By Steve Goddard
El Niño made it’s last gasp this week. Note that SST’s in the equatorial Pacific went from above normal to below normal during the past few days.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/sst/plots.php
Is there a La Niña on the way? Most of the models said no in April, though it appears they may be already wrong – given that they forecast positive ENSO through the summer. Two models forecast a very strong La Niña.
http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/enso_advisory/ensodisc.pdf
The last El Niño to La Niña transition occurred in 2007, and caused a sharp drop in GISS global temperatures.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:2006.9/to:2008.1
Most of the US had a miserably cold winter during the recently deceased El Niño. It is not pleasant to think what a cold La Niña winter might bring.
http://www.hprcc.unl.edu/maps/current/index.php?action=update_userdate&daterange=DJF&year=10
Here was my prediction from February, 2010 :
Flashback to 2007 – SST To Plunge Again?
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Steve,
Thanks for the info, but without relating it to a context it is difficult for us non-experts to digest and assess. I mean, it would be nice if you could connect your promotion of the speculation about a descent into La Nina with Bob Tisdale’s comments on this site earlier in the month. Or perhaps the drop in upper OHC supports the speculation of La Nina? I wonder what are the real trends pushing the models to make their predictions of continuing positive ENSO (which has dropped back into the neutral range). On Wednesday BoM offered this: “Current conditions below the surface of the Pacific Ocean show large volumes of cooler than normal water, indicating that further cooling of the surface is likely.” What do you make of that?
Hey Anthony,
It probably won’t be a cold winter in the United States.
Climate model for the globe- major Global Cooling though!
http://www.jamstec.go.jp/frcgc/research/d1/iod/2007/forecast/temp2.glob.DJF2011.1may2010.gif
I recall awhile back Anthony citing history in cautioning us not to predict a La Nina later this year. Joe Bastardi, for example, predicts a significant one.
I was wondering what Anthony thinks – without looking at history.
AEGeneral: May 13, 2010 at 9:37 pm
‘be’ and ‘apostropes’ ??
Are you sure about the reasons for your disqualification? (chuckle…)
/dr.bill
America & England. Two nations separated by a common language.
http://www.hintsandthings.co.uk/library/language2.htm
Here’s how to remember it: NEVER POSSESSIVE. (I.e., “it’s raincoat” should “never” be used. Just keep those two words in mind and you’ll fall into the right habit.)
[Reply: See post @May 13, 2010 at 9:27 pm. ~dbs, mod.]
Mike Jonas
This is where Anthony and David Archibald can be seen on their lecture tour in Oz.
http://climatesceptics.com.au/watts.html
Not good news for those in hurricane country….
John Finn
I think there is something wrong with the satellite temperatures. Had-Crut isn’t out yet for April, but through March – 2010 has been #5 after 2002, 1998, 2004 and 2007. Similar story for GISS.
Satellites seem to wildly exaggerate El Nino events.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:1978/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1978/normalise
Lest we forget: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/05/01/history-suggests-dont-bet-on-la-nina-this-year/
It will be interesting. I’ve been telling everyone that I think we will have a hot summer here in the southeast US, followed by an even colder winter than last year. I just have a gut feeling that this summer will be hot. Already May here in North Carolina has had several 90 F days. An early heat wave usually means a milder summer, but the 90 degree days didn’t last long. This is no heat wave, no records broken, just a lot of heat early on. My instinct tells me a hot summer. What is happening is a bunch of big ridges of high pressures from the south keep parking over the southeast. That means hot, humid, but no rain and few thunderstorms. The only plus is that such persistent high pressure keeps many Cape Verde storms away from land with the rest staying south going toward Mexico and Texas.
My instinct also tells me a lot of named storms but not many really strong hurricanes. The ARGO buoys tells us that the ocean has less deep water heat. To sustain itself, a hurricane needs a lot of deep water heat. Weaker ones can intensify fast off surface water. But when they get strong they suck up a lot of water from the deep ocean. If there is less heat there, there is less of a chance of maintaining such strength. NOAA has become overzealous in naming storms because to the uneducated public, more names equals more active year. Most people don’t know about the Accumulated Cyclone Energy scale.
Of course, I’m no meteorologist. But the above post had more scientific accuracy in it than most climatologist’s reports because I admitted I don’t know the answer. My post is full of opinion; to a scientist pinning for funding, opinion becomes gospel not to be questioned which always lays the blame for that opinion/gospel squarely at the feet of humans.
dr.bill says:
May 14, 2010 at 4:21 am
AEGeneral: May 13, 2010 at 9:37 pm
‘be’ and ‘apostropes’ ??
Are you sure about the reasons for your disqualification? (chuckle…)
/dr.bill
My mouth spells words much better than my fingers do. 😉
One possibility that explains the overall global warmth (in high and low latitudes) whilst allowing for mid latitude cold is my previous proposition that a quiet sun results in a smaller energy flux from surface to space which thereby enhances the polar high pressure cells via a more negative pair of polar oscillations.
Thus the quiet sun is partially offsetting the cooling effect of a generally negative PDO and where one gets a moderate or strong El Nino within a negative period of PDO then the quiet sun will compound and not offset the effect of that El Nino.
Future variations on the theme will confirm or rebut what I say but it does indeed look like what we need to do to cover most climate (as opposed to weather) observations is recognise oceanic and solar influences as the primary climate drivers, then reverse the sign of the solar effect (active sun increases energy flux to space and quiet sun reduces it) and set the two influences against one another as they interplay over time and affect the latitudinal positions of the main cloud banks thereby changing global albedo and thus affecting solar input to the oceans.
My understanding is that in most of the ocean, SST anomalies relate to cloud cover and the amount of sunshine which hits the surface of the water.
ENSO events have more to do with wind strength along the equator, and whether or not cold water is upwelling along the west coast of South America.
http://meteora.ucsd.edu/~pierce/elnino/whatis.html
Don V says: “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?”
I am not an expert in this at all, but it does seem that this might be quite normal. Maybe not quite such a thin line of anomaly, or maybe that’s simply because the El Nino is nearly over.
A chart of the 1997/8 El Nino at its height is on page 4 here:
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/archive/ensowrap_20060125.pdf
A toy diagram showing the warm water being pushed across by trade winds is shown here:
http://www.bom.gov.au/watl/about-weather-and-climate/australian-climate-influences.shtml?bookmark=enso
Others more qualified than me may be able to give better information.
berniel
Perhaps Bob has a different viewpoint from me. The NASA and Japanese models were forecasting a strong La Niña a month ago.
el gordo – lecture tour in Oz – thx. Obviously no spare time!
“stevengoddard says:
May 14, 2010 at 5:07 am
My understanding is that in most of the ocean, SST anomalies relate to cloud cover and the amount of sunshine which hits the surface of the water.
ENSO events have more to do with wind strength along the equator, and whether or not cold water is upwelling along the west coast of South America.
http://meteora.ucsd.edu/~pierce/elnino/whatis.html”
I agree with this because it seems to me that there are two opposing forces involved.
Firstly, variations from above as regards the latitudinal positions of the three main cloud bands which affects solar input to the oceans. As suggested above, solar activity levels appear to have a bearing on that.
Secondly, variations from below as the oceans alter the rate at which energy is released to the air from the oceans.
I’ve been watching this coming on and will be spending lots of my time this summer working on winterizing. It will be freaking cold if the Northern Pacific stays cold and we get a strong La Nina this winter. I want El Nino back.
Irradiance versus wind. Under clear sky conditions, irradiance is easily and mathematically determined. The resting state of water under these conditions is that the top will warm. Under cloudy sky conditions, irradiance is easily and mathematically determined. The resting state of water under these conditions is that the top will stay warm. Therefore, the deciding factor is the wind pealing back the warm layer, allowing the cooler water that stays below to mix with the surface. In the equatorial Pacific, this occurs when the wind blows East to West.
When the wind blows West to East we also get some mixing but only on the downslope of Kelvin waves.
All due to wind.
Re: KenB says: May 14, 2010 at 2:05 am
Its high time that WUWT sponsored a Global dunces hat award for the nuttiest CAGW theory..
—
My entry. Filter failures in cloud seeding ships will lead to viscous winters as brown algae alginates are blended with rainwater. Unofficial spokesperson for the cloud ships says they’re in talks with Ben & Jerrys for additional sponsorship opportunities.
Clearly we need to combine the ensemble of climate model projections into an weighted average. Of course, we’ll tweak the weighting as we go along to match up with observations. By doing this, we will end up with excellent predictive skill.
P.G., Isn’t the plural of “it,” “they?” Would you help out a bubba and please use “it” in its plural form as you described it in a sentence? It’s (the concept of a plural “it”) a little unclear for me, and as a writer I probably ought to know, well, it.
Just so I’m not completely off-topic, thank you Steve for the article. Apparently predicting a seasonal event like El Nino two months out is not as easy as predicting global climate a century from now.
Here’s an Australian SOI chart. This shows a quick change in SOI-heading for Nina?
BTW Bob Tisdale’s bit about the Midoki Nino may be right-but what about a cooler,
misplaced Neutral period sort of a La Nina Midoki?
May be a stupid question, but I’m on my second Americano right now…
Steve said:
I came across some plots of teleconnections suggesting that El Nino brings cool, wet weather to the southern US (like the snow in Texas!) and <a href="http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/ctl/images/cold.gif"La Nina brings dry, warm weather to the southern US. No significant relationship in the northern US, last winter there was almost certainly cold due to the strongly negative AO – which would also contribute to the cold in the south.
So it looks like a La Nina might actually bring a warmer winter to the US, not a colder one!
PS. that warm anomaly in the Atlantic off Africa is very noticable. Wonder what’s going on there?
Stephen Wilde wrote, “ENSO events have more to do with wind strength along the equator, and whether or not cold water is upwelling along the west coast of South America.”
The “and whether or not cold water is upwelling along the west coast of South America,” does not necessarily happen during El Nino Modoki/central Pacific El Nino events.