Weak El Niño could lead to U.S. Northeast Coldest Winter in a Decade

Gaia loves truth, honesty, and accuracy! You go, girl!

My prediction: no matter how cold it gets in Northeast USA it will be reported as the ?th warmest on record.

The 2006-07 El Nino was of similar strength and produced nearly the warmest beginning to winter ever recorded in the US. Here in New York we were planting bulbs and performing general landscaping well into December and January 9th was one of the warmest on record in the Northeast. Many all-time monthly max temperature records fell that day. Additionally, the ground had yet to freeze until January 13th of that winter and the lake across the street from our house didn’t freeze over until the 16th! February turned around to be quite chilly, 14th coldest on record in the Northeast, but the winter as a whole was about 3°F above normal.
The winter on 2004-05 wasn’t particularly cold either. There were two notable cold snaps in January but that winter also ended slightly above the long term mean.
Weak El Nino also struck in the winter of 1951-52 and that was also a top ten warmest for the winter season in the Northeast. Much of that winter was spent 3-5 degrees above normal AND that was during a -PDO.
There are examples, however, of very cold winters occurring during a weak El Nino winter, notably the winters of 1963-64 and 1968-69. December of 1963 was one of the coldest months on record for the nation as a whole with an arctic outbreak of air rivaling that of the extreme cold of February 1899. In each of those winters of the 60’s there was a strong blocking pattern over the North Atlantic corresponding to a -NAO, especially so in December at the start of meteorological winter.
The winters of 1951-52, 2004-05, and 2006-07 all had +NAO indices during the month of December.
Of course, all this is moot is El Nino doesn’t behave as NOAA expects, which I feel it won’t.
NOAA has been calling for an intensification of El Nino to moderate strength. This has been a point of contention for me since NOAA made the announcement a couple months back. I expect a continuation of weak El Nino into early December where we may eventually trend back towards an ENSO neutral state across the Pacific.
The 30-day and 90-day running mean of the SOI index has been in positive territory for almost a full month. SST anomalies have leveled off since late summer across the ENSO regions (dropping markedly, however, in region 1.2, though this region does have the most variability) and we’ve yet to transition into a high atmospheric angular momentum pattern, as measured by the WB2009 GWO. Additionally, sub-surface anomaly data provided by TAO buoy array shows an atypical slope to the thermocline to what one would expect if El Nino was intensifying.

ENSO Wrap-Up
CURRENT STATUS as at 30th September 2009
Next update expected by 14th October 2009 (two weeks after this update).

Despite a slight cooling over the past fortnight, Pacific Ocean temperatures remain at levels typical of an El Niño event. These warm conditions are forecast to persist until at least year’s end by most leading climate models.

http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/

Here in Kansas temps. have been below normal for most days this month, in fact we’re supposed to start off October with most days in the 60’s. If NOAA announced this was the warmest September ever, the heat sure wouldn’t have been over here.
The El Nino continues to fail developing and continues to fail getting all systems to fall in line with a typical El Nino event, according to Unisys most SH anomalies on the warm side are weak and the only stronger ones for the most part are in the Northern Hemisphere. Assuming Tallbloke is correct and we’re seeing the ocean batteries continuing to drain then we should see the anomalies drop off before long, though I’d wait for his opinion.

TonyB:
Very wise not to predict this winter in the UK. Unlike the MetOffice which said today that they expect it to be mild. Maybe they think El Nino will give them the odds.
I am not wise enough to keep my neck covered but I am not guessing from statistics. After the jetstream shifted in 2007 and we got a wet summer and the Met predicted a normal summer, I predicted that 2008 would be the same – unless the jetstream changed, it didn’t and it was. Under a bit of prodding the MetOffice finally looked at the jetstream, but predicted a mild winter – it wasn’t. I predicted that at some point the winters would shift to cold and clear – maybe 2008/2009. I was right. I also expected another wet summer – the MetOffice said it would be a barbie. I was right again.
So – how come I, a mere ecologist, generalistic policy analyst can get so much right, and the supercomputing meteorologists get so much wrong? I think it will be another cold winter, maybe colder than last (the coldest in 20 years), maybe the coldest in 40 years….
I read the signs, as well as the papers. In the past two years the normal low pressure systems centred over Iceland have been replaced by mobile polar high pressure cells that seem to originate in Canada and move eastwards to Greenland and Iceland, then leap the Norwegian Sea to settle for a while over Scandinavia and head off into Siberia. The normal high pressure over the Azores is now interspersed with low pressure cells and they seem to track due East into Iberia rather than looping up over the UK and into Norway (as pre-2007). We seem to be in the middle of a phase-shift and the pattern is not settled yet.
When the anti-cyclone is over Greenland, we get cold clear air coming from the north to the western Atlantic seaboard instead of warmer south-westerlies. When it moves over Scandinavia, we get the updraft of continental air coming in from the south-east. In the summer, this updraft is warm and dry, but in the winter, it will be cold and snow-laden. Right now we have had a couple of weeks of this warm dry air from the old polar high. Now a new polar high is over Greenland again and the northerly winds will set in bringing cool but dry air and autumn sunshine. These highs move slowly and can settle for weeks.
So – over this winter – I expect this pattern to persist – many weeks of dry and very cold weather, interspersed with cool and moist conditions at times, with the potential for severe snow storms from the east.
Actually, there is one more factor. This shift is marked by the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation index and this seems to coincide with periods of warm water build-up in the upper ocean waters. This warm water gets trapped in the north-atlantic gyre and the Hadley maps have shown this area as ‘red’ anomaly of Sea Surface Temperature for two or more decades. Now it is going ‘blue’. This means to me that the upper ocean heat store has been depleted – and it was this and the westerly prevailing winds that kept western Europe so warm between 1977-2007.
With that heat all-but gone either this year or next, I expect future winters to be much colder and summers to be cool and cloudy with less rain. I suspect that behind-the-scenes in the MetOffice, the supercomputers agree with me, because they have a short-range modelling team (to 2030) that gets no publicity (though it does publish in the peer-reviewed lit) compared to the long-range team’s projections to 2050 or 2080 (median projections to 2080 is 4 C warming).
I have complained that people such as I, who advise land-use planners, need to know more about the next 25 years, than the 25 or 50 following them – but to little avail. That’s because the MetOffice is an arm of government, of course – and answers to the Ministry of Defence.

TonyB (07:46:10) :
In the meantime has anyone got a scientifc handle on what all this may mean for Europe in general and the UK in particular this coming winter?
Not scientific but ENSO would of course have an effect everywhere. However it would probably be better to look at the Atlantic. I did a plot some time back matching AMO and England temps. It’s a bit old and a bit rough but there isn’t a strong correlation. Latest is AMO down from .282 to .205 and I think it will fall lower this month.
http://i599.photobucket.com/albums/tt74/MartinGAtkins/AMO-Eng.jpg
I think while everyone’s busy beating the warmists to death with the Hockey Stick I’ll see what NAO and AO look like. I’ll post them tomorrow.

Peter Taylor
I agree with you that Uk and Europe are heading for a cooler winter than last year and for several decades to come . The Winter NAO and the AMO are both trending to the negative in their current trend and they are both major players shaping Europe’s winter climate . The period 1962-1987 was a similar cooler period for Europe. AMO went negative in 1964 and was negative or cool for 23 of the 26 cooler years . Winter NAO was negative for 14 years in this period . The warmer winters were when NAO was positive[like 1973-1976 and 1982-1984]. Europe had a brief taste of this cooler winter earlier this year when AMO and winter NAO were both negative.

Peter Taylor
Piers Corbyn had better look to his laurels now you have taken up forecasting… Last year the trees turned at much the same time as this year and I forecast (in advance!) a cold winter in our local paper and substantially upgraded our house insulation.
This year I have not had such a clear indication of what will happen during the winter, but am inclined to think it will be cooler than (recent) normal-but whether it will be colder than last year we will see.
I am hoping for severe snowstorms grounding all flights to Copenhagen in December…
MartinGAtkins
Interesting graph. as you say there doesn’t seem to be a lot of correlation. Look forward to your update.
tonyb

She said that their model was more realistic than the model used by Latif’s German model who uses ocean surface data only.
Professor Philip Stott answered the way a good scientist should when the subject has many confounding variables.
Asked (by inference) if he thought the climate would get warmer or colder he replied.
“Well I think importantly John we don’t know.”
Dr. Vicky Pope when asked the same thing makes the blindingly stupid reply. (in part)
“We do agree that over the long term it will continue
warm due to global warming.”
Brilliant observation. What she couldn’t bring her self to say is warming will continue because of CO2 levels.
This is because it would expose the nefarious nature of the Met office’s outlandish predictions based on their models.

Ralph
It was not just Uk that had cold winter in the period 1962-1963. Atlantic Coast and the Great Lakes Area of Canada which are also affected by AMO and NAO had cold winters . 1963 Winter was the 4th coldest ever out of the last 61 years for the Great LAKESand St Lawrence area in Canada. The winter of 1962 was the 20th coldest for the Atlantic region. I have checked the US RECORDS for their winters and 1963 winter was the 21 coldest ever out of 114 years . So it was cold for many areas and not just UK
AMO and NAO are the prime climate makers for our Eastern Coast. I think the coooler winter expected along the Eastern North America will be due to the expected negative NAO and AMO this winter. A weak EL Nino has very little to do with this in my opinion.

MartinG.Atkins
Since the climate of this planet is the result of many factors, no single variable plotted against the global temperature anomalies will show perfect correlation. I have looked at a number of variables on the same graph like ENSO/PDO, AMO, NAO, VOLCANO ERUPTIONS, ETC., to get a more complete picture. Bob Tisdale has done many excellent graphs showing various Ocean SST vs. various regional global temperatures and showed some good regional correlations.
I have found that a plot of ANNUAL AMO and annual global HADCRUT3 anomalies gives a fair picture on a decadal basis only and part of the total the picture .Adding NAO to this plot makes it more informative . The best correlation I have found is the Southern Hemisphere SST with Hadcrut3. This is understandable as Southern Hemisphere SST is a major part of global HADCRUT 3. Also regional graphs show better correlation. Joe D’Aloe has many of these plots on his ICECAP blog. For Europe I would use AMO and NAO and for winters, I would use Winter NAO and AMO..

MartinGAtkins
Martin , you have it right on . I had only done similar plot of winter NAO but for all of Europe.

Now this gets very interesting – and once more indicates the great value of this blog. Vicky Pope says that Hadley have a better short-term model than Latif – though Latif’s is out there for public consumption at major conferences, and Hadley seem a bit coy about their’s. I had thought this was because it confirmed my view that the next decade would show either more flatlining, or real cooling – hence over-riding the main driver (according to IPCC). The real danger of publicising this before Copenhagen is of course that general science observers such as myself will be thinking – heh! If the IPCC describe their knowledge of oceanic variability as ‘low’ (especially of oscillations), and the models show a natural flatline from 1950-2000 (Fig1 of IPCC 2007 Summary for Policy Makers) without CO2, but now the natural variability overwhelms the signal – then could not the warming signal have been amplified in the first place? Of course it could, and has – all the cycles we know about – PDO,AO,NAO,AMO and ENSO, as well as good ole Sol, peaked between 1998 and 2007, even if we didn’t know what ‘drives’ them. Carbon’s signal comes on top of that – and I argue in my book ‘Chill’ that we can get an upper estimate of the GHG effect – especially by looking at the Arctic – I make it 20% of the driver. Max.
I could be wrong – but it is a valid argument and worthy of debate and I use real data and peer-reviewed papers to support the argument.
Now Vicky Pope brings in the upper ocean heat content. The only data accessible on their website shows broad inter-decadal comparisons – with no analysis of why upper ocean heat content has remained flat since about 2002. A published paper by Matthew Palmer at Hadley confirms the work of Gouretski and others that the previous estimates of upper ocean heat content (Barratt, based on Levitus) were out by a factor of 2. They don’t say how this new work undermines the previous models used by the IPCC – which of course, it does – but that would be to embarrass their own government, to whom they are answerable. So – yes, these ‘improved’ models, using new upper ocean data, show a flatline – and that is very very important. Vicky may say – ‘we expect some warming over the next decade’ – but how much? And how much compared to the previous IPCC model?
And as for the long-term warming….what aspects of the old model are still unrevised? Do the long term models incorporate the ocean cycles? What predictions do they make about solar cycles?
Its time to ask for an open seminar on these questions. Scientist to scientist (even if some of them, like myself, are generalist policy analysers with a background in systems ecology and no published climate papers or professorships to my name). I will make a request and see how far I get. Of course, Hadley will be very busy and it might not be possible before Copenhagen – so, lets hope no irrevocable commitments are made there on the basis of faulty models.

MartinGAtkins
Thanks for the better graph,but it is still hard to tell. Just eyeballing the graph I counted about half the years showed a relationship. [That is when the WINTER NAO goes up or down the Temperature follows in the same direction in step.
When I looked at Europe as a whole during the last cool spell about [1962-1987] or 26 years
14 years -the NAO and temperature anomaly moved in step [during these 14 years, the AMO was negative during half of these years.
9 years AMO and temperature anomaly moved in step [ but no NAO realtionship[ that is the NAO and temperatures went in opposite directions ]
3 years were a mix where NAO and AMO went in one direction and the temperature anomaly went the opposite[ other factors in play ]
What this showed to me is that both NAO and AMO seem to affect the EUROPEAN winter temperatures . The fact that this entire period was cooler than normal and AMO was negative or cool for 23 of the 26 years , it would appear that the cool or negative AMO lowers the back ground winter temperature and the NAO seems to amplify or reduce this background level depending whether it is negative or positve .

I have suggested on the tips and notes thread here that Anthony institutes a lighht hearted competion to see who makes the best forecast for the NH winter.
We have a number of interesting forecasts here-all very credible.
MartinGAtkins
Thanks for the NAO graph update. That appears to be a pretty good fit but seems to be looking back. Are you able to extrapolate its current mode into what is likely to happen this winter in the UK?
tonyb

Peter Taylor (13:16:33) :
“[…]Now Vicky Pope brings in the upper ocean heat content. The only data accessible on their website shows broad inter-decadal comparisons – with no analysis of why upper ocean heat content has remained flat since about 2002. A published paper by Matthew Palmer at Hadley confirms the work of Gouretski and others that the previous estimates of upper ocean heat content (Barratt, based on Levitus) were out by a factor of 2. They don’t say how this new work undermines the previous models used by the IPCC – which of course, it does – but that would be to embarrass their own government, to whom they are answerable. So – yes, these ‘improved’ models, using new upper ocean data, show a flatline – and that is very very important. Vicky may say – ‘we expect some warming over the next decade’ – but how much? And how much compared to the previous IPCC model?
And as for the long-term warming….what aspects of the old model are still unrevised? Do the long term models incorporate the ocean cycles? What predictions do they make about solar cycles?
Its time to ask for an open seminar on these questions. Scientist to scientist (even if some of them, like myself, are generalist policy analysers with a background in systems ecology and no published climate papers or professorships to my name). I will make a request and see how far I get. Of course, Hadley will be very busy and it might not be possible before Copenhagen – so, lets hope no irrevocable commitments are made there on the basis of faulty models.”
Reply: I don’t think that even the best of the current generation of climate models are capable of predicting future climate with accuracy and it will take many more years before this becomes a possibility. it is important to realise that this is still a very young science and it is trying to deal with an extremely complex system, using limited amounts of data of low granularity.
The accuracy of some of the older historic data used by the modellers also leaves much to be desired, with error bars often greater than the precision the model is trying to achieve. So even models which hind-cast well have less predictive power.
The other problem faced is that our climate is non-linear system. To attempt to produce models with good predictive power for these sorts of dynamic chaotic systems requires several bits of the jigsaw which are still missing.
The first big piece of this puzzle is an accurate and quantifiable understanding of how all the different climate mechanisms work together and the rate of energy transfers involved across the total of these climate interaction.
The second is that chaotic systems are very sensitive to initial conditions and the floating-point accuracy of current generation supercomputers is insufficient to avoid error divergence in the models which grows rapidly over time.
My view is that this generation of climate models are useful gaining insight into how different climate systems operate, but are not yet capable of making accurate enough forecasts for the UN and world governments to base policy on.
Panicking about the largely falsified CAGW hypothesis is not the way forward for the peoples of this Earth.

Tonyb
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Winter-NAO-Index.png
Winter NAO pattern is less prdictable than say AMO or PDO . The past pattern does show a period of negative NAO in the 1950-1970’S corresponding with cooler winters . It seemed to go more positive the next 20-30 years thereafter with much warmer winters for the affected areas . The current trend is again going negative [last winter as well]. Some of us feel that the pattern of 1950-1970’s may repeat.

Quoting the orginal article in NEWSCIENTIST re M.Latif’s prediction of global cooling ahead for the next several decades , he said ,
Breaking with climate-change orthodoxy, he said NAO cycles were probably responsible for some of the strong global warming seen in the past three decades. “But how much? The jury is still out,” he told the conference. The NAO is now moving into a colder phase. http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17742-worlds-climate-could-cool-first-warm-later.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-news
To look at the past global warming periods, one has to look at the annual NAO index , not just the winter NAO. The Annual PC based NAO index [ per Jim Hurrell’s data] shows the following pattern of number of positive NAO years per 3 decades.
1890-1910 [9] COOL PERIOD
1920-1940 [14] WARM PERIOD
1950-1970 [9] COOL PERIOD
1980 -2000 [17] WARM PERIOD
M.Latif seems to be right. Positive NAO tends to give milder winters for eastern North America and warmer weather over Europe. This tends to contribute to more global warming in years when the ANNUAL NAO is positive.

John Finn
OK, so you must agree therefore that we can have very considerable natural climate variability at a constant 280ppm?
tonyb

Another month is done and it’s time for more data to be released.
My view is Nino 3-4 will be down. The weekly chart shows it hovering at +0.79. This is a nice site for those of you that like to follow these things and will give values for all weekly ENSO zones.
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/indices.shtml
So 0.79 looks good for the Sept average. SOI says down for next month.
http://i599.photobucket.com/albums/tt74/MartinGAtkins/soi30-1.png
AMO is some what more difficult as there are is no weekly data and as it’s a complex composite the monthly value usually comes out late.
Zooming in to 1979 onward the values seem high.
http://i599.photobucket.com/albums/tt74/MartinGAtkins/amo79.jpg
And for the region the latest SST’s seems to say that it won’t stay that way. This site has no archive but my obsevations say that September will be down for AMO.
http://polar.ncep.noaa.gov/sst/ophi/nwatl_anomaly_ophi0.png
UAH and RSS at least for equatorial values should be down for September.