Bob Tisdale writes:
I’ve been holding off telling you about my most recent post in hopes that GISS would continue with their warmest-year nonsense. And they did.
Using correlation maps, animations, graphs and a youtube video, the post shows how leftover warm water from an El Nino gets spun up into the Kuroshio-Oyashio Extension (KOE) where it continues to release heat during the La Nina. The KOE correlates with the Northern Hemisphere warming during an La Nina, and one of the datasets used for the graphs and correlation maps is GISTEMP LOTI.
The ENSO-Related Variations In Kuroshio-Oyashio Extension (KOE) SST Anomalies And Their Impact On Northern Hemisphere Temperatures
Guest post by Bob Tisdale
OVERVIEW
This post provides brief background information about the Kuroshio-Oyashio Extension (KOE), and discusses the relationship between NINO3.4 SST anomalies and the SST anomalies of the KOE following major El Niño events. Using correlation maps the post also illustrates the possible impacts of the KOE Sea Surface Temperature (SST) anomalies on North Atlantic SST anomalies, Combined Land and Ocean Surface Temperature anomalies, and Lower Troposphere Temperature anomalies.
INTRODUCTION
The Kuroshio Current and Oyashio Current are located in the western North Pacific Ocean. The Kuroshio Current is the western boundary current of the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre. Its counterpart in the North Atlantic Ocean is the well-known Gulf Stream. The Kuroshio Current carries warm tropical waters northward from the North Equatorial Current to the east coast of Japan. The East Kamchatka Current and the Oyashio Current are the western boundary currents of the Western Subarctic Gyre. The East Kamchatka Current is renamed the Oyashio Current south of the Bussol Strait (which is located about half way between Hokkaido and the Kamchatka Peninsula). They carry cold subarctic waters south to the east coast of Japan. The Kuroshio and Oyashio currents meet and form the North Pacific Current that runs from west to east across the North Pacific at mid latitudes. The Qiu, (2001) paper Kuroshio and Oyashio Currents. In Encyclopedia of Ocean Sciences, (Academic Press, pp. 1413-1425) provides a detailed but easily readable description of the two currents. Figure 1, from Qiu (2001), illustrates the general locations and paths of the Kuroshio and Oyashio Currents.
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Figure 1
As noted above, the Kuroshio and Oyashio Currents collide East of Japan and form the western portion of the North Pacific Current. These waters are often referred to as the Kuroshio-Oyashio Extension or the KOE. For the purpose of this post, I’ve used the coordinates of 30N-45N, 150E-150W for the Kuroshio-Oyashio Extension, Figure 2.
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Figure 2
CORRELATION WITH NORTHERN HEMISPHERE TEMPERATURES
Sea Surface Temperature (SST) anomalies for much of the North Atlantic warm (cool) when the Kuroshio-Oyashio Extension SST anomalies warm (cool). This can be seen in the correlation map of annual (January to December) Kuroshio-Oyashio Extension SST anomalies and annual North Atlantic SST anomalies, Figure 3.
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Figure 3
And, as shown in Figures 4 (RSS) and 5 (UAH), annual TLT anomalies for much of the Northern Hemisphere correlate with the annual SST anomalies of the Kuroshio-Oyashio Extension.
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Figure 4
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Figure 5
The same thing holds true for combined land plus sea surface temperature datasets such as the GISS Land-Ocean Temperature Index (LOTI) data for the Northern Hemisphere, Figure 6. Much of the Northern Hemisphere GISS LOTI data warms (cools) as KOE SST anomalies warm (cool). (Also note the differences in the North Atlantic correlations in Figures 3 and 6. They’re based on the same SST dataset, so why are there differences? GISS deletes SST data from areas with seasonal sea ice and extends land surface data out over the oceans with its 1200km radius smoothing. Refer to GISS Deletes Arctic And Southern Ocean Sea Surface Temperature Data.)
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Figure 6
WHEN DOES THE KOE WARM?
As we’ve seen in past posts, the East Indian and West Pacific Oceans warm in response to El Niño events and then during the subsequent La Nina events. As part of the East Indian-West Pacific subset, the Kuroshio-Oyashio Extension warms significantly during La Niña events. Animation 1 is taken from the videos in the post La Niña Is Not The Opposite Of El Niño – The Videos. It presents the 1997/98 El Niño followed by the 1998 through 2001 La Niña. Each map represents the average SST anomalies for a 12-month period and is followed by the next 12-month period in sequence. Using 12-month averages eliminates the seasonal and weather noise. The effect is similar to smoothing data in a time-series graph with a 12-month running-average filter. Note how the Kuroshio-Oyashio Extension warms significantly during the La Niña event and how the warming persists for the entire term of the La Niña.
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Animation 1
Note in Animation 1 that the SST anomalies of the Kuroshio-Oyashio Extension were cool during the 1997/98 El Niño. The KOE actually started with depressed SST anomalies, and they did not drop significantly during the 1997/98 El Niño. Refer to Figure 7. On the other hand, the KOE SST anomalies did rise significantly during the transition from the El Niño to the La Niña in 1998. The other major El Niño event that wasn’t impacted by the aerosols of an explosive volcanic eruption was the 1986/87/88 event. The SST anomalies of the Kuroshio-Oyashio Extension cooled during the 1986/87/88 El Niño, but also rose significantly during the 1988/89 La Nina. We’ll take a closer look at that event later in the post.
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Figure 7
This response of the Kuroshio-Oyashio Extension to El Niño and La Niña events is easier to see if the NINO3.4 SST anomalies are inverted, Figure 8. That is, the Kuroshio-Oyashio Extension warms much more during the 1998/99/00/01 La Niña event than it cools during the 1997/98 El Niño. But could the significant drop in the Kuroshio-Oyashio Extension during the 1986/87/88 El Niño impact the global response to that El Niño? Again, we’ll examine that later in the post.
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Figure 8
WHY DOES THE KOE WARM DURING LA NIÑA EVENTS?
Let’s start with the El Niño. During an El Niño event, a significant volume of warm water from the west Pacific Warm Pool travels east to the central and eastern equatorial Pacific, where it releases heat primarily through evaporation. And most of the warm water from the Pacific Warm Pool water comes from below the surface. There is “leftover” warm water when the La Niña forms, and a portion of this leftover warm water is returned to the western tropical Pacific at approximately 10 deg N latitude. Video 1 illustrates global Sea Level Residuals from January 1998 to June 2001. It captures the 1998/99/00/01 La Niña in its entirety. The video was taken from the JPL video “tpglobal.mpeg”. The phenomenon shown carrying warm waters from east to west in the tropical Pacific at approximately 10 deg N is called a slow-moving Rossby Wave.
Video 1
Link to Video 1:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MF5vZErQ6HM
Unfortunately, the video “tpglobal.mpeg” is no longer available at the JPL VIDEOS web page, but for those who would like to watch the entire video, I uploaded it to YouTube as Sea Surface Height Animation 1992 to 2002 – JPL Video tpglobal.mpg.
In Video 1, the warm “leftover” warm water from the 1997/98 El Niño is clearly carried as far west as the Philippines. Shortly thereafter Kuroshio-Oyashio Extension sea level residuals rise and remain elevated for the duration of the La Niña.
In addition, there are other factors that add to and maintain the elevated SST anomalies in the Kuroshio-Oyashio Extension during the La Niña. As shown in Animation 1 (the gif animation, not the video), Sea Surface Temperature anomalies outside of the tropical Pacific rise in response to the El Niño. The changes occur first in the Atlantic, then Indian, and finally the west Pacific. Sea Surface Temperature anomalies rise as changes in atmospheric circulation caused by the El Niño make their way eastward around the globe to the western Pacific. Then, during the La Niña, the opposite occurs for much of the globe. But in the tropical Pacific, the trade winds strengthen and the North and South Equatorial Currents return warm “leftover” surface waters from the El Niño to the west. So the western Pacific is warmed cumulatively by the El Niño and then by the La Niña. In the northwest Pacific, the Kuroshio Current carries the leftover warm water up to the Kuroshio-Oyashio Extension.
Additionally, the increased strength of the trade winds during the La Niña also reduces cloud cover over the tropical Pacific, which increases the amount of Downward Shortwave Radiation (visible light) there. The increased Downward Shortwave Radiation warms the tropical Pacific. The warmed water is carried to the west by the Equatorial Currents and the North Pacific Gyre spins the warmed water up to the Kuroshio-Oyashio Extension.
WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT?
In the post “RSS MSU TLT Time-Latitude Plots…Show Climate Responses That Cannot Be Easily Illustrated With Time-Series Graphs Alone”, I illustrated that the RSS Lower Troposphere Temperature (TLT) anomalies of Southern Hemisphere and of the Tropics (70S-20N) followed the basic variations in NINO3.4 SST anomalies, Figure 9. This is how one would expect TLT anomalies to respond to El Niño and La Niña events. El Niño events cause the TLT anomalies to rise because they release more heat than normal to the atmosphere, and La Niña events cause TLT anomalies to fall because the tropical Pacific is releasing less heat than normal.
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Figure 9
But the TLT anomalies of the Northern Hemisphere north of 20N, Figure 10, appear to rise in a step after the 1997/98 El Niño. That is, there is very little response to the 1998 through 2001 La Niña. It appears as though a secondary source of heat is maintaining the Northern Hemisphere TLT anomalies at elevated levels.
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Figure 10
A similar upward step can be seen in the GISS Land-Ocean Temperature anomaly index (LOTI) for the latitudes of 20N-65N, Figure 11. (North of 65N the GISS data is biased by their deleting Sea Surface Temperature data and replacing it with land surface data with a higher trend. Again, refer to GISS Deletes Arctic And Southern Ocean Sea Surface Temperature Data.)
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Figure 11
And a similar upward step is visible in the North Atlantic SST anomaly data, Figure 12.
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Figure 12
The North Atlantic SST anomalies, the Lower Troposphere Temperature( TLT) anomalies of the Northern Hemisphere north of 20N, and the Northern Hemisphere Land-Ocean Temperature anomalies (20N-65N) all rise in response to the 1997/98 El Niño, but fail to respond fully to the 1998/99/00/01 La Niña. The similarity of the curves can be seen in Figure 13.
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Figure 13
The correlation maps in Figures 3 through 6 show that a portion of the warming of the Northern Hemisphere north of 20N should be a response to the elevated Kuroshio-Oyashio SST anomalies during the 1998 through 2001 La Niña. To further illustrate this relationship, Figure 14 compares the KOE SST anomalies (not scaled) to the three datasets shown in Figure 13. I did not scale the Kuroshio-Oyashio SST anomalies because I wanted to illustrate the differences in the magnitudes of the variations. The variations in Kuroshio-Oyashio SST anomalies are clearly far greater than the variations of the other three datasets in Figure 14. In fact, the KOE SST anomaly variations are about 40% to 50% of the variations in NINO3.4 SST anomalies (refer back to Figures 7 and 8).
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Figure 14
Figure 15 presents the same datasets as Figure 14, but in Figure 15, the Kuroshio-Oyashio Extension SST anomalies have been scaled. Keep in mind that the three Northern Hemisphere temperature anomaly datasets rise first in response to the El Niño.
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Figure 15
It appears the warming of the Kuroshio-Oyashio Extension during the 1998/99/00/01 La Niña and its interaction with the other datasets could explain a portion of the trend in Northern Hemisphere SST anomalies, TLT anomalies, and Land-Ocean temperature anomalies since 1995. The warming of the Kuroshio-Oyashio Extension during that La Niña counteracts the normal cooling effects of the La Niña and prevents the temperature anomalies for the three datasets shown in Figures 13, 14, and 15 from responding fully to the La Niña.
THE 1986/87/88 EL NIÑO & 1988/89 LA NIÑA
There is a similar effect during the 1988/89 La Niña. That is, Northern Hemisphere temperature anomalies do not drop as one would expect during a La Niña. But the response during the 1986/87/88 El Niño may help to confirm the impact of the Kuroshio-Oyashio Extension on Northern Hemisphere temperatures.
Figure 16 compares scaled NINO3.4 SST anomalies for the period of 1985 through 1994 to the same datasets used in Figures 13: North Atlantic SST anomalies, the Lower Troposphere Temperature (TLT) anomalies of the Northern Hemisphere north of 20N, and the GISS Northern Hemisphere Land-Ocean Temperature anomalies (20N-65N). Once again, the Northern Hemisphere datasets rise in response to the El Niño event, but don’t drop in response to the La Niña. Note also that the North Atlantic SST anomalies lag the NINO3.4 SST by more than 6 months during the ramp-up phase, but the lag in the Northern Hemisphere TLT and Surface Temperature datasets is excessive, about 18 months. Why?
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Figure 16
Could the dip in the Kuroshio-Oyashio Extension SST anomalies during the 1986/87/88 El Niño have counteracted their responses to the El Niño? Refer to Figure 17. It compares Kuroshio-Oyashio Extension SST anomalies (not scaled) to the North Atlantic and Northern Hemisphere datasets. The drop in KOE SST anomalies is significant in 1986/87/88.
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Figure 17
And in Figure 18, the Kiroshio-Oyashio SST anomalies have been scaled. The North Atlantic SST anomalies rise in response to the 1986/87/88 El Niño as noted earlier. The timing of the rises in the KOE data and the GISS LOTI data are very similar. But the rise in the TLT anomalies north of 20N precedes the rise in the KOE data. If the dip in KOE SST anomalies were the only factor preventing the TLT anomalies from rising in response to the El Niño, shouldn’t we expect the TLT anomalies to lag the rise in the KOE data? Or are the TLT anomalies responding to the rise in North Atlantic SST anomalies?
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Figure 18
If we replace the RSS TLT data with TLT data from UAH, Figure 19, the lag decreases between the North Atlantic SST anomalies and the TLT anomalies north of 20N.
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Figure 19
CLOSING
An El Niño event releases vast amounts of warm water from below the surface of the west Pacific Warm Pool. But the end of an El Niño event does not mean all of that warm water suddenly disappears. The warm water sloshes back to the western tropical Pacific during the La Niña. And some of that warm water is spun up into the Kuoshio-Oyashio Extension where it continues to release heat.
Kuroshio-Oyashio Extension SST anomalies rose significantly during the La Niña events of 1988/89 and 1998/99/00/01. These warmings appear to have counteracted the effects of those La Niña events on North Atlantic SST anomalies, and on Lower Troposphere Temperature anomalies north of 20N, and on combined Land-Ocean temperature anomalies of the Northern Hemisphere between the latitudes of 20N-65N. During the 1997/98 El Niño, the drop in Kuroshio-Oyashio Extension SST anomalies was very small and the KOE does not appear to have had a noticeable impact on the effects of that El Niño. On the other hand, the Kuroshio-Oyashio Extension SST anomalies did drop significantly during the 1986/87/88 El Niño and they appear to have suppressed the effects of that El Niño on Northern Hemisphere temperature anomalies. But why did the Kuroshio-Oyashio Extension SST anomalies drop significantly during the 1986/87/88 El Niño but not during the 1997/98 El Niño? Differences in Sea Level Pressure?
SOURCE
Data for graphs are available through, and the correlation and anomaly maps were downloaded from, the KNMI Climate Explorer:
http://climexp.knmi.nl/selectfield_obs.cgi?someone@somewhere
Posted by Bob Tisdale at 6:39 AM
If no one will put people out of there misery I will: it’s a pun, OK?
KOed = knocked-out, also KOE = Kuroshio-Oyashio Extension. Bob hasn’t knocked-out the GISS warmest alarmism he’s Kuroshio-Oyashio’d it. It doesn’t, as has been noted, rebut it, it just explains it.
eadler says: “None of this contradicts Hansen’s analysis which indicates that 2010 will be close to a record warm year.”
It wasn’t intended to contradict. This post is, in effect, a discussion of attribution.
You wrote, “Hansen highlighted the 10C anomaly in the Hudson’s bay area due to the absence of sea ice, and gave a possible explanation of why Europe turned out to be so cold. This was relevant and interesting.”
How would he know what the SST anomalies are in the Hudson Bay or in Baffin Bay? They aren’t represented by GISS data. GISS deletes SST anomaly data in areas where there’s seasonal sea ice and extends land surface data (with its greater variability and higher trends) out over the oceans and those bays.
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2010/05/giss-deletes-arctic-and-southern-ocean.html
R. Gates:
“….we still have an uptrend….”
Yes and even if you accept that the GISTEMP/HadCRUT record is free of jiggery-pokery, then that uptrend for the period since c.1950 for which the IPCC proclaims, with tangled logic, that human GHG emissions (mainly CO2) are over 90% likely to be over 50% responsible (GHG emissions prior to c. 1940 being irrelevant), then the most those emissions can be said to be responsible for is about 1.2°C/century and falling due to its logarithmically declining nature.
As others have commented, on the evidence of over 60 years, without the initial ‘C’, alleged AGW is unexceptional.
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/lanser_holocene_figure5.png
The title is maybe playful for insiders, not for people that came here for a couple of minutes.
Arno Arrak: I went back and read your comment. You’re missing a few things. I know, it’s tough to include all aspects of ENSO in a comment. Here are a few that you missed. La Nina events return the leftover heat from the El Nino back to the western tropical Pacific and they redistribute it as well, as was illustrated in this post. And if the redistribution to the KOE could be considered a part of the La Nina then your statement, “As much as the El Nino raised the global temperature the La Nina will now lower it,” is incorrect. It is also incorrect when you consider the cumulative effect that El Nino/La Nina events have on the SST anomalies of the East Indian and West Pacific Oceans; that is, the SST anomalies of the East Indian and West Pacific Oceans are wamed by both the El Nino and La Nina events. I’ve written dozens of posts on that subject over the past two years. In other words, El Nino and La Nina events do not have an equal and opposite effect on Global Temperatures. That is a myth that needs to be ended.
Your comment also missed a discussion of the recharge that takes place during the La Nina, and this is accomplished by the increased strength of the trade winds reducing cloud cover, which allows more downward shortwave radiation to warm the tropical Pacific east of the western Pacific Warm Pool.
Alex says:
December 13, 2010 at 1:57 am
The title is playful for all those with a sense of humour and an eye for detail. True for regulars and passers by alike.
ad says: “If no one will put people out of there misery I will: it’s a pun, OK?
“KOed = knocked-out, also KOE = Kuroshio-Oyashio Extension. Bob hasn’t knocked-out the GISS warmest alarmism he’s Kuroshio-Oyashio’d it. It doesn’t, as has been noted, rebut it, it just explains it.”
I liked Anthony’s double entendre.
I can’t help but wonder if there are not two other rare cases that have the possibility to cause major step changes. The usual La Nina is strong trades and low clouds. The usual El Nino is slack trades with increased clouds. What would happen in the other two cases? By this I mean strong trades with clouds, for example. This might reduce the surface temperatures AND reduce the absorption of solar energy resulting in a step down of oceanic surface temperatures for a considerable period. The other case of slack trades and less clouds would result in a step up as equatorial waters would absorb greater than normal energy.
I wonder … did the 1993 El Nino event experience clearer than normal skies and so absorb a lot more energy than normal and so set the stage for what is called “the great climate shift of 1975”? In other words, if the ’83 El Nino saw clearer conditions than previous events, maybe that was what really “tipped” things into a long term warmer regime. Wondering if all it takes is a “sunnier than normal” El Nino or “cloudier than normal” La Nina to tip things in one direction or the other.
“The usual La Nina is strong trades and low clouds”
Meant “few” clouds (in a relative sense).
“Njorway says:
December 12, 2010 at 3:18 pm
I have been in South America in November for vacations:
In Peru, I was shivering with cold. In Chile the nights were very cool. I had never experienced such a cold November in Argentina (I am Argentinian) . South America have experienced this year one of the coldest winters of the last years, with thousands of dead fishes in the rivers of Bolivia and snow in Brazil.
Now I am in Norway, which has experienced one of the coldest Novembers of the last century and December continues to be very cold.
We all know what has happened last week in UK, in France (and in almost all Europe) and today in Turkey. And also today in Buenos Aires, Argentina, the temperature is of 20C when normally should be 30C at this time of the year. Could you explain me where is that excess of heat that GISS talk about??”
Similarly here in Australia over most of he country below average temps and abov e average rains for months and months on end…Australia’s temps have taken a huge “southward” nose dive for most this year!…and the trend looks set to continue for a long time yet.
“did the 1993 El Nino event experience clearer than normal skies”
Sheesh, meant 1983, not 1993.
Baa Humbug says: “If I look at your fig. 2 side by side with a chart of the Thermocline Circulation, the Kuroshio and Oyashio Currents look trapped, almost like an eddy.”
It’s not an eddy. The KOE is the western portion of the North Pacific Current, which stretches from Japan to west coast of the U.S., where it splits into the California and Alaska Currents. As soon as the La Nina subsides, most (but not all) of the elevated SST anomalies there drop.
The appearance of it being trapped may be due to the persistence of the ENSO pattern. There are a number of factors that contribute to the persistence of the elevated SST anomalies in the KOE, one being Sea Level Pressure, another bsing the reemergence mechanism. I have a quick post on that phenomenon here:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/06/reemergence-mechanism.html
Reemergence was one of the factors Newman et al (2003) used to conclude that the PDO is dependent on ENSO on all timescales. Link to Newman et al:
http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/people/gilbert.p.compo/Newmanetal2003.pdf
crosspatch says: “I can’t help but wonder if there are not two other rare cases that have the possibility to cause major step changes. The usual La Nina is strong trades and low clouds. The usual El Nino is slack trades with increased clouds. What would happen in the other two cases?”
During the El Nino, the increase in total cloud amount over the central and eastern tropical Pacific results from the relocation of the warm water from the PWP. The convection and clouds stay with the warm water. The decrease in cloud amount versus “normal”, as you’ve noted, has to do with the increased strength of the trade winds pushing the clouds out of the way during the La Nina. For the other conditions to exist, they really wouldn’t be ENSO related.
Hi Bob,
I’m curious. You had an excellent post, so I decided to share it on a site called http://www.theenvironmentsite.org/forum/climate-change-forum/ they are wondering what credentials you have. Unfortunately, I can’t find any. Can you help on this? I would greatly appreciate it.
-Snow
Thnku Bob the links are very informative, though I have to read these things more than once.
p.s. before spending further $9, give me a yell, I gained lots of practice chasing down papers during the Citizens Audit Project. A free copy of Hanawa Sugimoto is HERE
If you look at today’s equatorial Pacific conditions, Ocean SSTs are -1.6C. Just a year ago, it was +1.8C. Where did all that warm water go.
Some of it released its heat during 2010 and cooled off. Some of it was pushed through the Indonesian Islands into the Indian Ocean. Some of it was pushed down at New Guinea to about 250 metres depth and is now moving east and is at 165E.
And some of it filters north into the Kuroshio. (I think some of it flows underneath the surface initially but that is for another day).
The Kuroshio is just like the Gulf Stream. The same processes drive both currents – its just that the equatorial Pacific has more oscillation of warm and cold than the equatorial Atlantic has. So the Gulf Stream is always warmer while the Kuroshio is warm and cold.
Bob has been looking for the sources of the lag and step impacts from the ENSO. He has now found one of the sources – the Kuroshio. The warm or cool water actually extends down to about 400 metres and extends into a wide area which means it is carrying alot of energy with it.
You can see the lag impacts of last year’s El Nino right now in the today’s SST map in the Kuroshio area.
http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/data/sst/anomaly/2010/anomnight.12.13.2010.gif
You can see how the global ocean currents operate in this animation of the last 30 days from the US Navy. The Kuroshio and its tie-in to the ENSO circulation is plainly evident.
http://www7320.nrlssc.navy.mil/global_nlom32/navo/WHOSP1_nlomw12930doper.gif
I think my other PC is a closet warmist – it crashes when I show the expanded version of this post ! Anyone else have the same problem ?
Old machine running Chrome under XP, but this laptop’s the same and seems OK…
Keep up the good work !
Snowlover123 says: “I’m curious. You had an excellent post, so I decided to share it on a site called http://www.theenvironmentsite.org/forum/climate-change-forum/ they are wondering what credentials you have.”
Snow, if your readers doubt my work, they can reproduce it and find alternate explanations. In lieu of that, they ask for credentials, which is a standard redirection/misdirection practice, like asking if a blog post has been peer reviewed.
Regards
crosspatch asked: “did the 1983 [corrected per your note] El Nino event experience clearer than normal skies”
The El Chichon eruption occurred during the development of the 1982/83 El Nino. A couple of years ago, I found a few papers that speculated about the effect the volcanic eruption had on the El Nino event itself, but they admitted it was speculation and that there was no way to document or estimate it.
The year isn’t over yet. Wait until NASA gives us the adjusted temps for this year and gives us the adjusted temps for the previous years. It will all become apparent then.
Bill Illis (December 12, 2010 at 6:44 pm)
Thanks for the preview.
I’ve been pondering, with no real answers yet, how to somehow come up with a factor that accounts for the response of the East Indian and West Pacific Oceans. As you’re aware, that portion of the global oceans can rise cumulatively in response to both El Nino and La Nina events if the significant El Nino is followed by the La Nina. The effect would not take place with the lesser El Nino events like the ones in 2002/03 and 2004/05. It might be a factor of the temperature transition from the peak of the El Nino to the low of the La Nina. There are also decay rates to consider and “gyre mixing” that would have to be considered. Whatever, it wouldn’t be simple.
“But why did the Kuroshio-Oyashio Extension SST anomalies drop significantly during the 1986/87/88 El Niño but not during the 1997/98 El Niño? Differences in Sea Level Pressure?”
Different winters.
Bob Tisdale says:
December 13, 2010 at 7:37 am
The El Chichon eruption occurred during the development of the 1982/83 El Nino. A couple of years ago, I found a few papers that speculated about the effect the volcanic eruption had on the El Nino event itself, but they admitted it was speculation and that there was no way to document or estimate it.
Hi Bob, thanks for another excellent post. I have a new post up that might shed light on the effect of volcanoes (I know I know 😉
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2010/12/13/working-out-where-the-energy-goes-part-1/
I’d appreciate your input, because I need to solve a mystery about OLR data sets and you may be able to help.
@Bob Tisdale
But what he fails to tell you is what happens to the leftover warm water from the El Nino during the transition to La Nina. It gets returned to the West Pacific by a slow-moving Rossby wave and spun up into the Kuroshio-Oyashio Extension (KOE) in the northwest North Pacific where it continues to release heat during the La Nina.
Why is this important to the discussion of global warming or the warmest year “nonsense”?
dp says:
December 12, 2010 at 11:34 pm
Just answer this simple question: did more energy arrive on earth than left earth in 2010? I don’t care what the temperature was – did more energy arrive than left? Who can answer that? Anyone? Come on – it can’t be that hard. Nobody knows?
I didn’t think so.
==========================
The answer is we don’t know! – and we will never really ‘know’. Which is precisely why the AGW shambles is so long lasting. Make an observation, pose a theory, and wait for somebody to disprove it. The AGW theory may as well be based on something else, like cow dung, or sea algae, or people with false teeth (steradent produces CO2 I believe?).
This post is very good though, clearly showing lag effects and ‘reasons’ for potential localised oceanic ‘heat’ retention. It is exactly this kind of information that the likes of Hansen and Schmidt (so tenpting to spell it wrong!) will NOT publish.