Guest Post by Nonoy Oplas,
Typhoon MEGI (local name “Juan”) has crossed the Philippines’ landmass but still on the western side of the country’s area of responsibility as I write this.
Before MEGI came, Metro Manila and the surrounding provinces were cloudy everyday last week except last Sunday, but then it rained that night and the clouds ruled the sky until today because of the typhoon. Two weeks ago, I was in Jakarta, Indonesia and all four days that I was there, it was cloudy there, with rains in the afternoon.
I checked the sea surface temperature (SST) anomaly to see if La Nina has already settled in East Asia.
This is the SST anomaly as of July 29, 2010. Click on the graph to see a bigger picture. Formation of La Nina — indicated by the movement of cold sea water, the blue color code, from east to west, or more specifically from South America to Asia — was rather weak then. Graph source,http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/data/sst/anomaly/anomnight.current.gif
And here’s the SST anomaly as of yesterday, October 18. Compared to the graph above or 2 1/2 months ago, the following are notable: (1) Cold sea water has consolidated in a big part of central Pacific Ocean, especially along the equator.
(2) But the eastward movement of colder than normal Pacific Ocean water has stalled since end-July although the degree of cooling has accelerated. East Asia though, including the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia, still has warmer than normal sea water.
(2) North Pacific is now generally cooler than normal compared to end-July. Note the consolidation of cold water south of Alaska.
(3) South Pacific, even South Atlantic, now generally much cooler than normal too.
(4) Indian Ocean also showed the formation of cooler than normal sea water.
Here’s SST anomaly for Nino 4, the region closest to East Asia, as of October 17, 2010. Data is from Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology. Note that the cooling this year in Nino 4, about -1.2 C colder than normal as of mid-October 2010, is more severe than the cooling of 2007-2008 La Nina, where SST anomaly as of mid-October 2007 was only about -0.5 C. Consider also that we just came from a bad El Nino just a few months back.
The warmer than normal sea water is somehow “trapped” in East Asia and west/north Australia. I am not a meteorologist or any climate scientist to make any intelligent discussion about the implication of this trend in the region’s weather. But perhaps this explains the formation of this rather strong typhoon Megi that lashes out the Philippines for two days now. It should move west or north-west and will soon slam Vietnam or southern China.
The current typhoon and the damages it caused should pose another question mark to the believers of the “man-made warming” claim, at least in east Asia. On the other hand, it might bolster the claims of “man-made climate change” where “global warming makes dry weather drier and wet weather wetter.” What a life.
Hello Stephen,
The first graph at: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2406928/posts?page=77
shows an excellent correlation between global mean temperature and solar activity at certain times but totally falls apart at other times. I do not know if it would be helpful to you. Or could Dr. Spencer’s ocean tropic anomalies help you prove your case? What I have in mind is using the months of March and April along with September and October when the sun can more or less be assumed to be above the equator. Then during times of very high or very low solar activity, the lower troposphere should respond to less or more condensation and heating. Naturally, El Ninos and La Ninas have to factored in since if the ocean is very cold, less water will evaporate at the equator. Then less can condense higher up and the ocean tropic anomalies will be cold. A case in point is this past September when the overall anomaly was 0.60, but the ocean tropic anomaly was only 0.17 if I interpreted it correctly.
Yes, Werner, the lack of correlation at certain times is why my hypothesis also proposes independent (or semi independent) ocean cycles that sometimes supplement and sometimes offset the oceanic effect. Furthermore the phasing of the solar and oceanic cycles seems to shift over time because the lengths of the solar and oceanic cycles are not the same.
Furthermore one really needs to measure the net effect at any given time of the cycles in all the ocean basins and not just PDO although that is the largest. I see fom your last few sentences that you do appreciate that point.
My comments about the effects of varying solar activity are only one half of the equation.
I am resigned to the fact that the historical data that I need most is simply not available. There is no clear data about average latitudinal jet stream positioning and no clear data about the moment by moment net global effect of all the ocean sea surface temperatures combined.
Similarly there is no clear data about past temperature trends in the mesosphere from solar proton activity on mesospheric ozone.
Thus I must rely on ongoing observations to support or rebut my hypothesis.
Hello Stephen, As you know, Dr. Spencer has huge amounts of data available for every month since December 1978. Is it possible there is some more detailed raw data in the satellites that you may wish to have access to? For example if the “ocean tropics” anomaly is 0.17, and if the average sea surface temperature was a certain quantity, would it be helpful for you to know exactly how the average sea surface temperature varied for every few hundred kilometres and how the troposphere above it varied at the same time? Perhaps the specific data you need is there, but it just needs to be made meaningful and analyzed for the specific thing you are looking for. Or perhaps he does not have exactly what you would like, although he may have other data to let you infer what you need to know to either prove or disprove your point.
” would it be helpful for you to know exactly how the average sea surface temperature varied for every few hundred kilometres and how the troposphere above it varied at the same time?”
Yes, if in global netted out terms that would be useful but even if Roy does have the raw data I wouldn’t be able to process it because I have a day job and this is just a hobby albeit an intense and lifelong one.
Mind you, the way things are going with modern sensors and the economic and political importance of the whole issue I think many things are going to become clearer over the next year or two so I think I’ll just wait and update my hypothesis as necessary.