El Niño and La Niña events are the dominant modes of natural climate variability on Earth, which is why the state of the tropical Pacific is continuously monitored. El Niños and La Niñas impact weather patterns globally. As a number of recent papers have argued, the dominance of La Niña events in recent years is responsible for part of the cessation in global surface warming outside of the Arctic, so by inference, those papers are also stating that a string of strong El Niño events were responsible for part of the long-term warming from the mid-1970s to the turn of the century. There’s nothing new about that; for years we’ve been discussing the naturally occurring, sunlight-fueled processes that drive El Niño events and cause long-term warming of global surface temperatures. If this subject is new to you, see the link at the end of this post for an overview.
The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) provides the following summary of their ENSO forecasts in their January 30, 2014 El Niño/La Niña Update:
- ENSO conditions are currently neutral (neither El Niño nor La Niña);
- As of mid-January 2014, except for a small possibility for weak and brief La Niña development during the next couple of months, outlooks indicate likely continuation of neutral conditions into the second quarter of 2014;
- Current forecasts indicate approximately equal chances for neutral conditions or the development of a weak El Niño during the third quarter of 2014, reflecting increased chances for development of a weak El Niño.
It appears no one is suggesting that a full-fledged La Niña will form for the 2014/15 season. As of the week centered on February 5th, the sea surface temperature anomalies of the NINO3.4 region of the equatorial Pacific indicated that the tropical Pacific was experiencing La Niña conditions, though not an “official” La Niña. See the monthly sea surface temperature update for January 2014.
What’s your prediction? Please provide links to the variables you monitor. Here’s what I predict.
I predict, if we see El Niño conditions, global warming enthusiasts will cheer, because they have forecast, in turn, that record high global temperatures will accompany the next El Niño. And I predict, if we see La Niña or ENSO-neutral conditions, skeptics will cheer, because global surface temperatures should continue to remain flat. (Other than that, I don’t make predictions.)
The ENSO wrap-up from Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) for February 14, 2014 provides a similar loose forecast. (For those who live north of the equator, keep in mind the BOM is discussing austral seasons.)
And NOAA’s CPC has a similar mix of possible scenarios in their Weekly ENSO Update dated February 10, 2014—though the NCEP’s models are forecasting El Niño conditions starting in April-June 2014. See page 27.
The WMO briefly mentions the problems with ENSO predictions during this part of the year. They write:
It must be noted that model outlooks that span March-May period tend to have particularly lower skill than those made at other times of year. Hence some caution should be exercised when using long range outlooks made at this time for the middle of the year and beyond.
ENSO predictions at this time of year are hampered by a problem called the Spring Prediction Barrier. See the discussion at the IRI website here. But a series of new papers claim to have overcome that hurdle.
The recently published Ludescher et al (2014) Very Early Warning of Next El Niño (paywalled) are predicting El Niño conditions by late 2014. The abstract reads:
The most important driver of climate variability is the El Niño Southern Oscillation, which can trigger disasters in various parts of the globe. Despite its importance, conventional forecasting is still limited to 6 mo ahead. Recently, we developed an approach based on network analysis, which allows projection of an El Niño event about 1 y ahead. Here we show that our method correctly predicted the absence of El Niño events in 2012 and 2013 and now announce that our approach indicated (in September 2013 already) the return of El Niño in late 2014 with a 3-in-4 likelihood. We also discuss the relevance of the next El Niño to the question of global warming and the present hiatus in the global mean surface temperature.
Global warming enthusiasts have already started cheering for an El Niño. See the Michael Slezak article in NewScientist titled El Niño may make 2014 the hottest year on record. And Andrew Freedman of ClimateCentral begins his post Study Sounds ‘El Niño Alarm’ For Late This Year:
A new study shows that there is at least a 76 percent likelihood that an El Niño event will occur later this year, potentially reshaping global weather patterns for a year or more and raising the odds that 2015 will set a record for the warmest year since instrument records began in the late 19th century.
Ludescher et al (2014) appears to be based on Ludescher et al (2013) Improved El Niño forecasting by cooperativity detection (paywalled). We discussed the earlier Ludescher et al paper in the July 2013 post El Niño in the News. I closed that post with:
DID GLOBAL WARMING CAUSE THE EL NIÑOS OR DID EL NIÑOS CAUSE GLOBAL WARMING?
Numerous datasets indicate that El Niño events are fueled naturally. Additionally, satellite-era sea surface temperature records indicate that El Niño events are responsible for the warming of sea surface temperatures over the past 31 years, not vice versa as Li et al (2013) have suggested. If this topic is new to you, refer to my illustrated essay “The Manmade Global Warming Challenge” [42MB].
Also for reference, the Hansen et al., 2014 prediction:
“So what are the near-term prospects? El Niño depends on fickle wind anomalies for initiation, so predictions are inherently difficult, but conditions are ripe for El Niño initiation in 2014. About half of the climate models catalogued by the International Research Institute predict that the next El Ni ño will begin by summer 2014, with the other half predicting ENSO neutral conditions 21. The mean NCEP forecast 21 issued 13 January has an El Niño beginning in the summer of 2014, although a significant minority of the ensemble members predicts ENSO neutral conditions for 2014.
The strength of an El Niño, too, depends on the fickle wind anomalies at the time of initiation. We speculated 22 that the likelihood of “super El Niños, such as those in 1982 – 3 and 1997 – 8, has increased. Our rationale was that global warming increased SSTs in the Western Pacific, without yet having much 13 effect on the temperature of upwelling deep water in the Eastern Pacific (Fig. 2 above), thus allowing the possibility of a larger swing of Eastern Pacific temperature. Recent paleoclimate 23 and modeling 24 studies find evidence for an increased frequency of extreme El Niños with global warming.
Assuming that an El Niño begins in summer 2014, 2014 is likely to be warmer than 2013 and perhaps the warmest year in the instrumental record. However, given the lag between El Niño initiation and global temperature, 2015 is likely to have a temperature even higher than in 2014.”
DontGetOutMuch says:
February 15, 2014 at 5:53 am
A couple of thoughts.
1. Joe Bastardi I believe, is on record stating that an El Niño will occur beginning fall of 2014. He is about the only reliable source that is predicting an El Niño. I don’t know what Joe bases this on, I read it in a tweet, I do not subscribe to Weatherbell. I think Joe follows WUWT, maybe he’ll stop by. 😉
See http://www.weatherbell.com/saturday-summary-february-15-2014
This is a free video by WeatherBell’s Joe Bastardi.
I download it every Saturday from http://www.weatherbell.com
It all depends on ducks.
however
Better than a supercomputer.
“2014 maybe the hottest on record.” These record periods are ridiculousy short.What? About 120 years or so, nowhere near long enough to include the Medeival or Roman warm periods.
Bill Illis, thanks for the links to the GODAS profiles for Januaries 2012, 2013, and 2014. The subsurface anomalies in the western equatorial Pacific looked warmer in January 2012…
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/GODAS/mnth_gif/xz/mnth.anom.xz.temp.0n.2012.01.gif
…than they do in January 2014:
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/GODAS/mnth_gif/xz/mnth.anom.xz.temp.0n.2014.01.gif
We’ll just have to watch and see if history repeats itself.
Hansen et al., 2014 prediction:
“We speculated 22 that the likelihood of “super El Niños, such as those in 1982 – 3 and 1997 – 8, has increased. Our rationale was that global warming increased SSTs in the Western Pacific, without yet having much 13 effect on the temperature of upwelling deep water in the Eastern Pacific (Fig. 2 above), thus allowing the possibility of a larger swing of Eastern Pacific temperature. Recent paleoclimate 23 and modeling 24 studies find evidence for an increased frequency of extreme El Niños with global warming.”
No wonder Hansen was wrong about global warming having it backwards. The western Pacific SSTs increase due to trade winds moving the solar warmed water in that direction. An increased period of stronger El Ninos fueled by solar energy reaching the ocean surface cause global warming not the other way round.
Scientific evidence that backs this up is the long period with no warming and weaker El Ninos from after the peak up to late 1990s. Also the step up in global temperatures only after a strong El Nino. If global warming was causing stronger El Ninos then they would have continued since the last strong one back in 1997/98 and we wouldn’t have a step up after the ENSO event.. The ENSO is just behaving with the natural cycle of the PDO and has nothing to do with humans.
“cum hoc ergo propter hoc”
Close, Post hoc ergo propter hoc. Of course, a prime fallacy committed by the warmists all the time.
Here is the International Research Institute (IRI)/CPC Plume-Based Probabilistic ENSO Forecast;
Columbia University – NOAA – IRI/CPC – Click the pic to view at source[/caption]
Columbia University – NOAA – IRI/CPC – Click the pic to view at source[/caption]
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="632"]
and here is a Plume of Model ENSO Predictions
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="632"]
Here is the IRI Products Page and IRI Forecast Archive back to 2007.
Their latest, December 19th, ITechnical ENSO Update was:
“What is the outlook for the ENSO status going forward? The most recent official diagnosis and outlook was issued earlier this month in the NOAA/Climate Prediction Center ENSO Diagnostic Discussion, produced jointly by CPC and IRI; it called for a high likelihood of neutral ENSO conditions enduring through winter 2013-14 and into spring 2014, with probabilities of El Niño or La Niña each less than 30% until Apr-Jun 2014 when El Niño probabilities rise above that level but stay less than 50% through summer 2014. The latest set of model ENSO predictions, from mid-December, now available in the IRI/CPC ENSO prediction plume, is discussed below.”
“For the Mar-May 2014 season, among models that do use subsurface temperature information, 76% predicts ENSO-neutral SSTs, 24% predicts El Niño conditions and none predicts La Niña conditions. For all model types, the probability for neutral ENSO conditions is above 90% for Dec-Feb 2013-14 and Jan-Mar 2014, above 80% through Apr-Jun 2014, and 67%-73% for May-Jul through Aug-Oct 2014 at the end of the forecast period. Probabilities for El Niño are below 20% through Apr-Jun 2014, and rise to approxiately 30% from May-Jul through Aug-Oct. (Note 1). Caution is advised in interpreting the distribution of model predictions as the actual probabilities. At longer leads, the skill of the models degrades, and skill uncertainty must be convolved with the uncertainties from initial conditions and differing model physics, leading to more climatological probabilities in the long-lead ENSO Outlook than might be suggested by the suite of models. Furthermore, the expected skill of one model versus another has not been established using uniform validation procedures, which may cause a difference in the true probability distribution from that taken verbatim from the raw model predictions.
An alternative way to assess the probabilities of the three possible ENSO conditions is more quantitatively precise and less vulnerable to sampling errors than the categorical tallying method used above. This alternative method uses the mean of the predictions of all models on the plume, equally weighted, and constructs a standard error function centered on that mean. The standard error is Gaussian in shape, and has its width determined by an estimate of overall expected model skill for the season of the year and the lead time. Higher skill results in a relatively narrower error distribution, while low skill results in an error distribution with width approaching that of the historical observed distribution. This method shows probabilities for La Niña at 1% for Dec-Feb 2013-14, remaining at 10% or less through the end of the forecast period in Aug-Oct 2014. Model probabilities for ENSO-neutral conditions are more than 90% from Dec-Feb 2013-14 to Jan-Mar 2014, dropping steadily during northern spring 2014 to become slightly less than 50% from Jun-Aug through the end of the forecast period in Aug-Oct 2014. Probabilities for El Niño are below 10% from Dec-Feb 2013-14 to Feb-Apr 2014, thereafter steadily increasing to exceed 30% by May-Jul 2014 and to between 40% and 50% from Jun-Aug to Aug-Oct 2014 (maximizing at 45% for both Jul-Sep). It is clear that the models collectively favor neutral ENSO conditions into northern spring 2014; then by Jun-Aug El Niño probabilities become more competitive with ENSO-neutral probabilities, until they are approximately equally likely for Jul-Sep and Aug-Oct 2014. A plot of the probabilities generated from this most recent IRI/CPC ENSO prediction plume using the multi-model mean and the Gaussian standard error method summarizes the model consensus out to about 10 months into the future. The same cautions mentioned above for the distributional count of model predictions apply to this Gaussian standard error method of inferring probabilities, due to differing model biases and skills. In particular, this approach considers only the mean of the predictions, and not the total range across the models, nor the ensemble range within individual models.
The probabilities derived from the models on the IRI/CPC plume describe, on average, maintenance of neutral ENSO conditions into northern spring 2014. The possibility of El Niño development is seen starting Jun-Aug 2014, but the objective model-based probabilities for El Niño still remain below 50% for Jun-Aug through Aug-Oct 2014. A caution regarding this latest set of model-based ENSO plume predictions, is that factors such as known specific model biases and recent changes that the models may have missed will be taken into account in the next official outlook to be generated and issued in early October by CPC and IRI, which will include some human judgement in combination with the model guidance. “
Kenny says: “I’ve read the PDO effects or drives the AMO.”
The PDO is anti-correlated with the sea surface temperatures of the North Atlantic, so it would be difficult for the PDO to drive the AMO.
http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/pdo-anticorrelated-with-north-atlantic-sst.png
Also, the PDO doesn’t represent the sea surface temperature of the North Pacific. Maybe they were discussing the sea surface temperatures of the extratropical North Pacific, which do correlate with the sea surface temperatures of the North Atlantic:
http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/extratropical-no-pacific-correlation-with-norhern-hemisphere-sst.png
Kenny says: “I’ve also read in some blogs that the AMO may be going negative….and at an earlier time than predicted.”
The North Atlantic sea surface temperature anomalies have been flat for about a decade, so the AMO may have peaked.
http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/07-amo-may-have-peaked1.png
That graph is from the following post:
http://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2014/01/17/comments-on-the-nature-article-climate-change-the-case-of-the-missing-heat/
But it’s difficult to say for sure if the sea surface temperatures of the North Atlantic have, in fact, peaked, since the AMO is such a long-term oscillation.
Kenny says: “Does this help drive Nino or Nina?”
There are some papers that try to link the variations in the sea surface temperatures of the North Atlantic to ENSO, but I haven’t found anything definite.
“In recent years this warm area has been reluctant to move where current anomalies on the other side are below normal.
Compared to December 2013 conditions this year have generally become cooler, especially between 150W and 90W.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/GODAS/mnth_gif/xz/mnth.anom.xz.temp.0n.2013.12.gif
For this reason I would favor La Nada continuing or La NIna than El Nino this year.”
———————————————————————————————————————-
Sorry, Just realized my mistake above.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/GODAS/mnth_gif/xz/mnth.anom.xz.temp.0n.2014.13.gif
The warm pool between 120E and 180 has been reluctant to transfer most/all of the energy into between 150W and 90W for resurfacing over very recent years. The warm pool is still expected to move towards here, so will be very unlikely an La NIna will occur later this year. The uncertainty is how much of the warm pools energy will surface by between summer and late Autumn. For the reason favoring La Nada instead of El Nino is down to conditions between 150W and 90W have become cooler this year and the warm pool is weak compared with many El Ninos developed in the past.
Greg says:
February 15, 2014 at 3:45 am
“A common tidal cause seems a lot more credible that some mysterious teleconnection that allows this tiny part of the Pacific to dictate global climate.
You seem to dismiss with “this tiny part of the Pacific ” and “mysterious teleconnection” everything known about ENSO. First, the tropical Pacific Ocean is the component of interest and it is a large percentage of Earth. The use of the word “tiny” is an attempt at misdirection. Second, what is “mysterious” about teleconnection? Search and read. As an analogy, think of a long garden hose – with pressure, water flows through and gushes out the far end. Shut the valve and that gushing at the end stops. This is not a difficult or mysterious concept.
When your material reachs the rigor of ENSO, your tidal explanation will be of great interest.
Just The Facts says:
February 15, 2014 at 10:59 am
The ENSO forecast from ECMWF and UKMO were very good for the last El NIno back in 2009/2010.
This year they are both forecasting La Nada.
Speaking of weather patterns. As most know we got plastered with snow on the east coast this week. I have mentioned several times at WUWT that the weather station near me 24 hours later reports temperatures 2 -4 °F higher than I actually saw during the day.
Well that B@ur momisugly$T@ur momisuglyrd Jeff McMasters (Wunderground) is reporting the snow we got this week as Precipitation (P)!!! And yes there is a separate category for snow.
Please note I can WALK to the %$#@ur momisugly weather station, it is THAT close to me:
“The official story” is
Tues; 11th -0.01 (P) 0.0 SNOW – Max 35 °F = Min= 29 °F
Wed; 12th -0.37 (P) 0.0 SNOW – Max = 31 °F Min= 24 °F
Thrus 13th -0.36 (P) 0.0 SNOW – Max = 34 °F Min= 30 °F
We had at least 6 inches and it certainly was not above freezing or even close to 32 °F on Wednesday. Heck we STILL have snow on the ground. I had to chop the ice, 2 inches thick out of my stock tanks on Wednesday and carried warm water to my animals to make sure they got at least one warm drink for the day.
So now we know how the US weather service deals with the temperature “adjustments”
They sweep the Snow under the rug!
Steve M. From TN says: “It appears to me that El Niño and La Niña are only weather related events.”
El Nino and La Nina events are the dominant mode of natural variability on Earth. They are monstrous in comparison to all other weather events. Sometimes it takes two tropical cyclones just to kick start an El Niño.
Steve M. From TN says: “As Bob says, ther were more El Niño events durning the warming.”
Actually, the document I linked showed that the warming of sea surface temperatures over the past 32 years was a response to a few strong El Nino events:
http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/the-manmade-global-warming-challenge.pdf
Steve M. From TN says: “I don’t think these are climatic variables, but rather are riding the wave of another pattern..perhaps the PDO.”
The PDO is an aftereffect of ENSO. For discussions of what the PDO is, and more important what it isn’t, see the posts here:
http://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2011/06/30/yet-even-more-discussions-about-the-pacific-decadal-oscillation-pdo/
And here:
http://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2010/09/14/an-inverse-relationship-between-the-pdo-and-north-pacific-sst-anomaly-residuals/
And here:
http://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2010/09/03/an-introduction-to-enso-amo-and-pdo-part-3/
Also, I linked a correlation map above that showed the PDO was anti-correlated with the sea surface temperatures of the North Atlantic:
http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/pdo-anticorrelated-with-north-atlantic-sst.png
The PDO is also anti-correlated with Northern Hemisphere land surface air temperature anomalies:
http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/figure-92.png
So it would be difficult for a positive PDO to cause global warming when surface temperatures throughout the Northern Hemisphere cool when the PDO is positive.
MATT G said
Hansen et al., 2014 prediction:
“We speculated 22 that the likelihood of “super El Niños, such as those in 1982 – 3 and 1997 – 8, has increased.
I agree with you Matt. Another false warmist prediction by the Hansen et al . There is little credibilty left there anymore . Stong EL Ninos typically happen only once per decade during cool phase of the ocean cycles . It takes time and an active sun to build up sufficient heat for strong EL Ninos and with the Pacific SST flat and a declining sun , I don’t see a strong El Nino until 2017/2018 at the earliest.
Bob Tisdale says:
February 15, 2014 at 3:15 am
Oops. I also should have included a link to the following post for those new to El Niño and La Niña processes:
http://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2014/01/10/an-illustrated-introduction-to-the-basic-processes-that-drive-el-nino-and-la-nina-events/
Thanks Bob!
I’m not a ‘newbie’ but I find a review of the basics are essential to help me understand the nuances of discussions that are outside my ‘wheelhouse’ of education and experience. I am not blessed with an eidetic memory. As a result, I appreciate these ‘backgrounder’ links very much!
I encourage others posting articles to include similar ‘backgrounder’ links. They help everyone understand and advance the discussion.
Mac
“DID GLOBAL WARMING CAUSE THE EL NIÑOS OR DID EL NIÑOS CAUSE GLOBAL WARMING?”
I select the third possibility.
Greg says: “That technique looks at ALL lags and analyses the frequency spectra. It may just be that your 2 month lag is not the right lag for those two oceans.”
Trenberth et al (2002) includes the correlations at a number of lags:
http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/papers/2000JD000298.pdf
See their Figure 8 on page 18 of 22.
Or if you feel I’ve not provided the time lag you’re looking for, you should become familiar with the KNMI Climate Explorer:
http://climexp.knmi.nl/selectfield_obs.cgi?someone@somewhere
Regards
Gail Combs says:
February 15, 2014 at 11:18 am
This outrage is going on everywhere in the US, at least, but the media are not reporting it. Real science will never be able to un-mess-up temperature “data” (not readings). The baleful influence of CACA will haunt meteorology & climatology for all time.
Bob
I watch the data that Anthony provides from the ENSO/SST page almost daily. I also watch weather data and the Arctic/Antarctic ice levels. I also read your work. One thing that I have noticed is that the NOAA El-Nino/La-Nina predictions are useless. Any accurate prediction they make seems to be entirely random occurrences. These predictions are updated based on new data every few months and they erase the old predictions. For example, the prediction for this year’s El-Nino has been pushed forward by several months. Originally the temperatures were supposed to have started pushing positive at the first of January. The opposite occurred. Now they are pushing the prediction forward with the same slopes by a few months.
I have watched variations of this for years.
What I have been noticing from the satellite record is a cooling of the entire southern hemisphere brought on by the dramatically increased ice in the Antarctic. You can’t add millions of square kilometers of ice to the oceans and melt it every year without having some cooling effects of the southern ocean. This propagates toward the equator and you can see this in cool water upwelling in the Nino 3.4 region. This fantasy that the deep ocean is heating is just that, a fantasy.
Thus my prediction is for continuing cool conditions in the Nino 3.4 region until the Antarctic ice levels in the oceans abate…
Ian L. McQueen says: “…..Why does this site show its ENSO meter at about -0.7 into the Nina zone?”
The ENSO meter is based on weekly sea surface temperature anomalies for the NINO3.4 region. The WMO is likely basing their statement on monthly data which is still in ENSO neutral territory (though getting close to La Nina conditions):
http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/02-nino3-4-ssta.png
Bob:
Is it my imagination or does http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/CFSv2/imagesInd3/nino34Mon.gif
always seem to hunt upwards (and occasionally downwards) rather than settle on ‘La Nada’ for any given future?
Has anyone ever done a predictions/history for the NINO 3.4 SST Anomalies Forecast analysis?
Greg says:
February 15, 2014 at 3:45 am
“This is URL at the top of the plot but difficult to read. I’ve asked Richard to provide a link. ”
Sorry, I was mobile. (I have a life other than the Internet and trying to look at the world on a post it note attached to a drinking straw is something I do badly).
Feed “tides m2 k1 map picture” into Google and get as many as you wish.
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=tides+m2+k1+map+picture
Retired Engineer John says: “Can you have a cold La Nino caused by the introduction of cold water from the Humboldt Current or by cold water upwelling?”
Increased upwelling along the equatorial Pacific is a part of La Niña conditions so the answer to that portion of your question is yes, but….
Cold water from the Humboldt Current would impact the NINO1+2 region (10S-0, 90W-80W). Last year, NINO1+2 region sea surface temperature anomalies were very low for part of the year, reaching -2 deg C…
http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/17-weekly-nino12-ssta.png
…but a La Niña did not form.
asybot says: “I was under the impression that a number of data collection points were not functioning anymore or intermittent. If so is data then averaged between points? and how large are these gaps in the first place where can I go to find that information?Thanks.”
You are correct that a number of the TAO project buoys are off line. I’m not sure how NOAA would infill the missing data, but for some of the variables there are secondary sources.
The TAO project website is here:
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/tao/index.shtml
But I believe it would be difficult to extract the info you’re looking for.