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:
peterhodges says:
August 31, 2010 at 11:01 am
It wasn’t very seasonable at 2350 feet either.
Just mention ‘early fall’ and watch heads pop up or turn around, as if on cue.
Geoff Sharp says:
August 31, 2010 at 6:13 am
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.
This is not a new type of spot. Solitary spots like that those do this all the time. The spot does not reverse its polarity as it crosses the disk. It does not know that you are watching and does not know about East and West. What happens is that the magnetic field in a spot is not vertical everywhere but bends down towards the surface at the edge of the spot. The magnetograph observes the line of sight field and because of the Wilson effect will see more of the Western edge near the East limb and of the Eastern edge near the West limb. This causes the apparent field to change, not the real field.
Coldest August since 1993 and ‘not a single hot day’
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1307782/Coldest-August-1993-mercury-failed-rise-higher-27c.html#ixzz0yDALKshh
rbateman said:
“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.”
As would the equatorward shift of the cloud bands which has been developing since at least 2000 and which is roughly correlated to the commencement of the ongoing rise in albedo.
So a quiet sun shifts the cloud bands equatorward, increases albedo by changing the angle of incidence of solar shortwave onto the clouds, reduces shortwave into the oceans and thereby reduces the baseline amount of energy available for El Nino and La Nina.
In order for that equatorward shift to occur the temperature of the stratosphere needs to rise so that the inversion at the tropopause is strengthened, less energy escapes upward and the polar high pressure cells intensify and migrate equatorward but that is not supposed to happen when the sun is quiet.
Conventional wisdom is that the stratosphere warms with an active sun and cools with a quiet sun.
That is the problem that needs to be resolved.
It makes perfect sense: Strong El Nino followed by a strong La Nina…
Looks like a repeat of 1997 – 2000.
Enneagram says:
August 31, 2010 at 9:23 am
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?
___________________________________________
You might like to take a look at Geoff’s website for a interesting new twist to what is happening with the sun. http://www.landscheidt.info/?q=node/196
If scientists are paying attention we could learn a lot during the next few years. But that is only if they have open minds and take off the “CO2 causes everything” blinders.
Cold and snowing on summit of Mt. Yale (14,196′) in the Sawatch Range of Colorado yesterday. The tundra vegetation above 12,000′ has bronzed and Aspen leaves are already turning golden above 9,000′. Autumn is already underway in the Colorado Rocky Mountains.
Thanks for the posting and all the good comments and links.
I only wish to add that there are other things going on (other than SSTs in 3-4) regarding Hadley Cell circulation and Trade Winds. Among others are the Harmattan and the Tehuantepecer:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmattan#See_also
http://www.weatheronline.co.uk/reports/wind/Thehuantepecer.htm
Someone reading posts on the web might get the idea that except for Arctic Ocean ice and SSTs in the Equatorial Pacific nothing else is going on in the world.
Leif Svalgaard says:
August 31, 2010 at 11:53 am
Apparently, the flux goes down in response to these ‘lone spot’ things in SC24.
I went back 2 months and looked it over.
Geoff has the observation: Kudos to the ‘Sharp’ eye for picking it out.
If that is the cause for the flux decoupling from the SSN, it’s a dandy.
The EUV response is a tad bit more interesting than TSI, which turned out to be a dud.
Stephen Wilde says:
August 31, 2010 at 11:59 am
Yes, we want to know how this thing works, this TerraClimate.
Nothing is immune to being chased down.
rbateman says:
August 31, 2010 at 12:22 pm
Apparently, the flux goes down in response to these ‘lone spot’ things in SC24.
It always does that. Nothing to do with SC24. The physics is this:
The flux [and EUV] does not come from the spot but from the corona above the spot trapped on magnetic field lines. For a bipolar large spot, the magnetic loops from one polarity to the other polarity reach relatively high up in the corona so we see enhanced flux and EUV. For a single spot, the magnetic field closes down near the spot to small opposite polarity patches, so there are no large loops up into the corona, and thus no enhancement of flux and EUV. This nice pattern can be obscured by other active regions on the disk as the Flux is an average over the disk, so you generally only see it clearly at rather low general activity level.
so you generally only see it clearly at rather low general activity level.
would this be the case for apparently reversing polarity spots as well?
Geoff Sharp says: August 31, 2010 at 6:13 am
………….
Geoff, that is an interesting and important observation (if it persists, of course). Polar magnetic field is steadfastly refusing to give way, and is not far down on where it was some 5-6 years ago.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LFC6.htm
My equation suggests that magnetic field should fail to reverse on the next cycle max (11-12 years from now, around 2022) but the sun may be playing a little game.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LFC2.htm
Bad news, I have to redo phase on the Hale cycle, good news I may have predicted a polarity change failure. Can’t win them all.
rbateman says:
August 31, 2010 at 12:22 pm
Wonder re: EUV how the ramp in solar faculae is coming along. May be more important than solitary spots. Sharp’s observation on the non-linear flux/SS relation might be due to a lag in faculae and/or concomittant unexpected relation in faculae/SS/flux.
peterhodges says:
August 31, 2010 at 1:29 pm
would this be the case for apparently reversing polarity spots as well?
No, no spots are ever reversing. 2-3% of all spots may have reversed polarity from what they should have for the cycle they ate in, but that seems to be quite random.
vukcevic says:
August 31, 2010 at 1:46 pm
Geoff, that is an interesting and important observation (if it persists, of course). As I have pointed out, this is not a ‘phenomenon’, but an observational artefact.
Polar magnetic field is steadfastly refusing to give way, and is not far down on where it was some 5-6 years ago.
The polar fields have [as they should] decreased ~30% from their high in mid 2006.
vukcevic says:
August 31, 2010 at 1:46 pm
My equation suggests that magnetic field should fail to reverse on the next cycle max (11-12 years from now, around 2022) but the sun may be playing a little game.
It also suggested that the field failed to reverse around 1900. But it did, so there is already refutation of your equation.
That changing polarity, not surprinsingly, it is turning the spin contrary wise to establishment desires. Interesting times ahead!, every time the possibility of a change appears there only two choices: either accepting it or opposing it and suffer.
Baking hot here in Eastern Canada (yet the leaves are starting to turn-as it has nothing to do with temperature). Continues one of the warmest summers I have experienced. Spring and Winter were also several degrees above average according to the official records. I understand that North East U.S is also in the midst of a heatwave.
PS The return to “normal winter” temps in S.E Australia this winter –after 12-13 years– only goes to show how warm it has been in S.E Australia over the past decade. Most people who lived through the decade of drought and bushfires in S.E Austrlaia will be waiting a little while longer before claiming things have returned to normal.
MJK
Stephen Wilde: You wrote, “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 linked this earlier on this thread. If one Googles “initiate el nino” in quotes, 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. Note also, Stephen, that some say it’s a change in wind that initiates the El Niño and other suggest coupled ocean-atmosphere triggers, yet you have no doubt that “any new trend in any coupled ocean air interaction must always be the ocean.”
Consider this. A Rossby wave or Kelvin wave (a coupled ocean-atmosphere phenomenon) can leave the ocean and cross land as an atmosphere-only phenomenon. As it encounters the ocean again, it then returns to a coupled ocean-atmosphere wave. In that case the atmospheric portion enabled the ocean portion.
You wrote, “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…”
Maybe you could find some papers on the impacts of El Niño on Hadley Circulation that would reinforce your claims.
You asked, “The distance between the sub tropical high pressure cells in each hemisphere might be a good proxy but who has ever checked that out ?”
What dataset would be used to determine the “distance between the sub tropical high pressure cells in each hemisphere”? I’ve shown you that the AO and AAO, when used as proxies for latitude of the jets, etc., don’t confirm your assertions. Suppose the dataset you select now doesn’t confirm your claims.
Stephen Wilde: You replied, “Bob, in your earlier post this what you said…which I paraphrased as…”
And I advised you…
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/31/cooler-times-ahead-indicators-show-deepening-la-nina/#comment-471179
…that your paraphrasing was incorrect. That is, you rewrote what I had written to reinforce your opinion, when what I had written does not agree with your statement.
Enneagram says:
August 31, 2010 at 2:08 pm
That changing polarity
Is an observational artifact.
Leif Svalgaard says:
August 31, 2010 at 2:27 pm
Enneagram says:
August 31, 2010 at 2:08 pm
That changing polarity
Is an observational artifact.
So, it’s a “spin”!. I see it now, it’s about politics! 🙂
Enneagram says:
August 31, 2010 at 2:45 pm
So, it’s a “spin”!. I see it now, it’s about politics! 🙂
Looks to me to be more about ignorance, yours and his.
Leif Svalgaard says: August 31, 2010 at 2:07 pm
………..
Polar field was for the first time measured as late as 1960’s.
If SS change polarity during their lifetime, than C14 oscillations are not guaranty of the SS’s polarity either way, in addition PF does not modulate C14.
It is surprising that you can categorically state what the PF polarity was some 60 years before it was measured for the first time. Remember Severniy, the top solar scientist of the time, doubted accuracy of his observations (in the early 1960’s) when he for the first time observed the PF polarity change.
rbateman says:
August 31, 2010 at 12:22 pm
“Apparently, the flux goes down in response to these ‘lone spot’ things in SC24.
I went back 2 months and looked it over.
Geoff has the observation: Kudos to the ‘Sharp’ eye for picking it out.
If that is the cause for the flux decoupling from the SSN, it’s a dandy…”
I agree, Geoff’s brilliant discovery that the reversed spots reduces F10.7 flux is a possible explanation of why SC24 still hasn’t cranked up yet. If this continues I wonder if we will end up with a situation like SC4/5, with little activity over a full Hale cycle?
Be interested to see what shows up on your composite EUV w/sunspot overlays when you get the time to do them.