As shown by the indicators on WUWT’s new ENSO/SST page there is a deeping of the La Niña that is starting to rival 2008 in depth. While it hasn’t yet reached the level of the 2008 event, indications are that it is possible to match or even exceed it.
The graph above from Australia’s BoM took a dip just today, going from last week’s value of approximately -0.9 to -1.4C.
Other NINO index indicators show similar recent drops:
For those unfamiliar with what these index graphics represent, here is a map that shows the regions covered:
The combined 3.4 index has been deemed a useful metric to gauge El Niño and La Niña events and thus you’ll see it more commonly referenced than the other indices.
Of course a picture is worth a thousand words:
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As Joe Bastardi and Steven Goddard point out Arctic ice should grow substantially this winter. La Nina will help. I think there will not be as warm an Atlantic next summer as this summer. Which would slow Arctic ice loss next summer.
The earth is cooling now, slowly, but it is cooling. Climate has always changed. It is normal. Global warming is not happening. CO2 does not control climate.
Global SST has not yet begun it’s plunge. It appears to be hovering in recent months with no indication from what I can ascertain will drop this month by any significant amount. Then again that is my amateur opinion. This El Nino is most interesting.
I just wanted to write about it, too. My preferred weekly report
http://www.elnino.noaa.gov/
(click on El Nino “status” in the right column) shows that the Nino 3.4 index dropped to -1.5 deg C. That’s already strong enough. Only twice since the 1980s, the 3-month average La Nina index dropped below -1.5: during the 1988/89 and 1999/2000 episodes.
Still, I am not quite sure whether even a “giant” La Nina will necessarily mean some unusual cooling. In particular, I still do expect 2010 to be 2nd (and maybe, less likely, even 1st) warmest year on the satellite record.
“…During the El Niño phase, the trade winds first slow, then reverse. Since the trade winds are no longer “holding” the water in place in the western Pacific, gravity causes the warm water to slosh to the east….” [From Bob Tisdale’s site.]
But what causes the trade winds to slow and reverse? The Earth is still turning the same direction. What else has changed?
My possibly really retarded question involves the apparently very, very cold upwelling about 20 N Long, 38 W Lat. What causes this, or is this an island artifact? Cape Verde, or ?
Patrick Davis says:
August 31, 2010 at 5:10 am
“I can find no link however, MSM TV news broadcasts at least on channels 7 and 10 in Australia are reporting Sydney has just had its coldest winter in 12-13 years ”
Not only the coldest winter but also the wetest across Australia. We don’t seem to be getting closer faster to the firy perpetual droughts we’ve been preparing for.
http://bing.search.sympatico.ca/?q=Austalia%20coldes%20winter%20in%2012%20years&mkt=en-ca&setLang=en-CA
Jorgekafkazar, this is the million dollar question. I read that minor changes in the time of the day, or planet rotation, cause it..
Stephen Wilde says: “I’m trying to tease out the chicken and egg problem as regards the Trade Winds and SSTs.”
I don’t believe you can tease out the chicken and egg problem. ENSO is a coupled ocean-atmosphere process. An increase in SST in the West Pacific Warm Pool increases convection and the strength of the trade winds, and an increase in the trade winds increases the temperature in the West Pacific Warm Pool and the convection.
You wrote, “I see that you take the view that the El Nino with it’s higher SSTs weakens the Trade Winds and the La Nina with it’s lower SSTs strengthens them.”
I don’t think I’ve ever written what you’ve written. I have written repeatedly that a weakening of the trade winds initiates the El Nino. And I have also written repeatedly that a strengthening of the trade winds lowers central and eastern Pacific SST anomalies. Here’s a graphic that might be helpful:
http://eesc.columbia.edu/courses/ees/slides/climate/enso.gif
You wrote, “I would say that the El Nino by expanding the tropical air masses pushes poleward the air circulation patterns that cause the Trade Winds so that they fade away whereas the La Nina by allowing the tropical air masses to contract again allows the air circulation systems that cause the Trade Winds to sink back equatorward so that theose winds resume once more.”
And I will ask, as I normally do, what data do you have to support the expansion of tropical air masses? Without data, I cannot confirm your claims.
While the La Niña formed over the last few months there was a strange heating of the atmosphere during July and first part of August. Before that it seemed the El Niño was waning. Any theories for why the “delay” occurred? The Icelandic volcano? The fast melting of Arctic ice? The lack of hurricanes?
@Bob Tisdale says:
August 31, 2010 at 5:30 am
—–
Thank you, Bob! I don’t always admit my, errrrr, shortcomings as openly as did Ralph, and I’m sure many of us appreciate the links you provided! Quite amazing and powerful phenomena. Cheers, Chuck the DrPH
Bob Tisdale says:
August 31, 2010 at 5:38 am
Nice synopsis, could portend coldening but best to wait for events to unfold.
“I still do expect 2010 to be 2nd (and maybe, less likely, even 1st) warmest year on the satellite record.”
I am beginning to think this a testament to H2O greenhouse effect via increased cloudiness and humidity in Troposphere. On the flip side, oceans integrated less solar energy over the Modoki period.
“Gary Pearse says:
August 31, 2010 at 8:06 am
Not only the coldest winter but also the wetest across Australia. We don’t seem to be getting closer faster to the firy perpetual droughts we’ve been preparing for.
http://bing.search.sympatico.ca/?q=Austalia%20coldes%20winter%20in%2012%20years&mkt=en-ca&setLang=en-CA”
Indeed that too. Lake Eyre “filling up” and many other water ways and “dry spots” getting mildly moist. Sort of a ~100 year event, which is, errrmm, normal for Aus.
In New South Wales, “authorities” are “back burning” upto about 35% more than last year. Well, last “summer” was a non-event for “summer” and bush fires. This summer, well, the goal posts have moved, haven’t they?
Bill Illis says:
August 31, 2010 at 6:18 am
You’ve reduced the complexity for us, much obliged.
I once wrote a post called “The Trade Winds Drive the ENSO” which provided a pretty compelling case that the Winds and the ENSO are strongly linked.
I also noted that I wasn’t sure what mechanism drove the Trade Winds to strengthen or lessen.
Today, I would reverse the title and write it as “The ENSO Drives the Trade Winds”.
It is the general temperature of the equatorial Pacific, itself, which determines where the air is rising the most, where the convection clouds are developing and how strong and where the Trade Winds are blowing.
When the equatorial Pacific is relatively cool, little air is rising, no clouds are devloping in the Pacific. The convection and the clouds are developing in Indonesia. The Winds pick up and blow right across the Pacific to replace the rising air there.
When the equatorial Pacific is relatively warmer, most of the tropical convection occurs at the International Date Line and in Nino 3.4. The winds are then low (it is mostly rising) and might even blow from Indonesia toward the warmer area in the central Pacific and drag the Pacific Warm Pool water along with it.
It is the equatorial subsurface and surface circulation of warmer or cooler water that drives this whole system. It is both self-reinforcing to a certain point and then it becomes self-limiting. Cool will increase the Trade Winds and cause even cooler water to well-up. The warmth of an El Nino will eventually escape to space and cooler water will eventually warm up from the Sun and the lack of cloud.
The ENSO, itself, drives the system and it is self-reinforcing up to a certain point and then becomes self-limiting awaiting the arrival of the next tranche of cooler or warmer water from the subsurface circulation, which alternating cool then warm and so on.
“a new type of sunspot that has emerged over the past 2 months that has a polarity reversing tendency actually reduces F10.7 Flux & EUV.”
!?! 2008 bequeathed 3 all-time evening lows on us, already a few fall like days have interrupted summer.
Patrick Davis says:
“Sort of a ~100 year event … for Aus”
I love these “unusual events”.
There are around 200 countries in the world. There are many different meteorological measurements of which: Temperature, rain, wind are the most common.
Counting all the “driest” and “wettest,” hottest/coldest, windiest, becalmed as possible “extremes”, there are some 1200 “extremes-country” events each year.
If as the Met Office do, you also subdivide the year into four quarters, then there are some 4800 possible extreme events each year.
If these were all independent (which they aren’t), then there would be some 12 to 48 extreme “100 year” events each year.
The real question of interest is why we have so few extreme events? The answer is that only a few places have the kind of hotels that journalists like to visit.
If during La Niña the seas save heat for the Niños to spend, then this La Niña will do it poorly as her salary from the Sun has lowered, so feebler el niños or more la niña are to be expected. Is this so?
jorgekafkazar & Juraj V.: Google “initiate el nino” in quotes and there are 152 results.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rls=com.microsoft%3Aen-us&q=%22initiate+el+nino%22&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=
Scanning the first page, very few of the initiators are the same.
BTW, How do you expect the weather to be for the next Global Gobernance (A.K.A. Climate Change, Global Warming) jamboree at Cancun in november?
Geoff Sharp says:
August 31, 2010 at 6:13 am
Very observant of you, Geoff. This new type of sunspot is par for the course for SC24, the renegade cycle. I’ll have to look through my composite EUV w/sunspot overlays to see what else they are doing.
Thanks Bob and Bill.
On balance I think I’ll go with Bill and hold to my opinion that as Bill says:
“It is the general temperature of the equatorial Pacific, itself, which determines where the air is rising the most, where the convection clouds are developing and how strong and where the Trade Winds are blowing. ”
Bob, in your earlier post this what you said:
“During a La Niña, the trade winds in the tropical Pacific renew and strengthen (they had weakened and reversed during the El Niño)”
which I paraphrased as :
“I see that you take the view that the El Nino with it’s higher SSTs weakens the Trade Winds and the La Nina with it’s lower SSTs strengthens them.”
Nonetheless I note your opinion that one cannot tease out the chicken and egg problem. I beg to differ. The thermal energy of water is so much greater than that of air that as a basic first principle the initiator of any new trend in any coupled ocean air interaction must always be the ocean.
I don’t need data to assert that additional energy released by a larger or more intense area of warmer ocean surface is bound to create a larger overlying warmed air mass than would be created by a cooler ocean surface.
Similarly a larger area of snow cover or a colder landmass will create a larger overlying cooled air mass than a smaller area of snow cover.
Sometimes a grip on basic first principles is good enough especially when as here no one has ever measured the total size of the tropical air masses as they respond to changes in SSTs.
The distance between the sub tropical high pressure cells in each hemisphere might be a good proxy but who has ever checked that out ?
Enneagram says:
August 31, 2010 at 9:23 am
All that has to happen is for the atmosphere to be acted upon to increase/decrease the albedo of Earth, then the Solar Energy need not change much for the Nina/Nino oscillation to move to a higher/lower baseline. GCR’s, ACR’s and Negative Sunspots afflicting EUV would fit this requirement I suppose.
well we had snow over the weekend and ice on the car window this morning.
in california. (allright, i do live at 7600 ft 😉
regarding the aussie winter, check this out:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/australiaandthepacific/australia/7904234/Mad-Max-film-delay-as-landscape-too-green.html
brought me to tears! i just hope it hits the theatres before the world ends in 2012.
Geoff Sharp writes: “Now for the big news. I can only compare the EUV readings at this stage for 1084, but the EUV reading followed the trend of F10.7 Flux….For the first time we have observed sunspot activity that reduces the F10.7 Flux and EUV. Currently EUV is being investigated as a driver in our climate system. This discovery could help explain the link between grand minima and a cooling planet.”
People need to know that it could get cooler. Overpriced energy in a time like this is an extremely bad idea!