Here is the current SST map:
From NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center:
EL NIÑO/SOUTHERN OSCILLATION (ENSO) DIAGNOSTIC DISCUSSION issued by CLIMATE PREDICTION CENTER/NCEP/NWS
10 September 2009
ENSO Alert System Status: El Niño Advisory
Synopsis: El Niño is expected to strengthen and last through the Northern Hemisphere winter 2009-2010. A weak El Niño continued during August 2009, as sea surface temperature (SST) remained above-average across the equatorial Pacific Ocean (Fig. 1).
Consistent with this warmth, the latest weekly values of the Niño-region SST indices were between +0.7°C to +1.0°C (Fig. 2).
![Figure 2. Time series of area-averaged sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies (°C) in the Niño regions [Niño-1+2 (0°-10°S, 90°W-80°W), Niño 3 (5°N-5°S, 150°W-90°W), Niño-3.4 (5°N-5°S, 170°W- 120°W), Niño-4 (150ºW-160ºE and 5ºN-5ºS)]. SST anomalies are departures from the 1971-2000 base period weekly means (Xue et al. 2003, J. Climate, 16, 1601-1612).](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/noaa_enso_fig2.png?quality=75 "NOAA_Enso_fig2")
Subsurface oceanic heat content (average temperatures in the upper 300m of the ocean, Fig. 3) anomalies continued to reflect a
deep layer of anomalous warmth between the ocean surface and the thermocline, particularly in the
central Pacific (Fig. 4).
Enhanced convection over the western and central Pacific abated during the month, but the pattern of suppressed convection strengthened over Indonesia. Low-level westerly wind anomalies continued to become better established over parts of the equatorial Pacific Ocean. These oceanic and atmospheric anomalies reflect an ongoing weak El Niño.
A majority of the model forecasts for the Niño-3.4 SST index (Fig. 5) suggest El Niño will reach at least moderate strength during the Northern Hemisphere fall (3-month Niño-3.4 SST index of +1.0°C or greater). Many model forecasts even suggest a strong El Niño (3-month Niño-3.4 SST index in excess of +1.5°C) during the fall and winter, but current observations and trends indicate that El Niño will most likely peak at moderate strength. Therefore, current conditions, trends, and model forecasts favor the
continued development of a weak-to-moderate strength El Niño into the Northern Hemisphere fall 2009, with the likelihood of at least a moderate strength El Niño during the winter 2009-10.
Expected El Niño impacts during September-November 2009 include enhanced precipitation over the west-central tropical Pacific Ocean and the continuation of drier-than-average conditions over Indonesia. Temperature and precipitation impacts over the United States are typically weak during the Northern Hemisphere summer and early fall, generally strengthening during the late fall and winter. El Niño can help to suppress Atlantic hurricane activity by increasing the vertical wind shear over the Caribbean Sea and tropical Atlantic Ocean (see the Aug. 6th update of the NOAA Atlantic Seasonal Hurricane Outlook ).
This discussion is a consolidated effort of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), NOAA’s National Weather Service, and their funded institutions. Oceanic and atmospheric conditions are updated weekly on the Climate Prediction Center web site (El Niño/La Niña Current Conditions and Expert Discussions). Forecasts for the evolution of El Niño/La Niña are updated monthly in the Forecast Forum section of CPC’s Climate Diagnostics Bulletin. The next ENSO Diagnostics Discussion is scheduled for 8 October 2009. To receive an e-mail notification when the monthly ENSO Diagnostic Discussions are released, please send an e-mail message to: ncep.list.ensoupdate@noaa.gov
(source: PDF)
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speculation: the globe is experiencing cooling effects from the drop in solar activity, but the atmosphere is seeing heating from the El Nino effect. If this is true, then there will be little movement either way providing these forces are roughly balanced. (so far this year they seem to be)
BUT IF the sun stays quiet and the cooling trend continues (big if) then there should be a significant and somewhat sudden move downward in the temperature anomolies when the El Nino effect ends sometime next year.
I’m not proposing this to say that this is certainly what will happen, but rather to say that this may be a future measurement to watch for to confirm a hypothesis.
FYI – Joe Bastardi / Accuwx is calling for this nino event to fall apart over the winter, not strengthen. Joe was the 1st one I knowto make the call this nino would develop – long before NOAA, so I put some stock in his forecast. Joe, if you are reading, could you make a post on your take of where the SOI / enso index will be heading?
tallbloke (13:50:54) : I said it on this site a while ago and I’ll say it again. The low solar activity has caused the oceans to go into heat release mode. ..and it will continue for a good while while the sun is quiet. The result will be a sustained but moderate el nino modoki extending through the winter, as I predicted some months ago. But when it dies down, the reduced ocean heat/energy content will result in sea surface temperatures lower than jan 2007 in 12-16 months time.
Enjoy the warmth while it lasts, and get some food planted next spring. Tough times lie further ahead.
The el nino I learnt was due to the warm waters in the Western Pacific, that pile up there due to the trade winds, sloshing back to the Eastern Pacific when the winds weaken.
How then is this tied up with solar activity?
John Edmondson (12:13:12) :
OT
North East Passage in BBC website
just another untrue stroy. the only new thing appears to be a political change, that allows foreign cargo ships to do what russian ships have done regularly during the last 80 years.
“…and in the 1930s the Northern Sea Route, a shipping lane, was established by the USSR. Since World War II the Soviet Union and now Russia has maintained a regular highway for shipping along this passage through the development of new ports and the exploitation of resources in the interior. A fleet of Russian icebreakers, aided by aerial reconnaissance and by radio weather stations, keeps the route navigable from June to October.”
http://www.reference.com/browse/passage
John Edmondson (12:13:12) :
That article is amusingly full of one step forward, one step back inconsistencies. The ships made it through the once impassible Northeast Passage, but did so following two Russian icebreakers. Cost savings of $300,000 if one does not count the two icebreakers. Germans trying to prove safety of the route, which is now especially dangerous because of icebergs. Yes, they got through all right, but their departure is now delayed over bad weather, etc. etc.
Richard (17:38:03) :
How then is this tied up with solar activity?
You are correct, it is not.
braddles (15:58:39) :
Is there any explanation yet why this El Nino has not affected the Southern Oscillation Index, which is normaly a reliable indicator of El Nino? The current 90-day SOI is +1, whereas it normally goes down to -10 or lower under El Nino
That´s because La Nina just went to the toilette a few minutes to arrange herself and now she is coming back!
OK, is this forecast based on actual data or wishful thinking that El Nino will strengthen? All I’ve heard/read is that negative PDO favors short/weak El Ninos and the Southern Oscillation Index has been, well, mixed over the last few months.
Richard (17:38:03) : El Nino, trade winds, slosh, Sun
Well, you have these four variables and about 40 unknowns. Manipulate the data enough and the truth will pop out. Simple.
Leif 18:01:19
It is not, that we know of. If there is a causal relation, the mechanism is unknown.
=======================================
Best guess.
Slack jet stream energies persist.
Year long slack wind system energy across Pac basins persist.
(Could we have an ACE for the jets any time soon?)
Reduced flow rates for So Pac ocean currents, in particular Peru Current.
Result: weak but persistent near surface heating in equatorial regions.
Prediction: Persistent weak El Nino conditions particularly in West Pac, Indo Pac.
Oceanic heat No. & So, will bleed off in a slow steady rate.
Sol running at pilot light rate will not help matters.
Wx over continental masses a big ?
NOAA will run out of yellew and red crayons.
wws (16:11:45) :
Let’s see what this baby will do: If the sun dramatically reverses course and the cooling trend stops on a dime (big if) then there should be a significant and somewhat sudden move upwards in the temperature anomolies when the La Nina boat-anchor effect ends sometime down the road.
62 out of the last 64 days dead sun. Activity only in the lee.
The “why” of it is taboo, and it cannot possibly be the sun or anything to do with the sun.
The Sun cannot affect Earth, and nothing can affect the Sun. Sentinels.
Stuff happens on them just because and no other reason.
kim (18:48:39) :
It is not, that we know of. If there is a causal relation, the mechanism is unknown.
We can only claim that something exists if we know about it…
Kevin Kilty (17:56:45) :
The ice is beginning to re-form in in key places up there, as foretold by the DMI Explorer.
Like Henirk says, enjoy Global Warming while it lasts.
Those who insist upon driving the wrong way on the Freeway, let ’em go, just as long as I don’t have to join them.
I find all the comments most interesting and with good thinking behind them.
Now I’m going to add a piece of “fuzzy logic” to the mix.
We are suddenly having a protracted “nice” autumn in MN.
This worries me tremendously.
I recall this happening in 1991. Then, after a nice 60 F high on Oct 31, a “front” came through and the temperature dropped to 28 F with snow.
Known as the “Great Halloween Snowstorm” of 1991, about 30 hours later there was 28″ to 36″ of GOREBULL WARMING all over the state.
What many people have forgotten is that 3 days later on Nov. 4th, we had -3F, the earliest below zero temperatures for 100 years.
My point being this: With the El Nino, and the Russian volcano, things could be “really wild” this winter.
Time to get out the Xcountry skis and the wax. Lots of HOT wax, the hotter the better.
John F. Hultquist (18:24:49) :
Richard (17:38:03) : El Nino, trade winds, slosh, Sun
Well, you have these four variables and about 40 unknowns. Manipulate the data enough and the truth will pop out. Simple.
Well the trade winds and the slosh are fairly well related. High, normal, trade winds blows the warm waters unobstructed westwards, till they hit the land dams of Indonesia/ Phillipines/ Australia, where they pile up, 50-60 cms higher than the Eastern Pacific. Trade winds weaken and the waters slosh back.
Why the trade winds weaken is a mystery. Maybe the sun has something to do with it.
Of course to the AGW crowd the answer is obvious – CO2 and evil humans. Except that El Nino appears in print well over 100 years ago and was known even before that. But then what do facts matter to AGW?
When there is and El Nino there is drought in Australia, and currently there is a drought in Australia, which is being blamed on AGW.
Some readers here may have looked at Ed Berry’s Atmospheric Insights, http://weatherclimatelink.blogspot.com/
which frequently had an interesting take on, for instance, what Ed referred to as the “La-Nina base state.” As an National Weather Service employee, Ed was quick to point out that the opinions on the site were his only and not those of the NWS. Then rather suddenly in July, he announced that he would no longer be posting.
I exchanged an e-mail or two with him in the weeks that followed, thinking to schedule an interview (suspecting politics behind the blog shutdown). When I went to follow through the other day, though, I learned that he had left the National Weather Service. From the passion evinced in his postings, though, this didn’t seem like someone who was on the verge of giving up the study of atmospheric science. I have heard that he now works for Bank of America/Merrill Lynch in Houston, Texas. I suppose it’s possible that banks have their own meteorologists/climatologists.
If anyone is in touch with him, I would be interested in talking to him about the end of his blog and his career at the NWS.
Winter of 71/72 here in Oregon was like that too-started snowing on Halloween and didn’t stop ’til late Feb… midding fair Nino then too…
(Good thing I got a Season Pass at the local ski area..)
I want to point to an essay of mine that explores the question:
Will tropical waters a warm or cool in the last half of 2009?
Necessarily it also addresses matters such as:
* The character of warming cycles in the tropics.
* The usefulness of the ENSO 3.4 Index as a proxy for tropical warming events. (Its very poor)
* The driver of sea surface temperature change in the tropics.
* Change in the nature of this driver over time.
* The contribution of warming cycles in the tropics to global temperature change.
* The place of greenhouse theory in explaining global temperature change.
Find it at: http://climatechange1.wordpress.com/
It’s not the last word on the subject. The more I look at the historical data the more I learn.
The mechanism for warming and cooling is described as:
When the ozone content of the upper troposphere and stratosphere increases, the upper atmosphere warms, cirrus cloud evaporates allowing more sunlight to reach the ocean. As the ocean delivers more evaporation to the atmosphere the centers of ascent and descent see intensified activity. As the centers of descending air expand, so also is there an expansion of the cloud free area. The ocean warms. This warming and cooling activity, depending upon cloud cover, is modulated by a wholly autonomous process that changes the concentration of stratospheric ozone.
Stratospheric ozone content varies over very long periods of time. ENSO is not temperature neutral on any time scale.
Speaking of solar effects (or lack thereof) on El Nino, here’s a technical question for Leif Svalgaard. Daily Solar Flux is available for download at ftp://ftp.geolab.nrcan.gc.ca/data/solar_flux/daily_flux_values/current.txt I see columns for “Observed”, “Adjusted”, and “Series”. I assume that “Adjusted” is the “standard” value. Also, is the standard to use the 1700Z or 2000Z or 2300Z observation or the average of all 3?
Leif Svalgaard (19:44:34) :
“We can only claim that something exists if we know about it…”
Due to our limited knowledge of the solar-climate mechanisms, we can only speculate, not dismiss entirely. We have much to discover, like on Earth, we know of new species to be discovered; we just don’t know what they are. (See recent discovery of species in a Papua New Guinea volcano crater including possibly the largest rodent discovered.)
Nogw (18:01:36) :
“That´s because La Nina just went to the toilette a few minutes to arrange herself and now she is coming back!”
Nonsense, Adolfo said the same when the 2008 La Nina began to fade, and she never came back.
I notice that in the last 2 El Nino years (2005 and 2007), IARC/JAXA’s sea-ice min was September 22nd and 24th respectively, while other years saw an earlier min. This makes sense in that the warming due to El Nino would extend the melt season and delay the onset of re-freeze. Given a weak El Nino, I expect the min to show up between the 15th and 20th.
For those of you who want to plot the weekly data yourselves, it’s available for download at http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/data/indices/wksst.for
Rhys Jaggar (13:24:57) :
“By the way: did Landscheidt predict this el Nino before he died??”
I read this up quite some time ago in a paper where he states that he correctly predicted an El Nino for around 2002. After some digging I discovered that his furtherest prediction was for an El Nino/ El Nino conditions for 2007, However I’ve lost the link but I will try dig it up.
Contrary to what some on this site say, there is an indirect link between the level of solar activity and climate here on Earth.
The link is that both are influenced by the same underlying mechanism.
The level of long-term solar actvity is simply set by a mechanism that is synchronized with half the beat period between the (retrograde) Jose cycle (= 3 x Synodic period of Jupiter/Saturn or 60 years i.e. the time it takes for the alignments of Jupiter and Saturn to rotate once around the Sun with respect to the stars in a retrogade direction), and the (prograde) orbital period of Neptune (164.8 year), such that:
(1/2) x (164.8 x 60)/(164.8 + 60) = 22 years
Likewise, the long-term (multi-decadal) variations in the lunar/solar tidal dissipation in the Earth’s oceans, and important factor in setting the long-term varaitions in the ocean surface temperatures, are set by a mechanism that is synchronized with the dominant periodicity of the assymetries in the Sun/Earth’s motion about the Solar System’s barycentry = 36 years = twice the lunar Saros period.
Since the Sun and the lunar/solar tidal dissipation probably both play a role in setting long-term temperatures here on the Earth, thee changes should be set by the beat period between the 36 year solar assymetry cycle and the 22 year Hale solar cycle, such that:
(36 x 22)/(36 – 22) = 57 years
Hence, the roughly 60 year cycle that is seen in both the trade-wind strengths and ocean surface temperatures.
Ah, found it :
http://www.john-daly.com/theodor/new-enso.htm
About 2007:
“PC/8 in 2007.2 has El Niño potential. As the date 2007.2 is closer to 2006/2007 than to 2007/2008 it is to be expected that El Niño will already emerge around July 2006 and last at least till May 2007 (Probability 80 %). The alternative to this early date is a release of the expected El Niño around April 2007; it should last till January 2008 (Probability 20 %).”
About 2005:
“The forecast for the rest of the year 2005 is more difficult than at other times, as can be seen when Figure 6 is compared with Figures 4 and 5. TCg/4 in 2005.9 would release an El Niño lasting from about May 2005 to April 2006 if it were not opposed by SM/2 which is expected to occur at the beginning of 2006. It is probable (75%) that conditions like around 1980 will develop when TCg/4 in 1980 and SM in 1979.9 released opposing potentials at the same time. Figures 4 and 5 show that around 1980 there was only slight warming that did not reach the level of an El Niño. These conditions should last at least till May 2006.”
I know many readers here are skeptical about Landscheidt’s papers, but they are an interesting read nonetheless.