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:
Whatever the reason, the early stats showing the decrease in Flux and EUV during rogue spots warrants further investigation. The EUV figures will be available for 1101 in a couple of weeks. One thing is for sure, the rogue spot adds nothing to the cycle.
Tenuc says:
August 31, 2010 at 3:05 pm
I generally do them (EUV w/sunspot overlay) on a daily basis, and they are on this page:
http://www.robertb.darkhorizons.org/DeepSolarMin9.htm
SDO AIA (EUV 5 bands)
SDO AIA (EUV 5 bands) w/Sunspots
Last cycle sunspots (No EUV due to SOHO being down in 1998)
STEREO AHEAD EUVI 3 band
STEREO BEHIND EUVI 3 band
SC23 2nd peak SOHO EIT w/ sunspots
Leif has a link to some STEREO 3 band archives I have done (haven’t updated it in a while).
I think that the focus on the Pacific (ENSO) is unfortunate. It leads to conceptual errors and red herrings in relation to causation.
For what its worth here is ‘the big picture version’ of what causes the global tropics to warm or cool:
Warming: Rising pressure at the poles robs the mid latitudes of the pressure that drives the trades.
Cooling: Falling presssure at the poles and rising pressure at mid latitudes, particularly in the northern hemsiphere, accelerates the trades, increasing ocean surface area, thereby increasing evaporation while forcing the upwelling of cold water in the eastern margins of the ocean.
The remarkable change in pressure relations since 1948 is documented at: https://climatechange1.wordpress.com
From today’s Advertiser (South Australia’s major daily newspaper);
It’s official – Adelaide has just shivered through its coldest winter since 1997 and its wettest since 2005.
With the end of winter yesterday, Bureau of Meteorology figures have recealed the average maximum temperature from June to August was 15.3C – 0.7C below the average. The nights were also colder at 7.4C, below the usual winter average of 8C.
The coldest day was July 18, at just 11.5C, while the coldest night was 2.2C on June 14. In July the city had the longest run of cold nights since 1982 – six in a row below 5C.
The city had a five-year high of 239mm of rain. It was the wettest August since 1992, with 113.4mm
gary gulrud says:
August 31, 2010 at 2:00 pm
From what I can surmise, the faculae are doing a LOT better than the spots.
http://www.csun.edu/sfo/dailyim.cgi
The big problem is that the way they are done today breaks calibration with the photoheliographic/sunspot drawing records.
Faculae are not mentioned during the Maunder (they were observed before & after it), and no drawings are available from the Dalton whose surviving record is sparse.
Bob Tisdale said:
“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.”
That’s easy. The Rossby wave is coupled to the global oceans as a whole and not just the bit of the globe over which it is situated. The oceans enabled the Rossby wave throughout. Even Leif goes for a ‘bottom up’ process.
and:
“I’ve shown you that the AO and AAO, when used as proxies for latitude of the jets, etc., don’t confirm your assertions.”
I’ve told you that the correlation may be poor in the short term but the longer the timescale the better it holds up. The reasons being that the oceanic effect is constantly being modulated by the solar effect on the polar oscillations (AO and AAO) and the jets are slow to move being tied to the global trend in the energy budget so the frequency of individual ENSO events shows little immediate effect.
and:
“Maybe you could find some papers on the impacts of El Niño on Hadley Circulation that would reinforce your claims.”
Difficult because the El Nino effect on the Hadley cells is modulated by the solar effect on the polar oscillations. However it is clear that the Hadley cells also change position over time such as between MWP, LIA and Current Warm Period. Also it is a poorly studied issue. Until a few years ago it was being said that the only reason for the observed poleward shift of the jets in the late 20th century was human CO2 emissions. That has been scotched by more recent events.
and:
“What dataset would be used to determine the “distance between the sub tropical high pressure cells in each hemisphere”? ”
I have already told you that there isn’t one.
erlhapp says:
August 31, 2010 at 4:10 pm
Thanks, Erl.
We are in broad agreement but certain details are still to be resolved.
vukcevic says:
August 31, 2010 at 2:59 pm
It is surprising that you can categorically state what the PF polarity was some 60 years before it was measured for the first time.
we have been over this before. The polarity of the polar field can be determined accurately from geomagnetic activity which is known back to the 1830s.
Tenuc says:
August 31, 2010 at 3:05 pm
I agree, Geoff’s brilliant discovery that the reversed spots reduces F10.7 flux
they are not reversed, just single, and I’ve already explained why that happens in any and all cycles.
Leif Svalgaard says:
August 31, 2010 at 8:32 pm
You have a point there: They have shown up on both leading & trailing, but when they do occur, it’s usually solo (occasional blinker) and this is our Mainstay Feature as far as sunspots go.
Still, Geoff did spot the drop in flux coincidental with these Alpha Cyclops, and, if memory serve me correctly, I don’t recall anyone else pointing it out. Would that be true?
Here in Japan we’ve been suffering from a record-breaking heat wave since mid-July.
The “picture worth a thousand words” above tells everything, indeed.
However, and strangely, TV weathermen do not say a word on the strong La Nina at all.
tokyoboy says:
August 31, 2010 at 9:49 pm
However, and strangely, TV weathermen do not say a word on the strong La Nina at all.
They need to get their act together perhaps, La Nina affects different parts of the world in different ways. Look at the SST charts and you will note Japan surrounded by warm waters blown across from the central pacific. Australia usually benefits from higher La Nina rainfall due to the same reason.
http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sst_anom.html
tokyoboy says:
August 31, 2010 at 9:49 pm
What do La Nina’s mean for Japan?
tokyoboy says:
August 31, 2010 at 9:49 pm
Re reading your comments I think you are saying the same thing…sorry.
Yesterday we had weathermen stating it was the coldest winter in 12-13 years, today we have the BoM stating that it was the 21st consecutive year of above average temperatures during winter.
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/from-winter-warmer-to-hot-spring-20100831-14d3l.html
“Mike Haseler says:
August 31, 2010 at 9:07 am”
You’d be right if you hadn’t taken my post out of context. I was talking about Lake Eyre here in Aus which does fill every ~100 years or so due to weather events in two other states.
Leif Svalgaard says: August 31, 2010 at 8:21 pm
we have been over this before. The polarity of the polar field can be determined accurately from geomagnetic activity which is known back to the 1830s.
Geomagnetic activity is determined by the sun’s total output. Polar fields are not necessarily in sync with it (and certainly not in phase).
What you and your colleagues at Stanford measure is only a fraction of a percent of the total solar output,
http://wso.stanford.edu/gifs/WSOPole.png
At SSmax both poles may have same magnetic polarity for prolong period as was the case (~1991-1993)
http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/433606main_MagneticButterflyDiagram.jpg
but these are available only since 1975.
It is doubtful that a magnetic needle down on the Earth surface can tell the pole’s polarity, when even an excellent up to date magnetogram
http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/assets/img/latest/latest_1024_HMIB.jpg
is more than uncertain , unless you judge it by the sunspot polarity, and that as Geoff found out, could be unreliable.
“the Earth is not the ideal vantage point to see what happens at high heliolatitudes”.
http://www.unisci.com/stories/20011/0129016.htm
rbateman says:
August 31, 2010 at 4:20 pm
“From what I can surmise, the faculae are doing a LOT better than the spots.”
Well Ok, then.
Stephen Wilde: With respect to your claim, “El Nino by expanding the tropical air masses pushes poleward the air circulation patterns”, there are studies that contradict this. Lu et al (2008) “Response of the Zonal Mean Atmospheric Circulation to El Niño versus Global Warming” make this observation on page 2, “Observational and diagnostic analyses (Seager et al. 2003) have shown that, during an El Niño event, the tropical atmosphere warms at all longitudes, and the subtropical jets in both hemispheres strengthen on their equatorial flanks and shift toward the equator. Poleward of the tropical warming there are latitudinal belts of marked cooling, extending from the surface to the tropopause in both hemispheres. The Hadley circulation intensifies and contracts equatorward.”
The intensification of Hadley Circulation and contraction toward the equator contradict your assertions. Link to Lu et al (2008):
http://www.atmos.washington.edu/~dargan/papers/lcf08.pdf
And here’s a link to the referenced Seager et al (2003):
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/1520-0442%282003%29016%3C2960%3AMOHSCV%3E2.0.CO%3B2
Patrick Davis says:
August 31, 2010 at 11:08 pm
Yesterday we had weathermen stating it was the coldest winter in 12-13 years, today we have the BoM stating that it was the 21st consecutive year of above average temperatures during winter.
The 2 statements are not necessarily inconsistent.
“John Finn says:
September 1, 2010 at 3:32 am
The 2 statements are not necessarily inconsistent.”
You are right. The BoM is consistent it its drive to promote AGW.
Bob Tisdale:
I think there is something wrong with the interpretations put forward in those links:
One says:
“During an El Nino event the Tropics warm at all longitudes and the subtropical jets in both hemispheres strengthen on their equatorward flanks”
If the subtropical jets strengthen on the equatorward flanks then the reason must be compression of the air on the equatorward flank as a result of the El Nino pushing warmed air poleward just as I suggest.
Whether the jets then actually do move latitudinally would depend on the net outcome of the interplay between the oceanic pressure from below and the solar induced pressure from above. Sometimes the sun is active and allows the jets to move poleward. Sometimes the sun is less active and the jets are not allowed to move poleward.
They then say this:
“Poleward of the tropical warming there are latitudinal belts of marked cooling, extending from the surface to the tropopause in both hemispheres.”
That would be a consequence of a negative polar oscillation restraining the shift poleward at the time they observed the El Nino event or events used for their analysis.
Then in the other link we have this:
“In contrast to the strengthening and contraction of the Hadley cell and the equatorward shift of the tropospheric zonal jets in response to
El Niño, the Hadley cell weakens and expands poleward, and the jets move poleward in a warmed climate,”
There they agree with me that in a warming climate the jets moved poleward. However it is normally an El Nino that warms the climate. As a result of their confusion over CO2 induced warming their interpretation of the observations is faulty and fails to see the obvious.
The fact is that an El Nino will always try to expand the tropical air masses and seek to push the air circulation systems poleward. Whether it succeeds on any given occasion depends on the other factor that I mention, namely the available resistance to that pressure then being supplied by the polar oscillations.
Stephen Wilde says: “That’s easy. The Rossby wave is coupled to the global oceans as a whole and not just the bit of the globe over which it is situated. The oceans enabled the Rossby wave throughout.”
Do you have a link to a webpage or study that confirms this?
rbateman says:
August 31, 2010 at 9:27 pm
Still, Geoff did spot the drop in flux coincidental with these Alpha Cyclops, and, if memory serve me correctly, I don’t recall anyone else pointing it out. Would that be true?
Nobody has pointed that out as a ‘phenomenon’ as it follows naturally from the explanation I gave. It’s like nobody pointing out that you get wet if you walking in the rain.