Updates to and ENSO Observations from the WUWT Ocean Reference Page

Ric Werme says: April 26, 2013 at 11:22 am
I like how the animations run into May 2013. Let us know if you can find similar animations for the stock market.
So, why do the animations do that, and why do some have text in the image that stops while the image keeps advancing. Are these a combination of observed, filled, and forecast values?
HYCOM is a “Real-time 1/12° Global HYCOM Nowcast/Forecast System”, “The data assimilation is performed using the Navy Coupled Ocean Data Assimilation (NCODA) (Cummings, 2005; QJRMS) system with a model forecast as the first guess.”
Here are two presentations summarizing Cummins’ forecasting model;
http://hycom.org/attachments/082_6_Smedstad.pdf
http://hycom.org/attachments/084_HYCOM-Cummings.pdf
and here is the paper that it is based upon:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1256/qj.05.105/abstract
The HYCOM system forecasts 7 days forward, as did the prior Naval Research Laboratory Navy Coastal Ocean Model (NCOM). I would not recommend investing money based upon its forecasts… 🙂

Ric Werme says: April 26, 2013 at 11:22 am
Shane O. says: April 26, 2013 at 11:25 am
In order to avoid further confusion I’ve added “Including 7 Day Forecast” to all of the NYCOM graphics titles in this article and on the WUWT Ocean Reference Page.

Bob Tisdale
What are your thoughts in terms of ENSO as “a nonlinear oscillator of the Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction type”?

rgbatduke says: April 26, 2013 at 10:18 am
As for its basic assertion, that the Earth’s climate system is rife with, and perhaps best described by, precisely these sorts of non-equilibrium self-organizing chaotic patterns, I think there is no doubt of it.
It seems that all of the elements are there, e.g. in his article Phil Salmon wrote of Matthias Bertram’s thesis that:

The author goes on to analyze several experimental non-equilibrium pattern systems, including the Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction. He outlines the essential conditions for the operation of a nonlinear oscillator such as a far from equilibrium state, and an “excitable medium”, that is, a medium within which localized positive feedbacks can be initiated and run their course according to their associated refractory period.

In terms of that “excitable medium”,

“The oceanic or limnological Mixed Layer;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed_layer
is a layer in which active turbulence has homogenized some range of depths. The surface mixed layer is a layer where this turbulence is generated by winds, cooling, or processes such as evaporation or sea ice formation which result in an increase in salinity.” The atmospheric mixed layer is a zone having nearly constant potential temperature and specific humidity with height. The depth of the atmospheric mixed layer is known as the mixing height. Turbulence typically plays a role in the formation of fluid mixed layers.”
“The mixed layer plays an important role in the physical climate. Because the specific heat of ocean water is much larger than that of air, the top 2.5 m of the ocean holds as much heat as the entire atmosphere above it. Thus the heat required to change a mixed layer of 25 m by 1 °C would be sufficient to raise the temperature of the atmosphere by 10 °C. The depth of the mixed layer is thus very important for determining the temperature range in oceanic and coastal regions. In addition, the heat stored within the oceanic mixed layer provides a source for heat that drives global variability such as El Nino.

X Anomaly says: April 26, 2013 at 3:51 pm
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/map/clim/sst.shtml
Yes, that’s very helpful I’ve added the following images to the Ocean Reference page:
Global Sea Surface Temperature Anomaly – Daily
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="578"] NOAA – Earth System Research Laboratory (ESRL) – Click the pic to view at source[/caption]
Global Sea Surface Temperature Anomaly – Weekly
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="578"] NOAA – Earth System Research Laboratory (ESRL) – Click the pic to view at source[/caption]
Global Sea Surface Temperature Anomaly – Monthly
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="578"] NOAA – Earth System Research Laboratory (ESRL) – Click the pic to view at source[/caption]
Global Sea Surface Temperature
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="578"] NOAA – Earth System Research Laboratory (ESRL) – Click the pic to view at source[/caption]
Also the following Time based Longitude/Latitude Sea Surface Temperature images are interesting in visualizing ENSO as Non-Equilibrium Pattern System:
Yearly Trends
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="578"] NOAA – Earth System Research Laboratory (ESRL) – Click the pic to view at source[/caption]
Long Term Anomaly (3.5N-3.5S)
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="578"] NOAA – Earth System Research Laboratory (ESRL) – Click the pic to view at source[/caption]
Longitudinally Averaged Anomaly
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="578"] NOAA – Earth System Research Laboratory (ESRL) – Click the pic to view at source[/caption]
Thank you

dbstealey says: April 26, 2013 at 8:15 pm
I would save that excellent and fun question to sandbag the next presumptuous Warmist commenter pretending to pass himself off as a climate expert.
It would be even better asked in person! ☺
I can’t even get a Warmist to comment on my threads these days, there has to be someone out there who can explain how this all ties back to anthropogenic CO2 emissions… I wonder if the Warmist blog troll funding is drying up…

Greg Goodman says: April 26, 2013 at 8:18 pm
What seems clear in these graphs is that the body of colder water is being drawn across the Pacific by the persistent oceanic gyres , not by surface, wind-driven currents. Secondly, the hotter water is not ‘piling up’ but sinking.
This would seem to more likely to indicate that there is a deep bulk water movement that I believe is inertial in origin. A very slow, deep water tidal movement in the halocline.
The “tongue”, be it hot or cold, is just the result of the convergence of the northern and southern oceanic gyres in that region.
Yes, Earth’s Rotational Energy</a causes the Coriolis Effect, which imparts Planetary Vorticity on the oceans and manifests as Ocean Gyres. Gyres play an important role in ocean circulation, especially along the equator. Also the Thermohaline Circulation;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermohaline_circulation
http://oceanmotion.org/html/impact/conveyor.htm
and its circulation patterns;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Conveyor_belt.svg
http://www.whoi.edu/page.do?pid=12455&tid=441&cid=47170&ct=61&article=20727
http://www.john-daly.com/polar/flows.jpg
also should be taken into account.This map shows where cold dense ocean water is sinking;
http://www.thewe.cc/thewei/&/&/bbc12/gulf_stream.gif
this one shows where heat is released to the atmosphere:
http://www.windows2universe.org/earth/Water/images/thermohaline_circulation_conveyor_belt_big.gif
With this said, there also seems to reasonable evidence for the influence of winds, i.e.:

The prevalent surface winds across the equatorial Pacific ocean are easterly trade winds. These drag warm surface water away from the coast of Peru and cause colder deep ocean water to come to the surface (so-called “upwelling”). Upwelling causes the thermocline (the zone at the top part of the ocean in which temperature decreases rapidly with depth) to be much shallower in the Eastern Pacific than in the western. Trade winds and the equatorial upwelling maintain warm sea surface temperatures at the western equatorial Pacific and cold surface temperatures in the east. When trade winds weaken, the equatorial upwelling decreases, the thermocline gets deeper, the ocean surface along the coast of South America becomes warmer, and trade winds weaken even more. This in turn causes surface waters in the eastern Pacific to became even warmer and so on. This mechanism is known as the Bjerknes hypothesis and represents an onset of El Niño. http://www.csa.com/discoveryguides/prednino/overview.php

I also wonder if part of the “pile”;
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="578"] NOAA – Earth System Research Laboratory (ESRL) – Click the pic to view at source[/caption]
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="578"] NOAA – Earth System Research Laboratory (ESRL) – Click the pic to view at source[/caption]
is the Equatorial Bulge:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equatorial_bulge“>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equatorial_bulge

noaaprogrammer says: April 26, 2013 at 9:29 pm
The bodies of water where I see some minor temperature “sloshing” occuring is in the Mediterranean and Black Sea.
The Black Sea is a swirling cauldron;
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="578"] NOAA – Earth System Research Laboratory (ESRL) – Click the pic to view at source[/caption]
and there is definitely some:temperature “sloshing” in the Mediterranean:
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="578"] NOAA – Earth System Research Laboratory (ESRL) – Click the pic to view at source[/caption]
What’s that all about?
Well from a structural perspective:

“The Mediterranean Sea is an enclosed basin composed of two similar basins and different sub-basins. It is a concentration basin, where evaporation exceeds precipitation. In the surface layer there is an inflow of Atlantic water which is modified along its path to the Eastern basin. This transformation occurs through surface heat loss and evaporation specifically in the Levantine basin. The Mediterranean is furthermore the site of water mass formation processes, which can be studied experimentally because of their easy accessibility.”
“The Mediterranean Sea is an enclosed basin connected to the Atlantic ocean by the narrow
and shallow Strait of Gibraltar (width 13km; sill depth 300m) (Figure 1). It is composed of two similar basins, the Western and Eastern ones, connected by the Strait of Sicily. In each of them a number of sub-basins are presently characterized by a rugged topography, especially in the Eastern part.”
“Why is the Mediterranean important? There are two main reasons. The first one is the impact of the Mediterranean on the global thermohaline circulation which originates in the polar convecting cells of the Northern Atlantic Ocean (Labrador and Greenland seas) where North Atlantic Deep Water (NADW) is formed. In fact the salty North Atlantic Upper Deep Water is the one spreading out at Gibraltar and forming a characteristic tongue that spreads into the eastern and northern Atlantic interior at 1000–1500m depth. This is the LIW discussed above, which has a direct advective path to the polar seas [2] as well as an indirect effect by progressive mixing with North Atlantic Central Waters [3]”
“The Western Mediterranean Deep Water is formed in the Gulf of Lyons in the northwestern corner, and was the object of an extensive observational campaign, the MEDOC experiment in the early 1970s. The deep convection in the Southern Adriatic has been known since the
pioneering work of Pollack [7], and the Southern Adriatic Deep Water spreading out in the bottom layer from the Otranto Strait forms the Eastern Mediterranean Deep Water, which is a component of the closed thermohaline cell. Finally, as already mentioned above, intermediate convection in the Levantine basin, and in the 1990s in the Southern Aegean, leads to the formation of LIW and intermediate Cretan Water respectively. For a thorough recent review of these properties sea see Tsimplis et al[1]. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/19475721.2010.491656

However, another factor might be, “Death hangs over Black Sea: Polluted by the effluent of 16 countries, it is now the ‘most damaged sea in the world'”:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/death-hangs-over-black-sea-polluted-by-the-effluent-of-16-countries-it-is-now-the-most-damaged-sea-in-the-world-1444529.html

As being one of the most contaminated seas in the world, the Black Sea is polluted by the six coastal states (Russian Federation, Ukraine, Romania, Bulgaria, Georgia, and Turkey) and the ten riparian states of major European rivers that flow into the Black Sea.
The Black Sea basin is home to some 160 million people which make up approximately half of Europe’s population. The Danube River, main source of pollution for the Black Sea, pours domestic and industrial wastes into the waters of the Black Sea.
Due to its unique geographical characteristics, the Black Sea has never been a convenient area for settlement. The only outflow of the Black Sea is through the Strait of Istanbul. http://www.mfa.gov.tr/convention-on-the-protection-of-the-black-sea-against-pollution-_bucharest-convention_.en.mfa

As such, in terms of your question, “what’s that all about?, the best I’ve got for you thus far is enclosed areas, complex systems and lots of human effluent… 🙂

phlogiston says: April 27, 2013 at 4:18 am
However in relation to the BZ reaction the term “excitable medium” or “reactive medium” refers specifically to positive feedbacks and the potential for such feedbacks. In the case of ENSO this condition is provided by the Bjerknes feedback – which you yourdelf have referenced in this thread. The Bjerknes feedback model states that both el Nino and La Nina are time-limited episodes of positive feedback, from interaction between Peruvian upwelling and the east to west trade winds.
Yes, you are correct, i.e.:

“Occurrence of ENSO has been explained as either a self – sustained and naturally oscillatory mode of the coupled ocean – atmosphere system or a stable mode triggered by stochastic forcing. In either case, ENSO involves the positive ocean – atmosphere feedback hypothesized by Bjerknes. After an El Niño reaches its mature phase, negative feedbacks are required to terminate growth of the mature El Niño anomalies in the central and eastern Pacific. Four negative feedbacks have been proposed: reflected Kelvin waves at the ocean western boundary, a discharge process due to Sverdrup transport, western Pacific wind – forced Kelvin waves, and anomalous zonal advections. These negative feedbacks may work together for terminating El Niño, with their relative importance varying with time.”
“Bjerknes (1969) recognized that there is a close connection between El Niño and the Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and they are two different aspects of the same phenomenon. Bjerknes hypothesized that a positive ocean – atmosphere feedback involving the Walker circulation is a cause of ENSO (The Walker circulation consists of the surface trade winds blowing from the east to the west across the tropical Pacific Ocean, the rising air in the tropical western Pacific, the upper – level winds blowing from the west to the east, and the sinking air returned back to the surface in the tropical eastern Pacific). An initial positive sea surface temperature (SST) anomaly in the equatorial eastern Pacific reduces the east – west SST gradient and hence the strength of the Walker circulation (Gill, 1980; Lindzen and Nigam, 1987), resulting in weaker trade winds around the equator. The weaker trade winds in turn drive the ocean circulation changes that further reinforce SST anomaly. This positive ocean – atmosphere feedback leads the equatorial Pacific to a warm state , i.e., the warm phase of ENSO – El Niño. At that time, Bjerknes did not know what causes a turnabout from a warm phase to a cold phase, which has been named as La Niña (Philander, 1990).”
http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/cdeser/Docs/submitted.wang.enso_review.pdf

phlogiston says: April 27, 2013 at 3:00 pm
Further to Wang et al.2012:

“3. ENSO mechanisms
The theoretical explanations of ENSO can be loosely grouped into two frameworks. First, El Niño is one phase of a self-sustained, unstable, and naturally oscillatory mode of the coupled ocean-atmosphere system. Second, El Niño is a stable (or damped) mode triggered by or interacted with stochastic forcing or noise such as westerly wind bursts and Madden-Julian Oscillation events (e.g., Gebbie et al., 2007) and the tropical instability waves in the eastern Pacific Ocean (e.g., An, 2008). In either framework, ENSO involves the positive ocean-atmosphere feedback of Bjerknes (1969). The early idea of Wyrtki’s (1975) sea level “buildup” in the western Pacific warm pool treats El Niño as an isolated event. Wyrtkisuggested that prior to El Niño, the easterly trade winds strengthened, and there was a “buildup” in sea level in the western Pacific warm pool. A “trigger” is a rapid collapse of the easterly trade winds. When this happens, the accumulated warm water in the western Pacific would surge eastward in the form of equatorial downwelling Kelvin waves to initiate an El Niño event.”
“The issue of ENSO as a self-sustained oscillation mode or a stable mode triggered by random forcing is not settled. It is possible that ENSO is a self-sustained mode during some periods, a stable mode during others, or a mode that is intermediate or mixed between the former and the latter. The predictability of ENSO is more limited if ENSO is a stable mode triggered by stochastic forcing than if ENSO is a self-sustained mode, because the former depends on random disturbances.” http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/cdeser/Docs/submitted.wang.enso_review.pdf

phlogiston says: April 28, 2013 at 8:58 am
What do Wang et al. mean by “stochastic forcing”? Periodic forcing I can understand, from orbital, tidal etc rhythms, but what would provide stochastic forcing?
Per Wang et al.:

“3.2. A stable mode triggered by stochastic forcing
Another view of ENSO is that El Niños are a series of discrete warm events punctuating periods of neutral or cold conditions (La Niñas). That is, ENSO can be characterized as a stable (or damped) mode triggered by stochastic atmospheric/oceanic forcing (e.g., Lau, 1985; Pendland and Sardeshmukh, 1995; Moore and Kleeman, 1999; Philander and Fedorov, 2003; Kessler, 2003). This hypothesis proposes that disturbances external to the coupled system are the source of random forcing that drives ENSO. An attractive feature of this hypothesis is that it offers a natural explanation in terms of noise for the irregular behavior of ENSO variability. Since this view of ENSO requires the presence of “noise”, it easily explains why each El Niño is distinct and El Niño is so difficult to predict (e.g., Landsea and Knaff, 2000; Philander and Fedorov, 2003). The external atmospheric forcing may include the Madden-Julian Oscillation and westerly wind bursts (e.g.,Gebbie et al., 2007), and the oceanic noise may involve the tropical instability waves (e.g., An, 2008).
No matter whether El Niño is a self-sustained oscillator or a stable mode triggered by stochastic forcing, El Niño begins with warm SST anomalies in the equatorial central and eastern Pacific. After an El Niño reaches its mature phase, negative feedbacks are required to terminate growth of the mature El Niño anomalies in the central and eastern Pacific. In other words, the negative feedbacks of the delayed oscillator, the recharge oscillator, the western Pacific oscillator, and the advective-reflective oscillator may be still valid for demise of an El Niño, even if El Niño is regarded as a stable mode triggered by stochastic forcing. As discussed by Mantua and Battistti (1994), a sequence of independent warm events can still be consistent with delayed oscillator physics, since the termination of an individual El Niño event still requires negative feedback that can be provided by wave reflection at the western boundary.”

This paper, “Ensemble-mean dynamics of the ENSO recharge oscillator under state-dependent stochastic forcing” by Jin et al., 2007;
http://www.academia.edu/2780504/Ensemble-mean_dynamics_of_the_ENSO_recharge_oscillator_under_state-dependent_stochastic_forcing
states that:

“In this paper, the conceptual recharge oscillator model for the El Nino-Southern Oscillation phenomenon (ENSO) is utilized to study the influence of fast variability such as that associated with westerly wind bursts (WWB) on dynamics of ENSO and predictability. The ENSO-WWB interaction is simply represented by stochastic forcing modulated by ENSO-related sea surface temperature(SST) anomalies. An analytical framework is developed to describe the ensemble-mean dynamics of ENSO under the stochastic forcing. Numerical ensemble simulations verify the main results derived from the analytical ensemble-mean theory: the state-dependent stochastic forcing enhances the instability of ENSO and its ensemble spread, generates asymmetry in the predictability of the onsets of cold and warm phases of ENSO, and leads to an ensemble-mean bias that may eventually contribute to a climate mean state bias.”
“More-over, not only is ENSO dependent on fast atmospheric variability, but MJO and WWB activity is modulated by temperature anomalies in the central equatorial Pacific [Keen, 1982; Luther et al. , 1983; Gutzler , 1991; Kessler et al., 1995; Kessler and Kleeman, 2000; Vecchi and Harrison, 2000; Yu et al., 2003; Eisenman et al., 2005; Perez et al., 2005]. As conjectured by Keen [1982], Lukas [1988] and Lengaigne et al. [2004], an individual MJO/ WWB can shift the warm pool eastward, making it more likely for more MJO/WWB events to be generated and thus further extensions of the warm water front and developments of Kelvin pulses, which may contribute to the generation of a mature El Nin˜o event. This type of fast and coupled interaction, which can be parameterized in terms of a multiplicative noise source, may have an important influence on ENSO predictability [Lengaigne et al. ,2004], the instability of ENSO [Eisenman et al. , 2005], andthe statistical probability distribution of ENSO [Perez et al. ,2005]. The aim of our study is to develop a new theoretical framework that captures and synthesizes these effects andillustrates the main qualitative differences between the additive [e.g., Penland and Sardeshmukh, 1995; Thompson and Battisti, 2000; Zavala-Garay et al., 2005] and state-dependent (multiplicative) stochastic forcing on the dynamics of ENSO.”
“The stochastic forcing terms [sx(t)G] and [asx(t)G] represent the effects of fast atmospheric wind anomalies (short de-correlation timescales) on the eastern equatorial SST anomalies and the equatorial heat content variations, respectively. The proportionality coefficient a reflects the fact that the same stochastic wind stress can serve as the forcing for SST and also for the recharge and discharge of the equatorial heat-content anomalies.”

Danny says: April 30, 2013 at 1:43 am
The link to Scaffeta’s forecast page seems to be broken.
Corrected, thanks.