R.I.P. El Niño

I always feel inhibited from commenting by the intellectual sophistication of this site but since we’ve desended to grammatically correct lizards, I feel right at home. Glad you spotted the spelling bee ctm.
Could we not get a grant for fitting the lizards with wee parasols to save them from the infernal spotless sun?
Sorry a bit jaded over the sudden shelving of the “greatess moral challenge of our time” ie ETS (Emissions trading scheme) but the hunt for the thermometer in !&@ur momisugly$& Svalbard was a hoot and reminds me of when I became a reader of this blog during the Chinese weather station stuff.
Looking forward to Anthony’s visit to Aus.
Cheers all, great posts and thanks to moderators as always.

Richard M asked, “What about the OHC? Any recent data available?”
The NODC has not yet provided a first quarter update for 2010 for its global OHC data.

I’m a little new to this site but have been quite impressed with the solid science that behind most of the subissions. Being new, I may have missed something that you all have already read before and take for granted. So at the risk of sounding a little naive, I thought I would ask anyways, and hope that someone would take the time to bring me up to speed.
Looking at the area in the Pacific Ocean, just off of the west coast of equatorial South America where the El Nino condition is supposed to have been in full force and is shown to dwindle down, I note something that to me looks quite suspicious. Is it normal for a tight narrow line of heat anomaly to line up right on the equator and extend off of the coast of South America out into the Pacific for thousands of miles, almost like tracer fire from a gun? Is it normal for there to be such a narrow band of heat anomaly? It would seem to me that a more normal “distribution” of equatorial heat anomaly to look more like what is showing up off of the coast of Africa. The only thing to me that would explain this narrow ridge of heat anomaly that seems to jet off of the coast of S. America would be an extremely narrow Pacific current. But could this also be another example of temp data bias? Are there a string of temperature acquiring buoys along the equator?

Sera asked, “How long will it remain neutral?”
Dunno. If NINO3.4 SST anomalies were to transition to a La Nina, and if they were to continue at the same rate of decline since their peak in December, they’d reach -0.5 deg C in late August. But El Nino Modoki typically do not transition to a La Nina:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2010/05/typical-average-el-nino-traditional-el.html

I hate to be pedantic about spelling, but engine oil is a viscous fluid and has measurable viscosity.
Masked bandits tend to be vicious if one thwarts their evil intent..

Amino Acids in Meteorites: Thanks for the links to Joe Bastardi’s forecasts. He keeps mentioning a cold PDO, but the PDO is positive:
http://jisao.washington.edu/pdo/PDO.latest
The North Pacific SST anomalies may be dropping…
http://i43.tinypic.com/974opz.png
…but the PDO is not.

I have noticed in the last couple weeks that weather presenters on BBC TV are frequently remarking on how far below historic average temeperatures the current daily temperatures are, but cheerfully tell us that it should be warmer ‘soon’ without giving us any evidence for their optimism, apart from the very obvious approach of Summer, while the MSM carries silly stories such as the very funny and terribly unscientific Great Lizard Extinction.
I know they are actually reptiles and not lizards, merely similar to lizards, but New Zealand’s Tuatara has survived for over 100 million years despite continental drift and considerable change in climactic conditions by their choice of appropriate habitats.
While fairly vicious and teratorial, the Tuatara cannot cope with predators such as rats, cats or dogs and none existed in its habitat until settlers from Polynesia arrived bringing their rats and dogs with them. Tuatara live in the wild on small offshore island wildlife reserves carefully kept free of predators, and in various institutions.
If these fascinating creatures have survived for so long, how long have various types of lizard been extant around the globe?

peat says:
May 13, 2010 at 9:45 pm
I have been following the near surface temperature as measured by the satellite system overseen by Roy Spencer et al. http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/ Worldwide near-surface temperatures have been remarkably high for the better part of a year, especially recently. I had supposed this to be an El Niño effect, but now I’m not so sure. It looks like Earth’s average temperature in 2010 could clobber the 1998 record. As a skeptic who figured temperatures would remain flat or trend downward as we enter the next decade, this has my attention. How long should it take for near-surface temperatures to return to normal after the El Niño finishes? However, from the first graph in this article, it appears that the Atlantic Ocean is having its own kind of strong El Niño event.
Temperatures will fall as the El Nino fades and they will fall still further if a La Nina kicks in. ENSO fluctuations are the main reason why we get short-term flat or cooling trends in a long term underlying warming trend. The question, though, is this (and I’ve read Bob Tidsdale’s posts) – how much will temperatures fall. The 2007/08 La Nina was cold by recent standards but in the context of the longer term, it was the warmest La Nina in the UAH record. We’ve just experienced a fairly moderate El Nino but UAH temperatures have been rivalling those of 1998. There’s no evidence of a sustained long term fall in temepratutes despite the claimed effects of the PDO and weak solar activity. I keep hearing about thermal lag, but there was very little thermal lag in the 1940s or 197os when previous climate shifts occurred. A while back we were hearing about “cooling since 1998”. That’s gone quiet because it’s no longer true – surely a clear lesson in not relying on short term trends.
By all means be sceptical about the more exaggerated effects of CO2, but be just as sceptical about some of the claims by some sceptics. I’m not knocking Steve Goddard’s post – just the interpretation of future temperature falls by some posters.

Currently we in NZ are enjoying temps 3-4 degrees above normal with April similarly mild. The projection is for the warmer weather to continue throughout the winter at 3 degrees above normal with odd flurries of cold.
I’ve got to go back to the mid 90s for a comparison to this.
JC

Sera 10:39pm
“Iz their uh inneret cite four englisch teechers?”
Yes. This is it. They come here to show us that they’re inlettigent, er, inettigelt, er, inglennitelt, er, brainy.