From the Jet Propulsion Lab:
NASA/NOAA Study Finds El Niños are Growing Stronger
A relatively new type of El Niño, which has its warmest waters in the central-equatorial Pacific Ocean, rather than in the eastern-equatorial Pacific, is becoming more common and progressively stronger, according to a new study by NASA and NOAA. The research may improve our understanding of the relationship between El Niños and climate change, and has potentially significant implications for long-term weather forecasting.
Lead author Tong Lee of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., and Michael McPhaden of NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, Seattle, measured changes in El Niño intensity since 1982. They analyzed NOAA satellite observations of sea surface temperature, checked against and blended with directly-measured ocean temperature data. The strength of each El Niño was gauged by how much its sea surface temperatures deviated from the average. They found the intensity of El Niños in the central Pacific has nearly doubled, with the most intense event occurring in 2009-10.
The scientists say the stronger El Niños help explain a steady rise in central Pacific sea surface temperatures observed over the past few decades in previous studies-a trend attributed by some to the effects of global warming. While Lee and McPhaden observed a rise in sea surface temperatures during El Niño years, no significant temperature increases were seen in years when ocean conditions were neutral, or when El Niño’s cool water counterpart, La Niña, was present.
“Our study concludes the long-term warming trend seen in the central Pacific is primarily due to more intense El Niños, rather than a general rise of background temperatures,” said Lee.
“These results suggest climate change may already be affecting El Niño by shifting the center of action from the eastern to the central Pacific,” said McPhaden. “El Niño’s impact on global weather patterns is different if ocean warming occurs primarily in the central Pacific, instead of the eastern Pacific.
“If the trend we observe continues,” McPhaden added, “it could throw a monkey wrench into long-range weather forecasting, which is largely based on our understanding of El Niños from the latter half of the 20th century.”
El Niño, Spanish for “the little boy,” is the oceanic component of a climate pattern called the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, which appears in the tropical Pacific Ocean on average every three to five years. The most dominant year-to-year fluctuating pattern in Earth’s climate system, El Niños have a powerful impact on the ocean and atmosphere, as well as important socioeconomic consequences. They can influence global weather patterns and the occurrence and frequency of hurricanes, droughts and floods; and can even raise or lower global temperatures by as much as 0.2 degrees Celsius (0.4 degrees Fahrenheit).
During a “classic” El Niño episode, the normally strong easterly trade winds in the tropical eastern Pacific weaken. That weakening suppresses the normal upward movement of cold subsurface waters and allows warm surface water from the central Pacific to shift toward the Americas. In these situations, unusually warm surface water occupies much of the tropical Pacific, with the maximum ocean warming remaining in the eastern-equatorial Pacific.
Since the early 1990s, however, scientists have noted a new type of El Niño that has been occurring with greater frequency. Known variously as “central-Pacific El Niño,” “warm-pool El Niño,” “dateline El Niño” or “El Niño Modoki” (Japanese for “similar but different”), the maximum ocean warming from such El Niños is found in the central-equatorial, rather than eastern, Pacific. Such central Pacific El Niño events were observed in 1991-92, 1994-95, 2002-03, 2004-05 and 2009-10. A recent study found many climate models predict such events will become much more frequent under projected global warming scenarios.
Lee said further research is needed to evaluate the impacts of these increasingly intense El Niños and determine why these changes are occurring. “It is important to know if the increasing intensity and frequency of these central Pacific El Niños are due to natural variations in climate or to climate change caused by human-produced greenhouse gas emissions,” he said.
Results of the study were published recently in Geophysical Research Letters.
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Enneagram:
I see that no El Nino was ever recorded as less than intense until 1902.
The assessments prior to that date are clearly suspect. All those years ago the means of making any assessment at all were extremely poor as compared to today.
However, interestingly, it has always been part of my contention that overall during the interglacial the tendency has been for oceanic cycles to offset rather than supplement solar cycles over longer periods of time so as to avoid the wild swings in climate ( known as ‘Bond Events’)that are typical of a glacial epoch when I contend solar and oceanic cycles more often supplemented one another to lead to huge northern hemisphere snowfalls with too much ice left over to melt during the summers.
So if there were a lack of moderate or weak El Ninos during the Maunder Minimum it would be consistent with my hypothesis that at that time the positive ocean cycles were indeed protecting us from the worst effects of then solar inactivity that would have instigated a highly negative polar oscillation and much worse cooling of the mid latitudes than was actually seen.
Enneagram says: August 28, 2010 at 10:19 am
……………
To be even more flippant:
Edison was a ‘pedestrian’ thinker in comparison to the greatest of the Serbs Nikola Tesla.
Edison’s DC couldn’t be stepped up, required a large power plant every square mile and thick cables for transmission. Tesla invented AC. Scientists of the late 1880’s were convinced that no motor could work with AC (sure sign it could!). After all, AC electricity reverses itself 60 times a second, so all previous motors would just rock back and forth 60 times a second. Tesla solved this problem and proved them all wrong. Tesla signed a contract with Westinghouse, but Edison had too much money invested into his DC system, and he tried his best to discredit Tesla by showing that AC was more dangerous than DC. Edison paid local children 25 cents for each stray dog they could bring him. Then he would hold press conferences and electrocute the dogs at public gatherings to frighten people. He claimed that DC could not kill, but in fact, it could.
Yes, it was actually Edison who invented the electric chair to frighten people away from Tesla’s AC system. Edison was rich American capitalist, Tesla was poor Serbian immigrant, but eventually Tesla was triumphant.
His lab’s fire (strange that) burnt all his works, from which he never recovered.
However no man is an island unto himself, and so ‘the sun is no a star unto itself’ or ‘the Earth is no a planet unto itself’.
Maunder minimum’s el’Ninos strong or or not; the sun, the Earth, Edison, Tesla, you, I and the rest are the children of one the same universe, made just of tree little bits: proton, electron and neutron, it is just a minor matter of their re-arrangements.
They found the intensity of El Niños in the central Pacific has nearly doubled, with the most intense event occurring in 2009-10.
If that is true then the earth must be cooling since temperature around the earth was higher from the 1998 El Nino.
I am certain this phrase “most intense event occurring in 2009-10” will be used to help justify why GISTemp shows 2010 is the ‘hottest year ever’—-if indeed it does show that in January, 2011.
If the majority of the warming from human GHG’s has indeed been absorbed into the oceans, as NOAA stipulates, then it not unreasonable to think that this heat could cause some changes in natural ocean cycles such as ENSO, PDO, etc. This notion does not sit well with AGW skeptics, as can be expected.
“Our study concludes the long-term warming trend seen in the central Pacific is primarily due to more intense El Niños, rather than a general rise of background temperatures,” said Lee.
Ummm…. huh? Which is it? Warming is causing stronger El Ninos or stronger El Ninos are causing warming? You can’t have both sir.
“Our study concludes the long-term warming trend seen in the central Pacific is primarily due to more intense El Niños, rather than a general rise of background temperatures,” said Lee.
There would be one cause in the chain of warming, not two separate ones, as you are arguing.
Hence my neologism, “scientwists”
“If the trend we observe continues,” McPhaden added, “it could throw a monkey wrench into long-range weather forecasting, which is largely based on our understanding of El Niños from the latter half of the 20th century.”
They should not have used such a small data set, i.e., “the latter half of the 20th century”, to draw conclusions from in the first place. ‘Global warming’ cannot be blamed for the “monkey wrench” rather their unscientific approach is to blame!
since 1982……..They found the intensity of El Niños in the central Pacific has nearly doubled….a trend attributed by some to the effects of global warming.
If this is true then it’s highly likely that El Ninos during the Medieval Warm Period were even more frequent and intense since it was warmer on earth then than now.
As pointed out on earlier posts, I had predicted a feverish rush of CAGW scientific literature pouring out after the Climagegate affair. The reason for this is only in part to rescue whatever the agenda they can. The feverishness however comes from the cooling signs that are upon us – even acknowledged by many of their stalwarts (Trenbreth and his remarks in a Climategate email that it was a travesty that there had been no warming in the past decade). They know that once things freeze up again: Arctic ice, glacier masses increase, UK elderly poor having to burn books again to keep warm ( http://www.metro.co.uk/news/807821-pensioners-burn-books-for-warmth ), that the jig is up. The post on Nature and the cold in the SH above this post
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/28/nature-notices-the-cold-global-warming-blamed/
along with this gobal warming El Nino is an escalation of the fever by pre-empting signs of the cooling to come (no mention of deepening La Nina) blaming it on global warming. This gives them more time when they can use cooling as a sign of warming. I hope someone is saving all these articles for a study of the anatomy of the crashing of a scientific theory.
Arno Arrak:
August 28, 2010 at 9:56 am
Animation of waters, temperature and height, along the equator in the Pacific
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/tao/jsdisplay/plots/gifani/t-dyn.gif
from this page
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/tao/vis/tao-vis.html
they also feature this same study of this post at the site, under “What’s New”
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/
It should have been categorized “What’s Happened Before But We’re Just Learning About It Now So We’re Going To Call It Global Warming”
I don’t understand how analysis of El Nino events can be meaningful without concurrently studying La Nina events. Are not the trends derived from the net differences between the two what matters?
I recall that the giant anchovy fishery along the west coast of south America crashed in the late 1960s due to a sudden and significant change in water temperature. The fish disappeared. I believe that subsequent investigation led to the discovery (or perhaps meaningful understanding)
We still remain largely ignorant of the causes and interrelationships of these phenomena, including their contribution to weather formation.
Anthony: thanks 🙂
Quote:
““Our study concludes the long-term warming trend seen in the central Pacific is primarily due to more intense El Niños, rather than a general rise of background temperatures,” said Lee.”
Wait, I thought El Ninos were the RESULT of warm waters, not the causal factor for warm water. Are the really saying that El Ninos cause waters to get warm?
Is that like saying snow causes the ground to get cold?
I was waiting to see what Bob Tisdale had to say since he has the actual paper and is the top expert here on this.
But for some perspective while we wait:
There is no trend in the ENSO.
It is one of the few areas in the oceans which does not have a trend over the long-term. Given this is unusual enough and it is by far the most important natural ocean cycle impacting the whole world’s climate really, it should be thoroughly investigated. Instead, we have scientists trying to put another global warming stamp on it.
Here is the Nino 3.4 monthly anomaly going back to 1871 (using the most common ocean dataset used for the ENSO – Trenberth/NOAA/CPC’s measure using the Smith and Reynolds ocean dataset).
It is increasing at 0.009C per decade (and given its impact on temperatures, it is increasing the global temperature by 0.0007C per decade over that period – ie ZERO).
http://a.imageshack.us/img844/1079/nino341871.png
Let’s look at the high resolution weekly data going back to November 1981 which should cover the same period as the paper (using OISST v2). It is actually declining by 0.002C per decade (with a nil impact on temperatures).
http://a.imageshack.us/img823/2301/weeklynino34.png
Let’s also look at the Nino 3 region versus the Nino 4 region back to 1856 (the Kaplan SST dataset). Both have essentially Zero trend but there are some higher spikes in the Nino 3 region lately – actually the Eastern Pacific versus the Central Pacific as was claimed in this paper.
http://a.imageshack.us/img830/3963/nino3and41856.png
Overall, I’m sure one can cherrypick a certain period and come up with a trend in the ENSO and write a paper about it.
But there isn’t one. And this also has an important impact on global warming science. It has been theorized that the ENSO could increase in a warming world – that we might end up with a permanent El Nino for example. But the long-term data says that is not happening – the data says the ENSO is a natural oscillation – El Nino then La Nina then neutral and so on – it is not reacting to a warmer world. It is separate enough from the rest of the ocean in that its waters more-or-less just keep circulating in the same area (although there is certainly some incoming water from and outgoing water into other ocean currents).
R Gates
The bad news for most people that believe CO2 gases can warm the oceans is the scientific fact that longwave radiation can’t warm a volume of water, only the surface. Whereas shortwave radiation easily warms a volume of water. The atmsosphere is always in equilibrium with the ocean, whatever the ocean does, the atmosphere follows. Hence, the atmosphere above the ocean can’t warm the surface.
The only exception to this rule is via convection, where low or high temperatures are transferred across the coasts or the very edges of oceans via changing weather patterns from a land mass. The rest of the ocean can’t warm because this convection can’t reach it and the changing seasonal yearly short wave radiation determines these levels.
You may have seen diagrams of changing fluxes between the atmosphere, but 100w of shortwave radiation is much different to 100w longwave radiation. This can easily be observed by a simple experiment in your garden. Place two containers of water at same temperature in identical containers with the same volume. One in the shade where shortwave radiation directly from the sun can’t reach it at all, but longwave can. The other directly in a spot where shortwave radiation is in contact most of the day. Record the temperature change of both near the bottom of the containers.
Well I have already done this experiment myself a number of years ago now. Starting temperature of the water for both was 15c and left out most the day with air temperatures reaching no higher than 21c. (sunny and mostly clear day, light winds) The experiment ended just as the sun stopped directly reaching the exposed sample. The volume of water exposed directly to the sun warmed up to 35c. While the shaded volume recorded no change and stayed at 15c, despite longwave radiation and atmosphere temperatures up to 6c higher.
I might also add, that there has been some additional cooling in the Pacific subsurface temperatures recently. The ECWMF ocean model is recording some -9Cs at 140W 100 metres deep (and I have not seen a +/-9C before in the equatorial Pacific subsurface ocean temperatures going back to 1980 even in the Super El Ninos).
That means that enough cool water has now built to sustain this La Nina for a long time and it might be enough to push it over the top and make it the very first Super La Nina (more than -2.5C).
http://www.ecmwf.int/products/forecasts/d/charts/ocean/real_time/yzmaps/
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/ocean/anim/wkxzteq_anm.gif
It is still early, but a record La Nina would make this study a moot point obviously.
Gary Pearse,
You may be right.
I add, they may not be allowed to or know where to look for the cause and effect.
Paul
vukcevic says:
August 28, 2010 at 10:21 am
Yes, I´ve just seen the graph: That line crosses 60 km.south of my house, at the SA west coast. Precisely there, back in 1957 (I still can remember it) NASA launched two
NIKE rockets from that place to study the magnetic equator, during the IGY. (12°39´SL).
Amino Acids in Meteorites says:
August 28, 2010 at 11:44 am
They are just lying again. I live in the El Nino 1+2 area, there was not any El Nino this year. A real one increases local temperatures above 35°C (Up to 38°C many times during 97-98 El Nino); the last summertime we reached just 30° only a few days in late february. BTW, in 97-98 El Nino, deserted hills around the city turned green, however with NO rain whatsoever. Again: Warm is good.
Arno Arrak:
August 28, 2010 at 9:56 am
In that red fired gif animation see the longitudes below, they conveniently start at 100°west. El Niño, the real one, starts at 75°west. They are picking green cherries and painting them red.
To Gary,
I add:
Plato believed that people sit in a cave facing down into the darkness. The enlightened try to take one-by-one each person and face them towards the light at the opening of the cave.
I knew they were deceiving us and had us looking down into the cave. One day I found a book titled, “Through Space and Time” by Sir James Jeans of the Royal Society.
He took all the classes of a liberal science degree and rolled them into one book. The book clearly rebutted the IPCC and Al Gore nearly 80 years ago.
We are in a global warming period that won’t happen again for 115,000 years. In the last 10,000 years we had 3 global warming periods.
We are in the latter part of this global warming period before we slide into the next ice age.
We are in another cooling period that happens every 100 years. That will last at least 30 years.
The people who will suffer the most are the elderly and the poor whom depend on big government much as those whom were dependent on the government in Katrina.
That showed up in an Ireland report just last week. This group feels the effects of winters the most and is reflected in higher death counts during winter months.
Like lambs they depend on the farmer. The farmer doesn’t know better to house them for the next 30 years.
Those who bought into the darkness of the cave such as Hollywood producers, stars and starlets, politicians, directors of our key government offices, liberals and intellects will be looking more into the darkness for answers as 30 years of severe winters come upon us.
Why? They want to believe they can answer the problem.
I was thinking today how rural we will be in 50 years as all our technical gains are lost.
If sunspot activity doesn’t begin to pick up in the next two years, another mini-ice age may be upon us.
Paul
Linear trends are illogical in an oscillating system. In agriculture, it would be financial suicide to pay attention to this kind of a statistic. Does it matter much to the span of a human life what has happened linearly? No. If you were to tell a human being at birth to spend the rest of his or her life preparing for a slight downward trend, or a slight upward trend, you would set that person up for much misery. So can we dispense with linear trends? Please?
Stephen Wilde says: “I’m sure Bob Tisdale has a lot to say on this thread.”
Just one comment before this. I was writing my comments up as a post. See below.
Bill Illis says: “I was waiting to see what Bob Tisdale had to say…”
I’ve just posted my comments of Lee and McPhaden and on the press release:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2010/08/on-lee-and-mcphaden-2010-increasing.html
Paul Pierett, Thanks for the comment on Plato in your response to Gary Pearse’s excellent post.
Plato explained that the people chained to the wall in the cave received enhanced prestige when they correctly predicted what the shadows on the wall would do next. [Maybe that’s a bad analogy, since planet Earth is not cooperating with the
shadow predictorsIPCC or James Hansen.]Plato also wrote in his Republic that society should be divided into the aristocracy, the army under the direction of the aristocracy, and the vast unarmed peasantry. The analogy works a little better there — no doubt the UN is working toward those exact same goals. It is clear in every action they take: the UN Aristocrats ruling the unarmed, tax-paying Peasantry [that’s us], through the coercion supplied by the UN Blue Helmets and the World Court. The long term goal is to eliminate sovereign military forces. Then they’re home free. No dissent will be tolerated. This is the age of an internet that never forgets what you wrote. Ever. So you’re already branded as peasant stock – if you’re lucky, and if you didn’t say too much. ☹
I just never expected they would demonize a harmless, beneficial trace gas to advance their agenda. Or that so many scientists would sell their ethics so easily. They’re lucky, I suppose: Cthulhu eats the souls of his supporters last.