I knew the moment I pressed the publish button yesterday, that Bob Tisdale would have something useful to add to this discussion on El Niño and influenza. He didn’t disappoint us. – Anthony
Guest post by Bob Tisdale
The Texas A&M press release in the WattsUpWithThat post “Possible Linkage between the 1918 El Niño and the 1918 flu pandemic ?” stated that “some researchers” continued to believe that global warming was causing stronger El Niño events. Link to press release:
http://dmc-news.tamu.edu/templates/?a=8028&z=15
Quote from it: “Giese adds, ‘The most commonly used indicator of El Niño is the ocean temperature anomaly in the central Pacific Ocean. By that standard, the 1918-19 El Niño is as strong as the events in 1982-83 and 1997-98, considered to be two of the strongest events on record, causing some researchers to conclude that El Niño has been getting stronger because of global warming. Since the 1918-19 El Niño occurred before significant warming from greenhouse gasses, it makes it difficult to argue that El Niños have been getting stronger.”
HOWEVER
Not to discount the work by Giese et al: a quick look at a graph of NINO3.4 SST anomalies that includes the 30 years before 1900, Figure 1, reveals that there were two comparably sized “Super” El Nino events in 1877/78 and 1888/89.
http://i25.tinypic.com/259v9si.png
Figure 1
Link to the preprint version of Giese et al (2009) “The 1918/1919 El Niño”:
http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/people/gilbert.p.compo/Gieseetal2009.pdf
SOURCE
HADISST Anomaly data is available through the KNMI Climate Explorer:
http://climexp.knmi.nl/selectfield_obs.cgi?someone@somewhere
timetochooseagain: You wrote, “Does the 1918 El Nino show up in SOI?…NO”
Actually, the 1918/19 El Nino shows up quite well in the Australian BOM SOI data. Invert the data and smooth it with a 13-month filter to remove the noise.
http://i25.tinypic.com/156rce0.jpg
@Nogw:
“And much bigger ninos in the past (around 600 AD), which caused the destruction of the Mochica culture.”
It is a common prejudice in archaeological, sociological and environmental circles that the downfall of the Maya civilization was due to humans changing the central american environment. This example is used as a warning fable by warmists to ‘prove’ that man is capable of causing climate change.
Can we assign any natural events, like extended super El Ninos, supervulcanism (like Iceland), or Solar minima to explain the ecological collapse of the Yucutan in that period? Doing so would debunk one of the accepted ‘plagues’ of the warmist cult mythology.
Gentry: You wrote, “Looks like this El Nino will end before it ever begins.”
But if we look at the subsurface anomalies…
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/enso_update/wkxzteq.shtml
…the El Nino may just be getting started.
If we are talking about ‘warming’ and ‘medicine’, then today’s Independent has sent in the sluggers to hit the home runs to Copenhagen:
‘Warning: climate change will damage your health’
The authors? Doctors.
Whilst I can understand this in the UK, doctors being funded by the taxpayer and the next tax regimen is ‘green taxes’, I wonder why US and Australian ones say so too.
The six deadly sins? Malaria (well that was solved before green purists banned the chemicals); Starvation (nothing new there, nothing to do with ‘global warming’); Cholera (that’s to do with not making water clean, nothing to do with ‘global warming’); Overcrowding (that’s to do with breeding, nothing to do with ‘global warming’); Dengue Fever (we can argue that one); and Filthy Water (well let’s see now: communities on the Ganges revered the annual flood of ‘filthy water’ because it produced the most fertile land on earth with soil depths currently of up to 3 MILES), so the definition of ‘filthy water’ probably has little to do with climate and more to do with human activity.
The seventh deadly sin in my view? SCAREMONGERING.
Where did that come? In the letters section: a Dr Phil Nicholson, quoting an ‘alarming report on global warming AND ITS EFFECT ON THE FAST-SHRINKING ACTICE ICECAP…’ – Dr Nicholson, where is this FAST-SHRINKING icecap please? It’s recovering. Where is this proof that it will disappear and where is the evidence that mankind will die because of it??
The letter was of course a dig for funding for geoengineering. Specifically ‘cloud albedo enhancement’.
Why not just say: ‘we’d like to do some research into this as it should be part of the human’s toolkit over the next 50 years?’ If our scientific administrators have any nous whatsoever, they’ll be more moved by that than scaremongering nonsense……
Do they have??
OT, but the Christian aid ad – Get Brown to Copenhagen – caught my eye so I followed the link.
It is getting people to send emails to Brown and Obama to sell our futures down the river at Copenhagen. The emails are pre-written, so you can’t compose your own, however, you can send your own free format message which will be displayed on the Copenhagen building. I wrote “Plants love CO2”.
If anyone else has an opinion on this, I suggest going to the site and making your own views count.
Mark: You wrote, “Looking at the graph of ocean temperature, I can’t find any trend up in temperature. It looks mostly like noise.”
There is little to no trend:
http://i28.tinypic.com/whk4g3.png
Noise? That’s how most climatologists treat it.
For a discussion on why that assumption is incorrect, here’s a link to my post “The Relationship Between ENSO And Global Surface Temperature Is Not Linear”. It’s a comment on Lean and Rind (2009):
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/09/relationship-between-enso-and-global.html
Significant traditional El Nino events cause upward step changes in the SST anomalies of the East Indian and West Pacific Oceans. The East Indian and West Pacific data in the following post represent about 25% of the global ocean surface are from 60S to 65N.
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/01/can-el-nino-events-explain-all-of.html
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/01/can-el-nino-events-explain-all-of_11.html
Significant El Nino events also cause upward step changes in the TLT anomalies of the mid-to-high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/06/rss-msu-tlt-time-latitude-plots.html
And significant El Nino events cause upward step changes in Ocean Heat Content. You just have to divide the data into smaller datasets for the step changes to make their presence known. And of course, the AMO is a major contributor to the OHC of the North Atlantic:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/09/enso-dominates-nodc-ocean-heat-content.html
So, while ENSO may look like noise, and while climatologists treat it only as noise, ENSO is a significant component of multiyear and decadal global TLT, SST, and OHC trends.
80% of AGW scam can not withstand look beyond last 30 year trend. Classic.
timetochooseagain (18:53:41) :
From the link you gave:
1918 14.6 16.6 -2.0 16.8 10.0 -4.7 -14.1 -4.4 -8.2 -5.0 1.3 -8.0
Negative SOI indicates NINO.
Karl (21:34:17) :
The super El Nino of 1877-78 resulted in the warmest winter on record in the north-central United States:
http://books.google.com/books?id=1vioLQGvvz8C&pg=PA130&lpg=PA130&dq=1877-78+The+Warmest+Winter&source=bl&ots=UlGSAn3Xx9&sig=eYbrCxjDdKWxnLxOZGOv_tYYSrE&hl=en&ei=cGmwSoPRIOC3tweS_umeCA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=9#v=onepage&q=1877-78%20The%20Warmest%20Winter&f=false
“Those were the days, my friend….of really HOT summers” but in those days there was neither a Prophet like “Gordo Al” to say the world was ending nor a prophet´s acolyte as JH and his hockey stick and his toy “trains”
Henry Galt (01:54:50) :
“The Christ Child”
There is a nine month gestation period
And the only belly seen up to now is el Gordo´s belly. Too cold down here for an el Nino.
Nogw (06:04:40) : SOI varies from -35 to +35. Those values make for a tiny El NIno, if one at all, because: “Negative SOI indicates NINO.” Is not strictly true. If the temperature anomalies in the 3.4 region are within .4 of normal, we are strictly speaking in a “La Nada”.
Trenberth, K. E. (1997) The Definition of El Niño. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 78, 2771-2777.
Bob Tisdale (02:34:45) : That’s still way weaker than suggested by Giese et al. How can you have an El Nino as strong as the 1997-98 El Nino with such weakly negative SOI?
There seems to be an 11 year periodicity to the super El Nino events.
timetochooseagain (06:29:31) :
You are right, same thing happens today. Only in 1925 there was a big El Nino.
Timetochooseagain: You asked, “That’s still way weaker than suggested by Giese et al. How can you have an El Nino as strong as the 1997-98 El Nino with such weakly negative SOI.”
Compare them side by side.
http://i27.tinypic.com/105utds.png
They’re based on two totally different variables and have different multiyear and multidecadal variations. While most of the ENSO events correlate, a strong NINO3.4 SST anomaly in either direction does not necessarily mean a similar response in the SOI, and vice versa.
El Nino, as with Brown and !Bam, is milquetoast.
Gentry (22:51:17) :
For interested parties, the daily SOI just racked up its highest value in nearly 2 months: 17.29
Where is the source/link of that information?
Animated gif of anomalies. It seems receeding.
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/surface_anim.gif
Didn’t Hansen’s precious models indicate a “super el nino?” if he turns out to be wrong, I wonder if/what he will say about it.
Can someone please explain this?
The NOAA anomolies plot above is red around the arctic, that from the scale indicates a 4 to 5 degree (C?) temeprature difference from the “average”. The JAXA SST Temperature plot shows those same regions with a 0 to 1 degree C temperature. How can it be 4 degrees different than average when it would be frozen if if were 2-3 degree less than the current temperature?
Please explain how I have this confused.
Bob Tisdale (08:11:49) : Thanks, I’ve been curious about the possibility of differences between the two. Which index do you think is best for characterizing ENSO? There seem to be lots of different measures.
Crashex (09:53:10) :
Can someone please explain this?
Good point!. “An inconvenient Question”
Oceans are cooling, as inicated in the following paper:
ABSTRACT
Ocean heat content data from 2003 to 2008 (4.5 years) were evaluated for trend.
A trend plus periodic (annual cycle) model fit with R2 = 0.85. The linear
component of the model showed a trend of -0.35 (±0.2) x 1022 Joules per year. The
result is consistent with other data showing a lack of warming over the past few
years.
http://www.ncasi.org/publications/Detail.aspx?id=3152
I thought a quotation from the late Theodor Landscheidt on el Nino predictions might go down well here…..’
‘my El Niño forecast proved correct, this would be the third successful El Niño forecast in a row. The second one had a lead time of 2 years. There are other successful long-range climate forecasts exclusively based on solar activity: End of the Sahelian drought 3 years before the event; the last three extrema in global temperature anomalies; maximum in the Palmer Drought Index around 1999; extreme River Po discharges around 2001.1 etc. (Landscheidt 1983-2001). This is irreconcilable with IPCC’s allegation that it is unlikely that natural forcing can explain the warming in the latter half of the 20th century. In declarations for the public, IPCC representatives stress that taxpayer’s money will be used to develop better forecasts of climate change. What about making use of those that already exist, even if this means to acknowledge that anthropogenic climate forcing is not as potent as alleged.’
The last two sentences are worthy of deep thought and discussion, I would suggest…….
Crashex: You asked, “The NOAA anomolies plot above is red around the arctic, that from the scale indicates a 4 to 5 degree (C?) temeprature difference from the “average”. The JAXA SST Temperature plot shows those same regions with a 0 to 1 degree C temperature. How can it be 4 degrees different than average when it would be frozen if if were 2-3 degree less than the current temperature?”
I wrote a post that explains why the Arctic SST anomalies in the NOAA/NESDIS graph read high:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/09/note-about-sst-anomaly-maps.html
Also, do you have a link for the JAXA SST anomaly map you’re referring to?
Andrew: You asked, “Which index do you think is best for characterizing ENSO?”
NINO3.4 SST Anomalies have the better correlation with changes in global temperature. It’s also not as noisy as the SOI data.