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.”
###
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Yes, like Espen says, send them to Bob Tisdale where they might learn something significant about El Nino Modoki: http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/07/there-is-nothing-new-about-el-nino.html.
Emanuel Di Lorenzo is publishing in Nature (Geoscience). Has he and colleagues submitted their data and methods with Nature? Should we respect research on “earth and atmospheric science” at Georgia Institute of Technology or is it in the funding orbit of leftist-AGW-global warming-climate disruption pseudo-scientists? The buzz words are there — “dramatic transition”, alteration in “fish stocks” and “ocean nutrient distribution” “ecosystems MAY VERY WELL BECOMEThe paper seems to be wanting to predict that changes in fish stocks and ecological changes in the North Pacific
I would be interested on Bob’s take on the North Pacific Gyre Oscillation. Googled this research but did not find what I needed.
Yes, like Espen says, send them to Bob Tisdale where they might learn something significant about El Nino Modoki: http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/07/there-is-nothing-new-about-el-nino.html.
Emanuel Di Lorenzo is publishing in Nature (Geoscience). Have he and colleagues submitted their data and methods with Nature? Should we respect research on “earth and atmospheric science” at Georgia Institute of Technology or is it in the funding orbit of leftist-AGW-global warming-climate disruption pseudo-scientists? The buzz words are there — “dramatic transition”, alteration in “fish stocks” and “ocean nutrient distribution”, “ecosystems MAY VERY WELL BECOME more sensitive” — so that all change in the Pacific Ocean can be claimed for their version of “[disruptive] climate change”. I have a file of research articles documenting changes in fish stock and ocean nutrient distribution in the Pacific according to whether it is a warm period or a cold one from quite a long time ago. Are these authors finding anything new to research, or are they trying to pretend that this research has not been done before?
I would be interested on Bob’s take on the North Pacific Gyre Oscillation. Googled this, but did not find what I needed.
Anybody ever hear of Lorenz and Chaotic systems? By the way, we lost another great in the field this past week when Mandlebrot died.
Pre-print of the paper here.
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/people/michael.alexander/DiLorenzo-NGEO-2010.pdf
No two El Ninos will look the same nor have the same impact on the north Pacific nor global temperatures or whatever. This is just another non-real phenomenon that can be turned into a global warming scare story. The current La Nina Ingens (I get dibs on making-up the name for a new made-up mode of ENSO variability – Latin for huge) looks to vastly impact the North Pacific Gyre Oscillation as well.
http://www.o3d.org/npgo/
Forget about that Niño Modoki, this is a brand new kid: This is the Landscheitdt Minimum Kid. Let’s don’t cheat ourselves!
Is this election news support? Keep funding coming if you are reelected. If not then maybe I can sell the idea to the new comers. Throw in significant effect on fish stocks and a dash of increased frequency, mantra achieved.
Salmon researcher Steve Hare first identified the PDO by recognizing the shift in abundance of salmon north and south in their range over a 20 to 30 year cycle. (El Nino operates within this broader PDO cycle). However this is not the only salmon cycle– they also demonstrate centennial and perhaps millenia scale abundance shifts tied to climate forcing. Until we understand these longer cycles -I’m not sure how one can say much at all about the shorter term cycle within a cycle within a cycle.
Some background on the subject if interested below.
A critical life period for salmon is the initial transition form fresh to salt water— for their osmoregulatory system to function effectively – a convergence of sea surface AND river temperatures must be in a very tight band of 8 to 12C for maximum survival at the time of the outmigration (there are other limitations as well). Shift the water temps even slightly out of this range and salmon numbers crash.
Salmon appear to fluctuate over PDO timescales and also larger but unexplained century and perhaps millenia scales with a high degree of variability. (Population size estimates made using the accumulation of marine derived nutrients (deposited by salmon carcasses) in the freshwater system as proxies for abundance. )
In a 2002 Nature Paper by Finney et al “Fishery Productivity in the northeastern Pacific Ocean over the last 2000 years” (416: 729-733). The swings in salmon abundance seen in the last 300 years are not nearly as great as the decadadal shifts in earlier periods. Alaskan stocks of sockeye salmon evidenced a severe multi-centennial decline between -100BC and 800AD and then a period of abundance between 1200 to 1900AD. Anchovies and sardines show a similar but out of phase with the salmon pattern.
El Nino Modoki is advanced as a change within a particular PDO pattern of late. I’m just not sure what that means unless someone can describe how these longer term patterns operate and/or whether Modoki is just one more unrecognized natural cycle pattern .
Think back, way back to the dark ages, you know the 1980’s in the time before models when we didn’t know how to predict climate. Funny we still don’t but that’s another story. I can remember stories like this one all be it about the atmosphere. The models were crap then and they still are. It looks like the ocean guys are falling into the same “model trap”, as the atmospheric boys did. I for one would be more comfortable with all this if the cautions and caveats of the abstract made it into the press release.
The article read, “‘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.'”
Has there been an increase in the frequency of El Nino Modoki in recent years? They’ve existed as long as equatorial Pacific SST data exists:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/07/there-is-nothing-new-about-el-nino.html
And there are no studies that show that the recent changes are not part of a natural
cycle. Here’s a graph of El Nino Modoki data (from post linked above) smoothed with a 121-month filter. It shows is an increase in La Nina Modoki, not El Nino Modoki.
http://i52.tinypic.com/nmb5gy.jpg
But the massive change in variability may simply be the result of the sparseness of data in early years and the fact that the data for the three regions used in the El Nino Modoki data are infilled then. (That curve bears a strange resemblance to the HADISST data for the Southern Ocean, except it’s inverted, and there’s very little Southern Ocean data prior to the 1970s.)
From now on I think we can call a Climate Scientist “El Scientist Modoki”.
A Climate Scientist isnt quite a Scientist, he is “Same same, but different”.
He allways gets confused when you talk about cause and effect, and thinks
he can control the world temperature with “The Great Control Knob”.
And if memory serves me well the North Pacific Gyre Oscillation (NPGO) is derived as the second PC of the North Pacific SST anomalies, north of 20N, where the PDO is the leading PC.
When they changed from global warming to climate change they broadened their claim to no limits to their claims.
As far as I know there are limits to everything in the natural world and universe. In the un natural world, not sure what that would be but climate change has probably got it covered.
“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.”
Did he provide any evidence for this, or is he just blowing AGW smoke?
Bill Hunter says:
October 18, 2010 at 6:28 am
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
Bill, I don’t know. It could be that there is a complex mixture of things going on that make every el nino-la nina cycle different. I think it likely the solar factor is important. My take is that because the ocean has to sequester additional energy when the solar output is above the long term average (equivalent to around 40SSN), it will tend to emit excess energy when the sun is below that level.
This explains why global ocean heat-energy content has been falling since 2003, when the sunspot number dropped below 40. This is why the el nino events we’ve seen since 2003 hav been more diffuse and ‘Modoki’ in nature. It is a different beast to the ‘traditional’ el nino, which comes after a concentration of solar energy warmed water concentrates in the Pacific Warm Pool and then belches a huge dollop of energy out into the atmosphere.
Bob Tisdale has the best account of the tie-up between the slackening of the trade winds and the timing of the el nino vents I’ve read, but I think my insolation based thesis gives the overarching setting within which the order of events Bob describes takes place.
Well…. Salmon fishing was GREAT this fall in the Northwest. Frasier River had the biggest run of Sockeye in over a 100 years. The Coho we caught out of Sekiu Washington were the biggest and reddest fleshed – and so many!! Best fishing my uncle ever saw and he has been going out every year for over twenty-five years.
Something is going on at the salmon feeding grounds, and from this fisherman’s perspective it is a positive thing. Like all fisherman – I’m plenty superstitious – but It never occurred to me it was all our fault. AGW and the return of the Salmon. Who’d have thunk that?!
Climate change may alter natural climate cycles of Pacific
Climate Change anybody?, Come On!….It seems that someone up there in the UN’s building has been reading WUWT and, by now, they already know we are already in a Maunder or Dalton like minimum and they are fixing their CAMPAIGN.
Forget it babies!: There are papers which describe exactly what happens in those CYCLIC events, so there is no ANY reason whatsoever to change ANYTHING. Period.
If the ocean is releasing energy to the atmosphere it stands to reason the atmosphere will warm, and we are seeing that with 2010 being the hottest year since the earth butted heads with planet X and created the moon. But – that energy placed in the atmosphere that does not return to the sea is shuffled off to the space between the stars which would imply our earth is losing net energy and as a system, is cooling.
And now I learn that climate change is causing climate disruption. One can only conclude that climate is the root of all evil, and sacrifices are needed to appease. For my part I’m going to toss out all my dry Sharpie pens, and sort my paper clips by size, gauge, and color. And since Seattle has had one of the coldest, miserable years in my time here, I’m going to turn up the CO2, er, thermostat a nudge.
In the Unisys graphic at the start of the article, lake Michigan in the central US looks warmer than anything on the map.
Before you can understand El Nino Modoki you have to understand El Nino itself. It is part of the ENSO oscillation which alternately gives us warm El Ninos and cool La Ninas. ENSO oscillation is a physical oscillation of ocean waters from side to side of the tropical Pacific ocean. It is kept going by trade winds that push the water west along the north and south equatorial currents. Between these two currents is the equatorial countercurrent and the water piled up in the western Pacific eventually comes back east via that countercurrent. It does so periodically as a massive wave, observable as a Kelvin wave, because the oscillation is caused by wave resonance and the resonance period is determined by the dimensions of the ocean basin. When that El Nino wave reaches South America at the equator it splashes ashore and spreads out. This creates a large area of warm water, the air above gets warm, an updraft forms that interferes with trade winds, and global temperature rises by half a degree Celsius. But any wave that runs ashore must also pull back. As the El Nino wave retreats water level behind it drops half a meter or more, cold water from below wells up to fill the space, and a La Nina has started. As much as the El Nino warmed the air La Nina will cool it so we have a global temperature oscillation, up and down by half a degree every four-five years or so. But outside influences can change that. The super El Nino of 1998 was an extra that did not even belong to ENSO. But if you understand that an El Nino happens when the warm water from the El Nino wave spreads out because it was stopped by collision with the coast it is not hard to see that if anything stops the flow of the countercurrent in mid-ocean El Nino water will spread out there instead of at the South American coast. This is what an El Nino Modoki or CP El Nino (Central Pacific El Nino) is. Offhand I don’t know what could stop the flow of the countercurrent but I have strong suspicion that a storm surge from a typhoon could probably do it. What happens next is unclear but I suspect it will have a strong influence on the La Nina that should follow. When the flow resumes the rest of it will reach South America in diminished form and may not be able to produce a normal La Nina as a result. These guys with billions of dollars to spend on climate research actually have no idea what an El Nino is, much less what an El Nino Modoki is, and just dream up some imaginary connections involving the Modoki form with climate change. They should spend some money tracing the flows I spoke of and maybe find out how the Modoki really happens.
Does an El Nino Moloki release Godzilla, or does Godzilla cause El Nino Moloki?
How will we ever know, unless Mothra comes to the rescue?
“So “climate change” causes climate change,”
Hmmmmm seems to be a very positive corelation here.
Kind of like wetness causing water to be wet.
According to a German Professor there are two types of science.
We have the traditional science and we have post science.
The traditional science works as science should work.
Post science however is dominated by political agenda.
Climate Change is Post Science.
And so is this article.
I will have a second look at the video where science and post science has been explained extensively and see if I can find some more information about the subject.
By the way, don’t worry about ocean life and the distribution of food.
A fish always goes where the food is.
They’re clever critters
hunter says:
October 18, 2010 at 8:40 am
What we expect is that it doesn’t release a new Godzilla with diapers (the global warmers now disguised as such) to sell us their new “Climate Disruption”, based on now REAL changes which are happening and which are absolutely NATURAL.
So don’t try to cheat us!, It’s just another cyclical minimum like the Dalton, Maunder, etc., etc.
Again: No more surprises here: There is no need to change anything. Go and preach your GREEN religion anywhere else.
Ten years ago they were not claiming AGW was going to cause El Nino Moloki at all. They were claiming “hockey stick” rises in global temperatures. Since global temperatures are not exponentially increases they are now trying to latch onto anything, including this El Nino Moloki. The AGW religion would get a lot more supporters if they could actually predict something BEFORE it happens, not attach their belief to something they just observed for the first time!!!
Bill Illis says: The current La Nina Ingens (I get dibs on making-up the name for a new made-up mode of ENSO variability – Latin for huge)”
Just as long as the frequency and magnitude of La Nina Ingens meet or exceed the frequency and magnitude of central-eastern Pacific El Nino and El Nino Modoki, global temps should remain relatively flat, one would think.