CO2 will cause runaway global warming once a mysterious “tipping point” is reached, resulting in climate catastrophe, is the alarming AGW hypothesis. Those believing in that hypothesis have the job of showing that it explains reality better than the theory of natural climate variability.
By demanding that scientific skeptics must disprove AGW, you are turning the scientific method on its head in favor of an assumption that can be found only in always-inaccurate computer models.
This may surprise you, but there is no real world, empirical evidence that CO2 causes global warming. The “evidence” comes from GCMs. Of course, that is not evidence, but the result of programming. It may or may not be true. But it is not evidence.
Do the scientific method the right way, and you will see why the CO2=AGW hypothesis fails.
I realize, Lamont, that hope springs eternal in the human beast, and that faith dies painfully. But why hang your faith, and pin your hopes upon man nearly inevitably destroying the earth’s climate. Far better for your spirit that you just open your mind and observe the phenomena than crouching in the corner, mumbling the catechism that CO2=AGW.
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Does anyone remember last Fall, under similar conditions, when Mary was arguing that we weren’t in a La Nina yet, and I kept flinging the predictions of a La Nina through midsummer ’09 in her face, from the aggregate consensus of a number of model runs. Does anyone have that prediction for the next six-twelve months? It was dead right last time.
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Out of my element here, but does not the declaration of El Nino
mean any trend in temperature is rendered as an exception?
Kind of a AGW mulligan.
Lamont: If all those happen in the next 5 years, will you all admit that AGW is correct?
No, Lamont, I will simply observe that the climate has had another unremarkable short term change. Why should I assume that this is ‘proof’ of any particular theoretical cause?
Kim:
It’s “breast”, not “beast” – unless you were making a further point :>).
A perspective on belief in the afterlife from “An Essay on Man” by Alexander Pope (1688-1744):
“Hope springs eternal in the human breast:
Man never is, but always to be blest.
The soul, uneasy and confined from home,
Rests and expatiates in a life to come.”
For some, perhaps the afterlife may be “hotter”.
Lamont…
It can be very scary to face reality and realise that the vision of the world imposed by politiciens is a fantasy. You see, politiciens (like Al Gore) live in their own world, with their own truths. Their goal is to change to world to fit their universe. The problem is, it seems, we lack that fantasy island vision… we are mear mortals living in reality. This reality tells me that CO2 is good and indispensable to life.
What do they mean?…Did a nino (child) spill red/orange inkjet over their graph?
I think they are applying the “positive thinking” method: Convince yourself and it will become true….but that´s wishful thinking…Oh!, I see, no, no, it´s sympathetic sorcery…you paint a deer on the cave´s wall and then you´ll be lucky when hunting…
With respect to todays ‘pinata,’ I suggest we apply the time-honored KISS principle thus: “Hey, Lamont. Thought ‘all those things’ were supposed to have happened in the last five years?”
Folks, we’re at the “hinge-point” between Positive, and Negative PDOs. Anything can happen. To bet your theory on next year’s weather is nuts.
Wheat is selling in Chicago for $4.94, at the moment. This is down 50% (from $10.00/bu) from this time last year.
Nobody, absolutely, NObody, pays any attention to what Argentina might, or might not, do (as relates to ag exports.) Their ag market actions are, basically, of the “loose cannon” variety.
DR: You asked, “As you follow SST quite stringently, what does it say about the overall heat content of the oceans?”
Though SST is a component of OHC, they are two entirely different beasts. A significant El Nino will cause a major rise in SST, even cause a lingering upward step change in some oceans, but for that same El Nino, the drop on OHC appears to be minor. But it’s tough to tell since no two OHC datasets are similar.
You asked, “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?”
Let me ask a question in return. Why aren’t the oceans retaining more heat than is being released? A change in cloud cover? A change in aerosols, dust from the Sahara? So, whatever is causing the plateau in OHC should also be impacting land surface temperature. And with respect to El Ninos, regardless of the direction of the trend in global surface temperature, or land surface temperature, or TLT, an El Nino will cause a temporary rise in those variables. If enough subsurface heat from the Pacific Warm Pool was released during the El Nino, then global SST, LST, and TLT would remain elevated while it’s being radiated into space.
You asked, “Isn’t OHC the real story?”
The real story in what terms? The four most recent OHC reconstructions (Ishii and Kimoto, Domingues et al, Levitus et al, Wijffels et al) are extremely different in terms of year-to-year variations. The only things even remotely similar are the direction of decadal trends. That is, they all have negative trends from 1955 to ~1969, then increasing trends from ~1969 to present. IMO, OHC has little value as a dataset because of the differences. In other words, there is no OHC real story.
Freezing here in the Canadian West, IN JULY.
Beer freezing on outdoor patios. Gas heaters ON.
Crops failing due to cold and drought.
Would welcome El Nino and any associated global warming.
Maybe we should call it “Enano Nino”
http://pichicola.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/08/enano.jpg
Note to Brian Flynn:
Given the current global cooling, and the economic meltdown, exacerbated by false global warming hysteria, perhaps this is the poem of the moment:
W. B. Yeats “The Second Coming” (excerpt)
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Brian 12:46:46
Heh, you got my little joke. Apologies to Sasha Pope.
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That “nino” will surely die frozen during SH winter.
Ray (13:09:26) :
Maybe we should call it “Enano Nino”
Thanks Ray!!!
Get it out of my head!
I got it! It´s a nino infected with the AH1N1 virus!!
John Galt (11:37:24) :” It’s like winning the lottery. The odds are 50/50.”
Say what?