Updates to and ENSO Observations from the WUWT Ocean Reference Page

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