PRELIMINARY
Guest Post by Bob Tisdale
STANDARD OPENING PARAGRAPH
The September 2012 Reynolds OI.v2 Sea Surface Temperature (SST) data through the NOAA NOMADS website won’t be official until Monday, September 8th. Refer to the schedule on the NOAA Optimum Interpolation Sea Surface Temperature Analysis Frequently Asked Questions webpage. The following are the preliminary Global and NINO3.4 SST anomalies for September 2012 that the NOMADS website prepares based on incomplete data for the month. I’ve also included the weekly data through the week centered on September 26, 2012, but I’ve shortened the span of the weekly data, starting it in January 2004, so that the variations can be seen.
WEEKLY DATA
The sea surface temperatures of an area in the eastern equatorial Pacific (5S-5N, 170W-120W), known as the NINO3.4 region, are a commonly used reference for the strength, frequency and duration of El Niño and La Niña events. Weekly NINO3.4 region sea surface temperature anomalies for the week centered on September 26, 2012 are well below the 0.5 deg C threshold of an “official” El Niño. They’re at +0.27 deg C.
Weekly NINO3.4 SST Anomalies
Weekly Global sea surface temperature anomalies have been cooling for the past 5 weeks. They are presently at +0.27 deg C. Nope. That’s not a typo. Global and NINO3.4 sea surface temperature anomalies are about the same, based on NOAA’s climatology, which uses the base years of 1971-2000.
Weekly Global SST Anomalies
PRELIMINARY MONTHLY DATA
Based on the preliminary data, September 2012 NINO3.4 SST anomalies are at +0.59 deg C still above the +0.5 deg C threshold of “official” El Niño conditions. They’ve cooled (about -0.26 deg C) based on the preliminary data. Refer also to the weekly data, which continues to show cooling in the NINO3.4 region.
Monthly NINO3.4 SST Anomalies
The preliminary global SST anomalies were basically flat, having warmed only 0.002 deg C. They’re presently at +0.273 deg C.
Monthly Global SST Anomalies
NINO3.4 COMPARISONS
The weekly NINO3.4 SST anomalies for 2012 are compared to those of the El Niño events since 1982 that started from La Niña conditions. The early cooling this year appears odd, but looking at the monthly data above, there have been early demises in the past.
NINO3.4 Evolution Comparison – Starting From La Niña Conditions
Looking at the evolution of all El Niño events since November 1981, the happenings in 2012 are beginning to look out of place. Will this year’s event turn into a non-Niño, aka La Nada?
NINO3.4 Evolution Comparison – All
INTERESTED IN LEARNING MORE ABOUT THE EL NIÑO AND LA NIÑA?
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 Free Preview includes 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. To keep it inexpensive, I still have no plans to publish a Kindle edition.
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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beng says: “Bob, your very first figure looks decidedly warmer than the following — especially the cooler waters around N Australia/southern E Indies among other areas…”
Anthony will sometimes add an illustration to a cross post, as he has for this one. The NESDIS “Reef Watch” website maps typically present extra warming in some places because they only use nighttime satellite data. I discussed the differences up thread. Here’s what I wrote in reply to Philip Bradley:
The NESDIS (Coral reef watch website) uses only nighttime SST data. http://coralreefwatch.noaa.gov/satellite/methodology/methodology.html#sst
They note:
“Nighttime-only satellite SST observations are used to eliminate diel variation caused by solar heating at the sea surface (primarily at the “skin” interface, 10-20 um) during the day and to avoid contamination from solar glare. Compared with daytime SST and day-night blended SST, nighttime SST provides more conservative and stable estimate of thermal stress conducive to coral bleaching.”
And that’s not the dataset presented in the graphs. The Reynolds OI.v2 SST data uses both nighttime and daytime SST measurements and as they explain,
“The AVHRR instrument has three infrared (IR) channels. Due to noise from reflected sunlight (sun glint), only two channels can be used during the day. However, at night the three IR channels are used because the residual noise is lower.” The OI.v2 data accounts for the glair problem and samples SST anomalies over the full course of the day.
The differences in the datasets were discussed here:
http://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2009/09/02/a-note-about-sst-anomaly-maps/
Regards
Jon says: “What is the cooling effect of the recent seasonal Arctic ice melt on the great ocean conveyor belt … is it cooling the Pacific?”
The great ocean conveyor belt is thought to “cycle waters” over a time period that’s somewhere in the range of 1000 to 1500 years, if memory serves. So any waters subducted in the North Atlantic recently aren’t going to be upwelled in the Pacific for a while.
Looking at data: the North Pacific has been cooling since 2004/05, before the big Arctic melts of 2007 and 2012:
http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/9-no-pac.png
The South Pacific looks like it’s been cooling since around 2001:
http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/10-so-pac.png
Those graphs are from the August update:
http://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2012/09/10/august-2012-sea-surface-temperature-sst-anomaly-update/
You wrote, “When ice reforms in the Arctic it will have a higher salinity than the multi year ice it is replacing …”
Do you a have a reference for that?
We have nearly reached the Sun cycle peak. The next ten years will be of lower Sun output. I predict no El Niño for the near future ( or extremely mild). We will get to watch the Sun affecting weather!
Bob … I don’t have reference for it … but its logical that the ice melt water will mix somewhat with higher salinity water below it … especially with wind mixing. There must be salinity data for open surface waters kicking around!
There’s a good reference here which describes brine concentration and movement sea ice: http://seaice.alaska.edu/gi/publications/eicken/09PE.pdf
Can an El Nino develop with this little warmth down there?
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/sub_surf_mon.gif
Would it not need more warmth to form a real El Nino? To me it looks like the reason why this El Nino is such a failed El Nino…
Did it look similar in previous episodes?
Bob,
could this lead to an ‘El Nino Modoki’ scenario at the end of this year/beginning of the next, similar to 2002-03 and 1977-78? The current NINO 3.4 numbers would have to stay around this level to fit the ‘Modoki’ criteria, would they not? I only ask because the two greatest droughts of the past 40 years in my part of New Zealand happened under El Nino Modoki conditions in ’78 & ’03.
Cheers,
Coops
Ian Cooper says: “could this lead to an ‘El Nino Modoki’ scenario at the end of this year/beginning of the next, similar to 2002-03 and 1977-78? The current NINO 3.4 numbers would have to stay around this level to fit the ‘Modoki’ criteria, would they not?”
Most El Nino events are El Nino Modoki. There are few East Pacific El Nino events. This one started off looking like it might be an East Pacific El Nino, but the sea surface temperatures in the eastern equatorial Pacific dropped quickly while the waters warmed toward the central portion. Over the past 5 weeks or so, NINO3.4 sea surface temperatures have dropped also. To answer your second question, if these conditions remained for the rest of the year, it would not be considered an El Nino, so east versus central (Modoki) wouldn’t even enter the picture.
Regards.
Lars P. says: “Did it look similar in previous episodes?”
This is the first time (that I can recall) during the evolution of an El Nino, where El Nino conditions were reached, and where subsurface temperatures then started to show negative anomalies. It’s not looking like the typical evolution of a medium strength El Nino.
Jon: Thanks for the link.
Bob, I’m not sure what point you were trying to make.
My point was, the NOAA graphic above shows strong warming for areas of the Arctic Ocean, which were ice covered for at least part of the climatology period from which the anomaly is determined (see link below). As they cannot measure SSTs under ice, they must use some other method to calculate the anomaly (which I termed an adjustment).
Showing strong warming for these areas is questionable to say the least, because they don’t know what the SST was for much of the past.
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_bm_extent_hires.png
Reblogged this on Standard Climate.
Lars P. says:
October 2, 2012 at 12:31 pm
Can an El Nino develop with this little warmth down there?
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/sub_surf_mon.gif
No. IMHO.
Philip Bradley says: “Bob, I’m not sure what point you were trying to make.”
Apparently, I was unclear about the point you were trying to make.
Philip Bradley says: “My point was, the NOAA graphic above shows strong warming for areas of the Arctic Ocean, which were ice covered for at least part of the climatology period from which the anomaly is determined (see link below). As they cannot measure SSTs under ice, they must use some other method to calculate the anomaly (which I termed an adjustment).”
They use the freezing point of sea water, -1.8 deg C, as the climatology,
Regards
Bob … there’s a good video here which shows the effect of cold brine on surrounding water etc: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4cX2EPt2zE
Bob Tisdale says:
October 2, 2012 at 5:53 pm
This is the first time (that I can recall) during the evolution of an El Nino, where El Nino conditions were reached, and where subsurface temperatures then started to show negative anomalies. It’s not looking like the typical evolution of a medium strength El Nino.
phlogiston says:
October 3, 2012 at 1:24 am
No. IMHO.
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Thank you for your answers. Am curious to see how this evolves.
I think a couple of month ago, I have not seen a model to forecast this downturn, and even now all of them are forecasting an El Nino. Hey, climate is interesting, I sympathise with Caleb.
Is it usual the change that can be seen in the sst charts of Noaa? In a small area of the west side of South America there has been a rapid cooling in the last 3 days. I know that big variations in SST are usual, but that area is related to ENSO and that’s why it caught my eye