UNISYS Current Sea Surface Temperature Anomaly Plot – click to enlarge
From the Georgia Institute of Technology
Climate change may alter natural climate cycles of Pacific
While it’s still hotly debated among scientists whether climate change causes a shift from the traditional form of El Nino to one known as El Nino Modoki, online in the journal Nature Geoscience, scientists now say that El Nino Modoki affects long-term changes in currents in the North Pacific Ocean.
El Nino is a periodic warming in the eastern tropical Pacific that occurs along the coast of South America. Recently, scientists have noticed that El Nino warming is stronger in the Central Pacific rather than the Eastern Pacific, a phenomenon known as El Nino Modoki (Modoki is a Japanese term for “similar, but different”).
Last year, the journal Nature published a paper that found climate change is behind this shift from El Nino to El Nino Modoki. While the findings of that paper are still being debated, this latest paper in Nature Geoscience presents evidence that El Nino Modoki drives a climate pattern known as the North Pacific Gyre Oscillation (NPGO).
“We’ve found that El Nino Modoki is responsible for changes in the NPGO,”said Emanuele Di Lorenzo, associate professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology. “The reason this is important is because the NPGO has significant effects on fish stocks and ocean nutrient distributions in the Pacific, especially along the west coast of the United States.”
The NPGO, first named two years ago by Di Lorenzo and colleagues in a paper in Geophysical Research Letters, explained for the first time long-term changes in ocean circulation of the North Pacific, which scientists now link to an increasing number of dramatic transitions in coastal marine ecosystems.
“The ecosystems of the Pacific may very well become more sensitive to the NPGO in the future,” said Di Lorenzo. “Our data show that this NPGO is definitively linked to El Nino Modoki, so as Modoki becomes more frequent in the central tropical Pacific, the NPGO will also intensify.”
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Wow, the equator and southern hemisphere is far colder than the northern hemisphere.
Has this effected sea life used to warmer temperatures?
How do you call the Nino around Nova Zembla…., is the very cold water over there the first effect that the gulfstream is less stronger??
Seppie.
Won’t be long before they’re blaming climate change on climate change…
Am I correct in thinking that they will now blame any natural, yet larger than normal, El Nino warming on humanities emissions of CO2 creating what they are now calling this “El Nino Modoki”?
So they do not have to prove that large El Nino’s are un-natural at all, they just redefine “natural” to exclude large events.
That’s quite the setup for La Nina in that Unisys image.
Did climate change do that too?
Somehow, I doubt it. More like that lackadaisacal Solar Cycle and related intertwined effects.
There is an over-emphasis on the Pacific in the analysis of the phenomenon of energy emission from the global ocean. The area with the fastest reduction in energy content is currently the north Atlantic. Is the energy swilling from there into the Pacific before it escapes to the atosphere? I doubt it.
In the coupled ocean-atmosphere system, the rate at which energy moves betwen the ocean, atmosphere and space is determined mainly by the clouds, which control evaporation rates, humidity and thus TOA energy balance.
The real difference between “traditional” el nino and el nino “modokai” isn’t the locale within the Pacific, it is the mode of energy release and its spreading out. “Traditional” el nino is predominantly a localised event at the sea surface, causi a huge spike in humidity which traps emerging energy and spreads it globally via the resulting winds. El nino Modokai is more a global emission of energy from the ocean, resulting in a general humidity increase worldwide rather than a localised blanket of water vapour arond a localised emission event, followed by rapid heat loss to space once the warm air is spread out.
That is why lower troposheric temps have remained high long after the Pacific event petered out a four months ago. If my analysis is correct, global LT temps will fall further and faster than after the ’98 el nino once the NH winter kicks in, due to the loss of humidity over the cold land masses.
Prediction I made 12 months ago: By March 2011 LT temp will be below Jan 2008 levels.
Tallbloke
Good comment as usual. What struck me immediately, it made me go wow, was the colour usage. If you follow giss, noaa etc they tend towards red at the 0.5 °c anomaly and above.
I’m sure I read somewhere that El Nino Modoki is not a new phenomenon, but signs of this event have been seen in the historic record?
There seems to be some circular reasoning in the article, with an increase in the frequency of El Nino Modoki being blamed on climate change, while El Nino Modoki is responsible for climate change.
As in all things connected with climate science, we seem to have cause and effect conflated. There seems to be no good evidence or explanation for the mechanism behind the change, and we are left with smoke and mirrors.
Perhaps if the scientists who wrote the paper could understand/predict the behaviour of this turbulent deterministically chaotic system, enlightenment would ensue. In the mean-time perhaps the coming strong La Nina will cool their fruitless speculations?
on your comment, Tallbloke, I have been puzzled, as has Joe B, as to why global temps have remained high (UAH) at a time when oceans are cooling. More so the pacific than the atlantic. Your comment seems to explain this.
So a climatic change is caused by climate change? Don’t these people realise how daft they sound outside of their echo chambers.
So “climate change” causes climate change, that’s what they’re saying? What if it’s climate change that causes “climate change”?
Anyway, Bob Tisdale says that there’s nothing new about El Niño Modoki .
Isn’t it hubris to be so certain about events that may be long cycle events – essentially where pontifications are made with an N=1 or < 1?
When, many moons ago, I started playing around with electronic spreadsheets, one of the first messages I got was: “cannot resolve circular references” or some words to that effect. (I did my engineering degree with a slide-rule, and it was kind of fun)
However, it seems that warmists are still waiting to have their first go with a basic spreadsheet and experience the fact that circularity is not an option. And then they are given millions of our own dosh for purchasing of super computers to predict the weather (climate) that my great-great-grand children will be experiencing. LOL.
Science is a process fueled by speculation and conjecture. “Belief” in what is going on is anathema to the process, as shown by the claims that [CO2] explains everything (including earthquakes!).
Given time, rational scientists discard ideas shown by experiment and observation to be invalid. Clinging to cherished or valuable (CCX anyone?) understandings or ideologies is not part of the scientific method, as much as it may be a very human counterweight upon it.
In another few decades, climate scientists will have a better take on actual weather producing systems that contribute to overall, long-term climate effects. Hopefully, the [CO2] craze will only be a Piltdown-type bad memory, no matter what the outcome.
The frustrating thing is that we knew a year ago that 2010 would be a hot year. We also know that next year will be a much cooler year because of this La Nina. It won’t stop the warmists from going crazy if 2010 is warmer than 1998. We know that 2011 will be much cooler already.
This La Nina is looking very impressive though. Will be interesting to see what happens. If the AMO also cools off a bit next year we could see an impressive drop in temperature.
John Kehr
The Inconvenient Skeptic
Only one question. Is it in the models?
An answer is that evaporation has a cooling effect at the surface. The evaporation can be induced by reduced pressures and movement (winds) of low saturation air. The moist air rises and reduces in temperature due to expansion. Water vapor then condenses into clouds and eventually rain releasing latent heat. There are time lags in the processes. Cooling surface and warming troposphere go together for some time in a changing equilibrium trend.
I note that the AGW team are again promoting their model showing that the only effect on climate is CO2 see http://www.drroyspencer.com/2010/10/does-co2-drive-the-earths-climate-system-comments-on-the-latest-nasa-giss-paper/
Their assumptions about 1/ radiation compared to other heat transfer mechanisms and 2/ the absorption/emission of CO2 are wrong.
I contend they do not understand the basic theories of thermodynamics, and heat transfer.
Maybe they have put this out to counter the latest Miskolczi paper here http://www.friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/E&E_21_4_2010_08-miskolczi.pdf
Time for Bob Tisdale- bet there is a perfectly reasonable explanation- as I recall some months ago Bob charted a “Step change” with El Nino.
Also Tallbloke has a point.
Sorry, Sarc off now!
“The NPGO, first named two years ago by Di Lorenzo and colleagues in a paper in Geophysical Research Letters, explained for the first time long-term changes in ocean circulation of the North Pacific, which scientists now link to an increasing number of dramatic transitions in coastal marine ecosystems.”
I need to read up on this but I am sure someone here can tell me how long the data spread used by Di Lorenzo was?
Tallbloke your explanation makes sense. Here is a small extract from an abstract from a Japanese study on El Nino Modoki: http://www.agu.org/journals/ABS/2007/2006JC003798.shtml
“The ENSO Modoki events significantly influence the temperature and precipitation over many parts of the globe. Depending on the season, the impacts over regions such as the Far East including Japan, New Zealand, western coast of United States, etc., are opposite to those of the conventional ENSO. The difference maps between the two periods of 1979–2004 and 1958–1978 for various oceanic/atmospheric variables suggest that the recent weakening of equatorial easterlies related to weakened zonal sea surface temperature gradient led to more flattening of the thermocline. This appears to be a cause of more frequent and persistent occurrence of the ENSO Modoki event during recent decades.”
This suggests that El Nino Modoki is actually the signature ENSO mode of the warm ocean phase. (warm PDO) as opposed to the cool phase measured prior to 1980
Oh. I can see where this is going. The CO2 argument will explain cold and warm temp extremes. So I am going to do a pre-emptive strike and state their case as I predict they will.
Here is my predicted title of the next journal artical: “Strong La Nina’s (thus extreme cold) are connected to El Nino Modoki’s which will be more frequent due to increased greenhouse gasses (ex: CO2)”.
The argument will be made at the front and back door thusly:
There are those in the CO2 camp who feel that greenhouse gas driven Trade Wind diminution brings about El Nino (it’s warm everywhere) and that Trade Wind increases (the cycle continues but now the swing is more dramatic) bring about colder La Ninas. Then there are those who feel that it is oceanic temperature change that brings about Trade Wind changes. To follow this logic and try to make the CO2 case in both scenarios I imagine it might go like this:
If it is the former (changes in trade winds), the increasing CO2 ladened land temperatures affect the normal cycle of trade winds by inserting a manmade increase in the drivers that bring about this cycle. The temperature/pressure differences needed to kick it up and take it down a notch more than under natural conditions can be explained by greenhouse gasses increasing land temps. This increased land temperature forces El Nino to change its location by spreading out due to air temps being warmer everywhere, thus nearly stopping wind. Then when the cycle (which they will say continues but with greater swings) begins its swing towards La Nina, the extra energy causes La Nina extremes.
If it is the later (oceanic changes came first), it is because the oceans are very large entities compared to land, and that the much smaller affect of CO2 warming on oceans can nonetheless easily cause the oceanic temperature changes necessary to bring about this Modoki condition, (which then drives La Nina into extremes).
The icing on the cake: It is likely that both trade wind and oceanic temperature changes due to increasing greenhouse gasses work in tandem to create the extremes in ocean temperatures that are the ultimate source of weather and climate extremes.
Or something like that. This is a falsifiable argument. If modoki’s do not become more frequent, then it is back to the drawing board. I’ve noticed that the drawing board is getting a bit worn.
Quoting from the press release:
“so as Modoki becomes more frequent in the central tropical Pacific, the NPGO will also intensify”
One question that I’d like to see addressed is “which way is the causation here?” – in a complex non-linear coupled system like the oceans and the atmosphere, causation is not always so easy to work out. Is El Nino Modoki driving the NPGO, or is it the other way about? And equally, are global temperature changes causing these Pacific ocean phenomena, or is it the other way around?
Climate change causes change in El Nino. Anything they haven’t seen is automatically categorized as caused by humans.
These folks are pathetic. They need to get out from behind their computers and do some field work. There are plenty of sediments that record the marine climate history of the Pacific basin.
Tom Pederson of the University of Victoria (in Canada) has been doing work on this area for many years. It would likely broaden some Modaki researchers views if they took a look at his results.
# „“climate change” causes climate change”,
Could it mean that ‘the average weather changes the average weather?’ The word CLIMATE is scientifically absolute meaningless, discussed at: http://www.whatisclimate.com/
And “Modoki“ ? El Nino, derive presumably from an internal mechanism. Dake Chen et al (Nature, Vol. 428, 2004) assumes:
____ “THE implication is that the evolution of major ENSO events is largely determined by oceanic initial conditions, and that the effect of subsequent atmospheric noise is generally secondary“; Discussed in: Ch.2, p.23f at: http://climate-ocean.com/02_12-Dateien/02_12.html
“may very well become”
How fresh. Another AGW attribution with “may”.
This new speculation may have a link to Jane Lubchenco’s baseless and false attribution of Oregon’s seasonal Ocean dead zones to AGW.
The web is full of her ginned up link.
“We seem to have crossed a tipping point,” Lubchenco said. “Low-oxygen zones off the Northwest coast appear to be the new normal.”
“all signs point to stronger winds associated with a warming planet”
This has been one of the more cooked up claims by alarmists and it got her the job of NOAA chief.
Her peers at Oregon State University helped her further embellish her fabricated link.
To make sure the phenomenon was actually new, Oregon State marine ecologist Francis Chan reconstructed data from water sampling at 3,100 stations dating to 1950. He found that low-oxygen areas have long existed in deeper waters, but there was virtually no evidence until recently of hypoxic waters in prime fishing waters, which extend down to 165 feet. “It’s pretty clear this is unprecedented,” Chan said. “It’s never been detected since we began to measure oxygen levels.”
Imagine how sloppy this science is. These seasonal “dead zones” have been recorded in history for 100 years and this group comes along and uses old water samples, reliable and adjusted as “tree ring data”, to bolster a baseless claim.
A claim so empty that this same research team that also devoured a $9 million NAS grant studying the same dead zone cautioned they were “unable to determine the extent of the link, if any to global warming”.
I’ll wager that those water samples and work by Chan are as defective as any AGW work to date.
Because Lubchenco, the nead of NOAA, was involved and her fabricated link has traveled the globe in countless publications perhaps someone will be insprired to check the work. Without the water sample claims the embellishment vanishes leaving nothing but a completely ginned up link.