Guest post by Bob Tisdale
This post will serve as the mid-September 2012 sea surface temperature anomaly update.
Sea surface temperature anomalies for the NINO3.4 region of the eastern equatorial Pacific are a commonly used index for the strength, frequency and duration of El Niño and La Niña events. In recent weeks, they have cooled to well below the threshold of El Niño conditions. For the evolution of an El Niño that starts from La Niña conditions, that dip is unusual during the satellite era (since November 1981). See Figure 1. Actually, it’s unusual for any El Niño event over the past 30 years.
Figure 1
This does not mean the El Niño this year has come to an end. A dip of similar magnitude did occur once before in the satellite era, and that was during the evolution of the 1991/1992 El Niño. See Figure 2. The dip in 1991, however, may have been in response to the June 15, 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo. There have been no explosive volcanic eruptions comparable to Mount Pinatubo this year. The evolution of the 1991 event is highlighted in purple in Figure 2.
Figure 2
MID-MONTH UPDATE
Weekly NINO3.4 sea surface temperature anomalies for the week centered on August 15, 2012 are approximately +0.365 deg C, having dropped from almost +1.0 deg C over the past few weeks.
Figure 3 – Weekly NINO3.4
Global sea surface temperature anomalies are continuing their wiggly upward march, rebounding from La Niña conditions and responding to the evolving El Niño. There is a time lag between the variations in the NINO3.4 data and the response of global sea surface temperature anomalies. It will be interesting to see if they reach 2009/10 levels.
Figure 4 – Weekly Global
INTERESTED IN LEARNING MORE ABOUT THE EL NIÑO AND LA NIÑA AND THEIR LONG-TERM EFFECTS ON GLOBAL SEA SURFACE TEMPERATURES?
Why should you be interested? Satellite-era sea surface temperature records indicate El Niño and La Niña events are responsible for the warming of global sea surface temperature anomalies over the past 30 years, not manmade greenhouse gases. I have been publishing blog posts for the past 3 ½ years that illustrate that fact.
I’ve recently published my e-book (pdf) about the phenomena called El Niño and La Niña. It’s titled Who Turned on the Heat? with the subtitle The Unsuspected Global Warming Culprit, El Niño Southern Oscillation. It is intended for persons (with or without technical backgrounds) interested in learning about El Niño and La Niña events and in understanding the natural causes of the warming of our global oceans for the past 30 years. Because land surface air temperatures simply exaggerate the natural warming of the global oceans over annual and multidecadal time periods, the vast majority of the warming taking place on land is natural as well. The book is the product of years of research of the satellite-era sea surface temperature data that’s available to the public via the internet. It presents how the data accounts for its warming—and there are no indications the warming was caused by manmade greenhouse gases. None at all.
Who Turned on the Heat? was introduced in the blog post Everything You Every Wanted to Know about El Niño and La Niña… …Well Just about Everything. The Updated Free Previewincludes the Table of Contents; the Introduction; the beginning of Section 1, with the cartoon-like illustrations; the discussion About the Cover; and the Closing.
Please buy a copy. (Paypal or Credit/Debit Card). It’s only US$8.00.
SOURCES
The Sea Surface Temperature anomaly data used in this post is available through the NOAA NOMADS website:
http://nomad1.ncep.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/pdisp_sst.sh
or:
http://nomad3.ncep.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/pdisp_sst.sh?lite=
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BM says: “The .05 [sic] threshold is an artificial number to use in determinining if this one is unusual. If you picked a number a little higher or lower then several of the other years you list go above then below those lines.”
The threshold for El Niño conditions used by NOAA is 0.5 deg C. I did not arbitrarily select it.
BM says: “This does look like the largest drop from a maximum, but we are talking about only five events.”
Scroll down to Figure 2. That includes all of the El Niño events since 1982.
Per Strandberg (@LittleIceAge): Please provide a graph. I’m having a hard time visualizing what you’re saying. However, what I can show you is, ENSO is tied to the seasonal cycles of two regions. During an El Niño, the NINO3.4 region temporarily takes on the seasonal cycle of the western tropical Pacific:
http://i49.tinypic.com/292wbqv.jpg
This is not good. Soil moisture is exhausted. Without LOTS of snow this winter and a wet spring and summer, the drought will get -worse.
prjindigo says:
September 24, 2012 at 9:45 am
El Nino just died. Ice is now increasing at BOTH poles. The earth’s atmosphere has shrunk to the smallest diameter NASA has ever recorded.”
And many northern countries have decimated the reliability of their electricity supply systems.
With the energy lost from the Arctic seas due to the ice break-up, and now signs that El Nino has backed off, it could get nasty this northern winter. !
I hope not, because a lot of people will not be able to afford what meagre amount of electricty will be available.
enthalpy says: “Is there any correlation to the recent arctic cyclone?”
Hopefully, someone will write a paper about that recent Arctic cyclone. If it was tied to ENSO, the person to write that paper would be Trenberth. But the problem is he’s stuck in alarmist mode, though his recent paper about the 2010 Russian heat wave…
http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/Trenberth/trenberth.papers/TF_RHW_JGR_2012JD018020.pdf
..is good, a return to his early papers, if you can read beneath the AGW hype.
Bob,
Love to buy your book, but your payment system assumes that all your buyers have a US address. I don’t — I live in Australia!
Dr. Tisdale
I would very much like to purchase a paper copy of your book. Will a real book becoming available any time soon?
NIWA in NZ are picking a neutral Summer, for what it’s worth!
FWIW, in Denver, the 1991-92 winter was a big year with 79 inches of snow , which was 130% of normal. Snow was mostly in winter with a normal March & dry April. Perfect ! Hope this “dip analog” holds true this winter !
For data , see link :
http://www.crh.noaa.gov/bou/?n=denverannualsnowfall1882-2013
Joe Bastardi, please.
Free, Ryan Maue maps, (models)
Very expensive.
Here’s what I said on Weather Advance.com, on what I think could be the cause of this weakening el nino, “I also noticed that the SOI is slowly coming back from being negative and is headed towards 0 for the present moment. SOI is usually a good indicator of how strong or weak and el nino or la nina is, however, I think the MJO is playing a significant part in this. One thing I’ve taken note of is that over the last several weeks, actually since about mid-August the upward pulse of the MJO has been hanging around the Indian Ocean and the Western Pacific. The upward pulse of the MJO helps to induce more thunderstorm activity over the tropics and the enhanced thunderstorm activity releases latent heat into the atmosphere and lowers the pressures over the area of the tropics it is at. Now the SOI is a measure of the pressure difference between Tahiti and Darwin, Australia, and when it is positive, the air pressure at Tahiti is higher than at Darwin, and when it is negative it is vis versa. Now, with the upward MJO pulse generally sitting closer to Darwin, Australia since Mid-August, what that has essentially done is it has favored a positive SOI there, because with an upward MJO pulse in place that favors lower pressures closer to Darwin, Australia, and when pressures are lower towards Darwin as opposed to Tahiti that favors a positive SOI. A positive SOI is associated with la nina conditions, or cooling waters over the eastern pacific not an el nino. With the SOI becoming less negative, that is not favoring warm waters over the eastern Pacific, which is exactly what is occurring, however, the less negative SOI doesn’t as greatly affect the waters over the central pacific and towards the International date line, which remain above normal, and in some cases those waters are warming. Combine this with the fact that is you look at ENSO events since 1950, the el ninos and la ninas really don’t strengthen until later in the fall, anyway, and are prone to large fluctuations in the spring, summer, and the early fall. This why I’m not too concerned for the moment that the el nino is weakening, however, if the el nino continues to behave in this way for another month or so, then I’ll be more open to the possibility of a warm ENSO neutral for the winter.
As far as dramatically changing the forecast, I would have to disagree to a certain extent on that. Yes, a switch to warm neutral would alter the winter forecast, but the overall pattern playing out over the northern hemisphere remains similar even with warm ENSO neutral. When you have an el nino over the pacific, especially if it is central or west based you have to consider the reasons why the el nino produces a cold winter, at least for the southern and eastern US. An el nino in a cold PDO with the warmer waters over the central pacific, and with the Atlantic ocean warmer than normal, what happens is that pressures lower over both of those oceans, and in between the pacific and the atlantic oceans is the North American continent, and when you have two areas of separate low pressure, in this case being the oceans, you have an area in between that must receive higher pressures, and that area that sees this is North America. In the winter, the above normal pressures are associated with cold air because colder air sinks and forces the pressures to rise. Even with warm ENSO neutral conditions, the waters over the central pacific will be above normal, and you will still see the same effects as far as overall pressure patterns go, with the lower than normal pressures still being focused over that area of the global tropics. (although the drops in pressure aren’t as dramatic as they are in el ninos.) Unless we go into cool neutral territory, (which is very, very unlikely to happen) I don’t see this winter being a bad one like this year, given that even if we see warm neutral conditions the overall pressure pattern would support a good winter over the US, but if we get an el nino to form, the winter will likely be even better. Also of note is how the AO and NAO are going to shape up this winter. One very strong indicator of how the NAO will be in the winter is the water temperatures that are just south of, and around Greenland in the month of October. A trend that was noted during the 2009-10 & 2010-11 winters was that when the water was warmer than normal in October, the NAO and AO were negative for the upcoming winter, and last year when the waters were cooler off Greenland, we witnessed how positive the NAO and AO were. The reason this is the case is similar to what I was talking about over the tropical pacific regarding el nino and warm ENSO neutral. When you have warmer than normal waters near Greenland, what happens is the pressures are lowered over the water, and this helps to focus more predominant areas of higher pressures over Greenland, and higher than normal pressures over Greenland are what helps to drive a negative NAO. The opposite occurs when the waters are cooler than normal, and now instead of focusing lower pressures over the water, the pressures are higher simply due to the water being colder than normal, and this induces more rising air over Greenland, thus lowering the pressures overall, and lower pressures over Greenland are what helps to drive a positive NAO. This year I’m happy to say that the waters are VERY warm off of and just south of Greenland, and since this is the case, I’m leaning towards us experiencing strongly negative AO and NAO pulses this winter, which is a good reason not to be nearly as concerned about the state of the el nino, because even if we go into warm neutral, we’ll still have the warmer than normal waters over the tropical pacific supporting lowering pressures there and creating higher pressures over North America, plus, we’ll probably also have strong support from the NAO. In general, even if el nino dissipates into warm ENSO neutral, conditions overall support a colder and snowier winter than normal over the US, however, if we do see el nino conditions over the central tropical pacific this winter, then the conditions may be in place for a very cold and snowy winter, as opposed to just some cold and snow that we would see with warm ENSO neutral.”
In general, the combination of an unfavorable MJO and a cold PDO, both appear to be working against the el nino, and this could be why the el nino is not strengthening as it typically should this time of the year.
Bob – Nino 3.4 catches the El Nino wave before it has reached South America. But atmospheric temperature increase takes place when it reaches the coast, hence the delay between Nino 3.4 and observed El Nino temps. To get in phase with the actual El Nino warming you should be looking at SST in the Eastern Equatorial Pacific, not in Mid-Pacific where Nino 3.4 sits.
Let the El Nino thrive.. because it’s letting out the stored heat energy that was building up through 1997… But then… cool winter in the north anyone?
“Paul says:
September 24, 2012 at 9:05 am”
I have family ties to Ethiopia. Great link/read, thanks!
Jan P Perlwitz said on September 24, 2012 at 2:40 pm:
That would be “showed”, past tense. In my comment I provided the quote which clearly said “Right now, most of the simulations of air and sea conditions show a developing El Niño.” So at the time of that story’s posting, that is what the models showed.
I did include the link to the graphic of the many forecasts of ENSO 3.4 SST anomalies, as provided with the story, but that’s a dynamic image thus the exact graphic at the time of posting is unknown. What, in your esteemed wisdom, do you think the current version of the graphic is saying?
In another example of your devious wording, what Hansen said was not mentioned by me. After over a decade of stalled global warming, as the meme of “inevitable global warming” falls apart as the atmospheric CO₂ concentrations continue their merry rise, requiring endless hem-hawing and “silent” revisions and introducing of temporary exceptions to CAGW theory (actually barely a conjecture),
As the alarmism that Hansen has long championed is increasingly disparaged and rejected,
And as the “death trains of coal” continue to happily run on time, in growing numbers in China and elsewhere,
Can you honestly say that Hansen doesn’t want a “record breaking year of dangerous deadly Anthropogenic Climate Change!” to “prove” the threat he so long warned about is actually real and does exist?
kadaka,
Disregard the climate alarmist Perlwitz, who has his snout planted firmly in the public trough. The sooner that grant-sucking GISS charlatans like Perlwitz are cut off from public funds, the better.
@ur momisugly D Böehm on September 24, 2012 at 9:53 pm:
Gee, I wonder if Jan is a legally-voting US citizen. Seems a guaranteed Obama voter. Either his share of the global warming gravy train continues, or if Congress won’t let Barry follow through on that promise then there’ll be plenty of other places at the public trough for a dedicated government servant. Or at least he could get government-paid job retraining and learn something useful and marketable, like plumbing. They’re often hiring at Lowes.
Side humor: I Googled his name, got his GISS Personnel Directory listing. Google gave me the option “Translate this page”. I guess it’s official, “Bureaucrat” is indeed a separate recognized language.
kadaka (KD Knoebel) wrote:
OK, I see. The misunderstanding was here on my side. Your statement about the model simulations did not refer to climate model simulations on which James Hansen relies (not exclusively, though) for his statements on future global warming, but on the weather prediction simulations of El Nino/La Nina over a time-scale of a year. I apologize.
But what is the link between those prediction and what James Hansen allegedly “wants” supposed to be, then? Are you asserting most of the model simulations showed a developing El Nino because Hansen wanted it so? That would be quite some conspiracy fantasy. You said “The answer is obvious”. The answer to what question is supposed to be obvious?
What is the “CAGW” theory? Where can I read about it? Only your claims quoted here are conjecture. The statements about anthropogenically caused global warming made by mainstream climate science, for which the IPCC report is quite representative, are based on a body of scientific research and evidence accumulated over decades. That something was “falling apart” there is only a figment of your imagination. Claim that global warming “has stalled”, “stopped” or similar talking points don’t have any scientific basis.
Do you believe there wouldn’t be any record breaking in the years ahead anymore, if El Nino ceased to occur every few years? If Hansen wanted such a thing he wouldn’t need El Nino for such record breaking. The global temperature anomaly would break positive records in the years and decades ahead again and again anyhow, since global warming continues and is going to continue with further increasing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
Ric Werme says:
September 24, 2012 at 10:45 am
> I update that automatically on Tuesdays from http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/nino_3.4.txt .
> Currently it’s still showing last Tuesday’s data:
I suppose that’s easier, because it’s a text file, and you can set up a script to read it. NOAA has a website at http://nomad3.ncep.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/pdisp_sst.sh where you can manually type in the NINO34 boundaries and other info, and get a plot, then manually download the ASCII data. I figured out that it builds a honking big URL, which is submitted to the generator. I manually tweaked the URL to http://nomad3.ncep.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/pdisp_sst.sh?ctlfile=oiv2.ctl&ptype=ts&var=ssta&level=1&op1=none&op2=none&day=03&month=jan&year=1990&fday=26&fmonth=dec&fyear=2012&lat0=-5&lat1=5&lon0=-170&lon1=-120&plotsize=800×600&title=&dir= (I did say it was big). And I change it every year. That URL generates a plot and an ASCII file near the bottom left of the page is a link
“Download data file for -clm.2+(t-273.15) (Text)”
Click on that, and you get the ASCII file. Only problem is that it’s just the values, no date column. Note that this is a scratchfile generated by your data request. Do not save that URL. Save and use the one I listed.
D Böehm wrote:
Insults and fantasies about punishment. Obviously, Boehm dreams of a state where only those scientists are funded with money from the public, who say and produce something that is to his politically or ideologically motivated liking.
I love this forum… there are some very smart and at times passionate and angry folks. I get angry myself because I know the AGW propaganda falls on many folks who believe in it without wanting to understand the basic science which can dispel it all. Keep up the good comments… they are both entertaining and give me confidence that some of you can change hearts and minds so that our economy has a change to prosper!
I think wiggle watching the ENSO 3.4 numbers will get to be a little puzzling for those people who like nice neat causal chains. The PDO has gone cold and we have a quiet sun – neither of these have occurred previously in the ‘satellite era’. Consequently, all these easy rules of thumb may start to become unglued as the chaotic systems involved demonstrate that they are non-linear. We have had a few tens of years of repeated similar cycles now we are likely to see things change in ways that are not forecastable.
Certainly, the large cold pool to the North of the ENSO 3.4 and the streamer of colder water along the equator from Peru to the mid-Pacific are precisely NOT the indicators of an El Nino indeed _that_ pattern looks more like La Nina – but then the chaotic system may be different this time.
As an aside – it is interesting how the competitive forecasting of an El Nino/La Nina has become almost a full contact sport. We are all on this same ride; I just hope that the temperatures do not drop only Malthusians want the cold.
Arno Arrak says: “Bob – Nino 3.4 catches the El Nino wave before it has reached South America. But atmospheric temperature increase takes place when it reaches the coast…”
Wrong. Atmospheric temperatures increase due to the additional heat loss from the tropical Pacific to the atmosphere, which results from the increased surface area of the warm water. The heat loss to the atmosphere occurs primarily through evaporation and has nothing to do with whether the event is a Central Pacific or East Pacific El Nino. East Pacific El Nino events are stronger because a greater surface area is involved, but a Central Pacific El Nino also releases heat to the atmosphere. Also your argument fails to address those two different types of events.
donaitkin says: “Love to buy your book, but your payment system assumes that all your buyers have a US address. I don’t — I live in Australia!”
What problem are you having? A good portion of the persons who have purchased my book are from Australia. Please advise.
Regards
Bought you book Bob and enjoying reading it. (And I live in Australia and had no problem).
Have been watching El Nino reports at BOM for years and this helps greatly in making sense of them.
I have a question though. On the BOM site there is a description of previous El Nino events going back to ~1900. They don’t list any between 1926 and about 1940. Is that right, or have they ignored some. I ask because I’ve always heard that the mid ’30s were very hot. If so perhaps it can be pretty hot in the absence of El Nino?