Guest essay by Joe Bastardi
I am a bit surprised at some of the waffling in the meteorological community on the ENSO event ( then again, maybe it is I who will be surprised). Its evolving . I stated on our weatherbell.com site at the start of the month to get ready for the drop in the SOI that would allow the warmer sub surface water to come up and its like clockwork, its coming. Look at the SOI this month, and notice how over the last 15 days, alot of double digit negatives have shown up after a period that was basically a wash. I don’t know why there is all the hand wringing with this event.
The JAMSTEC el nino index has had this nailed from the get go. The REASON IT IS CALLED EL NINO is in many cases its effects mature late in the year, and the reason for that I think is that rising pressures over Asia force the shift in the global wind oscillation so that the feedback needed, when all things are equal, to produce the linkage occurs. It has been a mainstay of our idea all year ( if you remember the trashing of the Super Nino I did when that was being pushed). But its been interesting watching update after update hemming and hawing, the range going from the Super Nino in mainly public circles to an idea I saw last night, that low solar means no el nino. Actually the opposite is true, as every sunspot min since the 50s has had an el nino around it within 18 months.
Here is the sunspot cycles with el ninos in X’s next to the mins. It is not to say that el ninos do not occur because of the more standard ideas, there are other el ninos that have occurred, it is to say, that when the sunspot cycle is weak, el ninos tend to show up, so the idea of less solar radiation means cooler, so no el nino does not look good when confronted with the facts seen here.
Which would make some sense since a reduction of incoming radiation in the tropics, would have the effect of perhaps changing the pressure patterns and slowing the easterlies, allowing warm water to come to the top. In any case, check out the SOI fall pattern the last couple of weeks in the dailies
![clip_image001[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/clip_image0011.png?quality=75 "clip_image001[1]"){kind=small}
The latest daily
The warmer water is there, and is coming to the top
The JAMSTEC has had this all along, back in April when we had to debunk super nino hysteria
At that time the CFSV2 had this going to plus 2, the Jamstec had plus 1.25
The CFSV2 has this reaching a plus .8 or so now this winter, the Jamstec is consistent with its a shade over plus 1
It is interesting to note 2 things 1) it was too warm too quick, but maintained about the same value for the winter 2) The cry of the Super Nino crew that has changed from Super nino to 2 year nino, citing the CFSV2 is not agreed with at all by a) The D Aleo method that says in the cold PDO decadolly, these warm spikes last on average 9 months and b) by the JAMSTEC which agrees with Joes theory, and the physical realities of the overall pattern. That monster warm look in the Pacific 2 years from now is likely to be almost opposite of what it is now. Look at the current SST ( left) then in Jan 1958 middle, then in Jan 1961
Amazing, isnt it
Now a snide climate comment., what do you think is going to happen to the global temp, since here, the last 10 years,
when this predictable cyclical flip occurs?
Let’s remember while September was 1st warmest ever by NOAA’s bullhorn, it was 8th in the NCEP satellite era, 7th in Dr Roy Spencers UAH and 9th in the RSS. Of course if you look at everything, then you see everything, but if you refuse to look, then you blindly report only on what you see. ( especially if it fits your missive
Joe Bastardi
Thank you for continuing to increase my understanding of Meteorology. Some observations and a question:
This past early June, I was in Tahiti and there were very strong Easterlies. 10 days later, I was in Darwin and there were moderate to strong Easterlies. The Western Pacific Warming Pool was quite warm, yet the predictions of El Nino by Australian Meteorology kept declining from Very Big in January, to Big in May, to Moderate in June. Stating that the SOI did not “cooperate”. Hmmm. When back to USA, I wrote that the Christmas child may be a “no-show” and there were some speculations in the blogosphere that El Nino wouldn’t come to late January or even Spring.
My question: as El Nino seems to vary in terms on onset, area covered, strength, does the present picture of El Nino have any resemblance to a Modoki event?
BTW: I am unfamiliar with the terms 190-240E on your graphs.
Thank you
Its the mainstay of the kind of event we believe is coming
Caleb,
A key to whether we get monster snowstorms(ice in the south) is whether the AO/NAO crashes, which supplies the cold air and provides the potential for the northern jet stream to phase/link with jet stream energy in the southern branch with origins from El Nino land.
To elaborate more, the AO is the Arctic Oscillation, NAO North Atlantic Oscillation. Here’s a great link for an explanation for what they represent:
http://www.nc-climate.ncsu.edu/climate/patterns/NAO.html
When these 2 indices are negative(-AO/-NAO) in the WInter, it represents a pattern that often flushes cold from high latitudes farther south to the mid latitudes(meridional, north to south flow). This causes the Eastern half of the US to be colder than average.
When these 2 indices are positive(+AO/+NAO) in Winter, there is a tendency for the exact opposite effect and temperatures are often milder than average in the Eastern half of the US.
The NAO and AO usually move in the same direction and cause similar type of weather in the Eastern US.
For somebody forecasting Winter weather from the Midwest to East Coast, knowing the phase of the NAO/AO is extremely useful, especially with regards to predicting temperatures.
The NWS provides some good links on this:
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/daily_ao_index/ao.shtml
You can go to the forecast of the AO for the next 2 weeks, in red here for instance:
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/daily_ao_index/ao.sprd2.gif
Or go to the monthly graph going back to 1950 for the NAO for instance:
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/pna/month_nao_index.shtml
Recent Winters(like 2009/10) featured some strongly negative AO/NAO values which was the result of a very cold pattern.
Last Winter was a bit unusual in the fact that extreme cold dominated but the pattern was not a typical strongly negative AO/NAO. When these values are very low, we often have a strong upper level high around Greenland(Greenland block) with a deep upper level trough or low farther south. The graphic from the first link earlier illustrates how cold air is driven from north to south with the -AO pattern.
In 2013/14, we had the deep upper level low/Polar Vortex pretty far south but the connection was not with a Greenland High to the north/northeast, instead the cold air connection was from Siberia and much farther west from a massive upper level high anchored in the East/Northeast Pacific that extended all the way up to Siberia, which is where alot of our air masses were coming from. Part of this blocking ridge was nicknamed the Ridiculously Resilient Ridge(RRR) and it also blocked weather systems from getting to California.
Downstream from the RRR, we had the jet stream energy digging southward and carving out a deep vortex(Polar) that, at times was a cut off low way far south to the US/Canadian border.
Having the Polar Vortex this far south was much more common in the 70’s, numerous times in much of the Winter of 76/77 and the 2nd half of the Winter of 77/78 for instance.
In fact, it’s not that unusual during our coldest Winters.
When we have a strongly -AO, the cold air connection is much farther east, so much so that Europe usually feels the effects of the cold dropping from high latitudes to the mid latitudes.
I believe 2009/10 was such a Winter and that last Winter, 2013/14 was not as cold in Europe because the AO was not as extremely low.
In the last 5 Winters(2011/12 was a huge exception) we’ve had some pretty stout -AO/-NAO’s. There’s a tendency for phases to stay more negative or more positive for numerous years.
Thanks for the overview.
I like the idea (and humor) of the RRR.
“the drop in the SOI that would allow the warmer sub surface water to come up”
So the heat was hiding in the ocean and it is now very likely to surface causing the globe to warm another notch. Isn’t this the very idea we were denying? I am not a troll, I am just confused.
Warm does sound good to me, I will be retiring in a couple of years time and I don’t like cold.
But I explained that in previous posts. Yes it comes up, but guess what, it will then start cooling from below. My point was all the hysteria early about the super nino was off base because the easterlies would not weaken enough, due to the water around Australia affecting the pressure pattern, so that water simply cooled as it came up. Its when the easterlies weaken, the warmer water can come up. So here it is, but its coming late in the year, not into a full blown monster super nino, which by the way has been forecasted with every nino since the 97-98 one.
Robin the problem is that the weather is a movie, not a snapshot. If you read the posts I had in April then in mid summer, I continually explained what I thought was going on. The enso event is a product of all around it. Its like a storm that forms because of the pattern, then eventually feedsback into pattern until the imbalance is resolved. Its my take that the rising pressures over the Asian continent as we go into the cool season leads to a change in the Global wind oscillation, which then allows the warming to come toward the top, where it can then “link” with the overall pattern and produce the drop. So they work in tandem. But once the imbalance is corrected, then we will go back to the cooler look of the cool pdo. That is what the maps I put on showed, how close this is to Jan 1958 ( it will look very much like it in a few months) but within 3 years, the cold was back yet again.
I am taking the time to answer here, because these are ideas. In the private sector, many times we have to battle test our ideas ON THE FIELD OF BATTLE, not in a lab, or in a paper, So I like trying to show what we are up to first. As in any event in the future only God knows..but guys like me try to reach beyond our grasp
I never expected a reply. My opinion is of no consequence whatsoever in the field of climate science. I am sure you are right. If those coincidental plateaus on the temperature graphs are real then I will simply accept that non-el Nino years are somehow masking our slow climb out of the little ice age.
“That is what the maps I put on showed, how close this is to Jan 1958 ( it will look very much like it in a few months) but within 3 years, the cold was back yet again.”
Ah Joe so now you’ve explained that I can try and understand those maps a bit more but now you’ve elaborated on hat you was trying to show, I feel a bit better. I guess many of us have been embroiled in this issue for a long time especially since the internet years which really has notched the whole thing beyond what it once was and without that internet the AGW’s would have had game , set and match by now.
So when I and I guess others who are not scientist of any description see articles like yours and other from other sceptics we want it to be clear , with direction and cast iron foundations. For me its been like watching a tennis match with the leading sceptical scientist saying this and then looking at what the global warming scientist say next. This whole thing could turn into an even bigger mishmash of a mess if warming starts to significantly continue after this last 18 years then the sceptics case will be totally weakened whether the cause is natural or not -no one will care by then and the AGW’s will have won the day with all opposition being shut up. However natural or not natural that is out of the hands of sceptics but what is still in their hands is to see if there really ha sbeen data tampering and lots are talking about it and some coming right out and saying it like Steve Goddard and Jennifer Marohasy but even that seems to be going nowhere.
So IMHO if warming resumes we on the sceptics side are royally f*&£ked
Joe, this is by far the most interesting and informative thread I have seen in quite a while. My thanks to you, Bob (‘Mr. T.’) and most of those who replied.
To Robin H.;
You seem to be equating the “warmer sub surface water” with the heat hiding in the (deep) ocean. Some claim Earth’s atmosphere is not warming like it was some years ago because there is “missing heat” or warming that hasn’t been measured in the deep cold water of the world ocean. Many look at the surface temperature record and see a pause or plateau or hiatus. That, then, needs and explanation if the heat trapping CO2 hypothesis is to be maintained. The “heat hiding in the deep ocean” will not magically reappear (if it is there) any time soon or rapidly (over a short time span).
The known warm water is found in the Pacific Warm Pool. Bob Tisdale has been writing about the PWP since – well, since he started in 2008. The water becomes warm because of the Sun’s short wave radiation (think seeing the color of fishes in shallow clear water). That energy warms the water and currents move it to the western Pacific. Bob’s site and WUWT carry his posts – now at #18 in a special series, but there are many more. Unlike the missing heat, this heat comes and goes on a relitively short (a few years) time span.
The warm pool water is maintained in the western Pacific by relatively strong trade winds orchestrated several factors. Regards the sun, The strength of the Hadley Circulation should weaken as solar heating weakens and thus weaken the trade winds making it easier for a westerly burst to trigger an El Nino. Paleoclimate data shows that during the LIA that coincides with solar minimums, the warm pool was cooler and the oceans were in a more El Nino like state (i.e a smaller east -west temperature gradient). In contrast during the Medieval Warm period and higher solar activity the oceans were more often in a LA NIna like state and the warm pool was warmer than today.
Nice post Joe, as always..
If there is an ENSO+ event, it will be minimal. The subsurface waters just don’t support anything beyond a weak El Nino, if there is one at all…and the Aussie model, which is a heck of a lot better than the CFS v2, shows La Nada, for the 5th straight month.
Like every other pattern in weather, there are things we simply haven’t seen before, and being in this phase of a solar cycle has likely not had El Ninos many times in the past…but we only have a limited database. The sun is weaker than at any time in modern history, and measured oceanic temperatures back in the 1700s and 1800s are sparse to none, so it’s also possible that we’ll have no Nino this year, or at best a weak one, and it’s likely that such a situation has happened many times in the past.
My forecast analogs are based on a weak Nino, so I am certainly hoping for that at least, but even a La Nada pattern favors a cold winter in the east (like last year).
SOI, MEI, etc. don’t mean much if the water isn’t warm enough for 3+ months to support an El Nino, and right now that water doesn’t exist. The Kelvin Waves have been weak and the current one is about to wash out with little impact on the Nino status. Looking west, things aren’t much better…so a weak event as most is my analysis and how I’m basing my client forecasts.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/ocean/anim/wkxzteq_anm.gif
Rich 🙂
JAMSEC
is indeed a state of the art model
http://www.jamstec.go.jp/frcgc/research/d1/iod/e/seasonal/overview.html
The cool thing about this weather prediction system is that its also a GCM
AND even cooler it was used by Nissan to study lithium batteries
( model has chemistry)
Bottom line Joe is right to put faith in JAMSEC. Of course to get the weather right
you must include the warming effects from c02. which.. jamsec does.
Has the necessity of a CO2 effect been tested for, or is the model merely robust against such interference?
I’m sure the modellers could just as easily make a climate / ENSO model which depended on imps with pitchforks.
BTW a chemical system more relevant to climate than Nissan’s lithium battery is the Belousov-Zhabotinsky oscillator, a good experimental analog for ENSO which is also a nonlinear oscillator.
No warming effect from CO2 is in evidence. Models are meaningless & worse than worthless except for showing how insignificant at best is CO2. Modelers can make whatever assumptions they want in backcasting. It is evidence of nothing but their shameless perfidy.
But does it include the mysterious and undetected amplifiers that are supposed to but don’t drive climate where CO2 alone cannot?
“…you must include the warming effects from co2…”
Could have been “SOME warming effects”
Could have been “WARMING effects”
But it’s “THE warming effects”
I had no idea that models had come so far.
“Of course to get the weather right
you must include the warming effects from c02. which.. jamsec does”.
Steven,
You are a very funny guy (:
Hi Joe, many thanks for your post. As a layman in the UK we don’t consider ENSO events to impact us much although we know they do but Gulf stream and Jet Stream are constant factors here. What do you think is in store for us this winter? I have heard predictions of a long cold one with the Jet Stream slipping south of us (when last winter it was to the north and brought constant cyclones and a lot of water), will an ENSO event make any impact in the UK no matter how small it is?
Thanks
Badgerbod
Thank you Joe …… Keep up the good work we are listening and learning …….. Cheers
Joe,
Thanks.
If I understand you, there is a strong correlation between sunspot number (therefore other periodic solar variables) and El Nino.
Please CC Willis and Lief.
While I question Joe’s wisdom in using the words he used, I don’t think Joe said anything about a “strong correlation”. It seems to me that Joe was using anecdotal information. I would caution Joe, you and all climate-curious people not to use anecdotal observations to make hypothetical statements. They have in the past led entire herds of people to run pell-mell down the primrose path and over the cliff of wrong-headed thinking.
Funny you should mention Primrose. I just bought 416 plants to border a 100″ driveway. I do now have a primrose path so to speak. For real.
Those Xs at the trailing edges of the sunspot maxima are very thought provoking.
Joe – are you going to take up Bob Tisdale’s bet?
Bob Tisdale October 26, 2014 at 7:55 am
No bet, phlogiston. Joe reminded me via email that some of the ENSO indices are already pointing to El Nino conditions. It was a dumb idea on my part.
The thing to remember about any future El Nino is that once the warmth from the oceans moves in to the Atmosphere it is then lost to the world and with the weak sun could take a long time to be replaced.
Such events with all the other patterns coinciding means it could get very cold in the northern hemisphere.
Hey Joe,
The Philippines Department of Agriculture have produced a list of rice varieties that they hope will best perform during the coming El Nino.
http://buythetruth.wordpress.com/2009/10/31/climate-change-and-the-death-of-science/
O/T and as an avid reader bu8t non-qualified layman interested only in the search for honesty, I have read the article linked above for the first time via a James Delingpole article on a non-climate posting of his – utterly astonishing that after following the “debate” for so many years to have found what appears to be an erudite and well sourced essay demolishing the whole AGW prognosis.
I can only assume that in the several years I’ve been folllowing WUWT that I’ve missed posting showing this link so apologise for duplication
Much appreciated post. Keep it up, showing the data and the thought process gives more insight to logical thinking people that CAWG is not science but is only political science.
Hi Joe, down here in the SW corner of the Big Pond it is very much an El Nino Spring. The extra strong prevailing westerlies that rise up around the S.H. spring equinox and are locally known as “the Equinoctuals,” are very common. It is when the gales continue further into the spring that we get the feeling, even without looking at the numbers, that it is an El Nino Spring.
The highs tend to cross the top of New Zealand, while sub-Antarctic lows push up and put the squeeze on the isobars that cross most of the country giving us a procession of strong westerlies followed by cold southerlies coming up off the Antarctic. This prolongs the winter symptoms somewhat to the extent that the only Januaries where snow has fallen on the local mountains are the strong El Nino ones.
So for New Zealand an El Nino is not a ‘hot’ event. El Ninos of the past 40 years are known to be the source of the glacial advances on two of the fastest reacting glaciers on the planet, Franz Josef & Fox on the west coast of our South Island. The prevalence of the moist westerlies dumping metres of rain on the neve’s of those glaciers resulted in rapid advances for the two glaciers from the mid 1980’s through to a maximum in 2008. Since then the lack of strong El Ninos has seen an equally rapid retreat. It is quite funny to watch local scientists claim that FJ & Fox are reacting to El Ninos while the bulk of the retreating glaciers on the eastern side of the Southern Alps are only being affected by man made global warming!
The big question is how prolonged will the effects of this little El Nino be. On the west coast of the North Island we don’t like El Nino. The Boy Child equals cloud, cool temperatures and rain. If prolonged it leads to drought on the other side of our mountain divide so no one is happy. We love the girl! She brings our hottest, sunniest summers. Bring on La Nina!!
“Yes, Virginia, there are El Ninos, but you will not see one until later this decade”. Sorry, Joe . I tend to agree with Bob Tisdale . I do not see an El Nino over this winter I know of no previous case where an El Nino first reached the threshold as late as November/ December / January. and was sustained through the winter. The latest start was the 1958/1959 El NINO which had start during OCT/NOV DEC and it may have been still part of the 1957/1958 El NINO with a 3 month pause. There is no evidence that one is about to start soon . The prevailing SE TRADES are blowing strong over cooler water to the south thus potentially blocking any reversals. Here is what the Australian Bureau of Meteorology said in their last Enso Update
“The tropical Pacific Ocean has remained warmer than average for more than six months, while the Southern Oscillation Index has remained negative since early June. However neither has reached typical El Niño levels for any sustained period, and only weak atmosphere-ocean coupling appears to have taken place so far.
International models surveyed by the Bureau suggest that warmer-than-average tropical Pacific waters are likely to persist. While there has been some easing in model outlooks over the past month, three of eight models reach El Niño thresholds by January and another two remain just shy of the thresholds for an event. ”
So they have no idea either what will happen.
We have seen lots of signs that the El Niño is emerging from wetter weather trends in Texas these last few months to the active monsoon season in the Southwest to the very quiet Atlantic and very active east Pacific hurricane seasons.
The CFS definitely has a warm SST bias, especially when looking “through” the springtime predictability barrier.
Bob Tisdale- there was a westerly wind burst in just the past week near the dateline: http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/MJO/hov_u850.gif
Thanks, WxMatt. I couldn’t get your link to work, but I did go to the MJO webpage…
http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/MJO/
…and yes, you’re right, there was a westerly wind anomaly.
And finally, here is the “wonderful” JAMSTEC forecast for last winter from October 2013. It had the forecast backwards: http://www.jamstec.go.jp/frcgc/research/d1/iod/2007/forecast/temp2.glob.DJF2014.1oct2013.gif
If people can see this as fact https://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2005/arch05/051012electric-earth.htm
How much does this affect ocean , atmosphere coupling? http://www.ips.gov.au/Educational/5/2/3
A really fine post. I think some of the confusion here can be cleared up by looking at the basics. Bob has some good diagrams that explain ENSO very succinctly, here: http://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2014/01/10/an-illustrated-introduction-to-the-basic-processes-that-drive-el-nino-and-la-nina-events/
Many Warmists have confused themselves into thinking that El Nino is global warming. Hence, the little dance they do during El Ninos. They’ve even convinced some of us. But it’s the La Nina that adds extra heat to the system; El Nino is a heat-shedding mechanism that gets rid of the extra heat by exposing it to the sky (T₀, approx. 4°K). Yes, atmospheric temps go up during El Nino, but that just increases Earth’s heat loss by raising T₁ in the Stefan-Boltzman Equation: Q = ε*A*σ*(T₁⁴ – T₀⁴). Note the T to the fourth power, a very powerful exponential.
Tracking global temperature by averaging local air temperatures is like trying to estimate the population of a city by counting cars on its freeways. It’s the net heat flux that matters, and temperatures alone neglect humidity and phase changes and atmospheric pressure, all vital factors in heat flow.
(Here are some tildes to apply above as needed: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~)
yes
JB wrote, “what do you think is going to happen to the global temp, …when this predictable cyclical flip occurs?”
JB:
I’m guessing you’re saying the Global 2-meter temp anomaly will go to -0.3 C (+/- 0.1) or so. Is that what you are saying?
From other lines of evidence and empirical obs, I’ve come to expect that by 2017, the global temp anomaly will have fallen at least 0.2 C or so (in the satellite RSS/UAH datasets, since the GISS monkeys will keep fudging the surface data as long as they can).
Joel
Joe’s chart identifies 6 El Nino periods since the start of Cycle 19 which I’m guessing from memory is about 1950. NOAA/CPC identifies 19 El Nino periods in that same time span. It seems reasonable that another El Nino will happen before the start of Cycle 25 which I am guessing will begin towards the end of the current decade. If an El Nino were to begin in the next few months it would be coinciding with the tailend of the peak of Cycle 24. I suppose that is possible but I think I will rely on Bob’s research and agree with him that an El Nino in the next couple of months is getting increasingly unlikely though NOAA/CPC continues their high probability (65% chance) watch.
Updated Charts:
Troup’s SOI
Pressures
Still looking like warmish “la nada” to me. After flagging for a week or so, looks like the trade winds are starting to pick up again. While the forecast models might be saying conditions are favorable for the development of El Nino, I’m not seeing it reflected in the trades (yet). Trades are roughly nominal across nearly the entire Pacific except for the farthest western Pacific and even then it has started to turn around the past couple of days. Also, we currently don’t have anywhere in the Pacific with a surface anomaly of >1 degree C.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/intraseasonal/tlon_heat.gif
I would not say jamstec is the state of the art, it has often chops and changes between el nino and not in the first half of the year, and also does not produce southern hemp sst anomalies at all well, away from the equator in certain large areas, I also have noted.. Though it is better than many others, it still has a long way to go, and I would not say the CO2 input helps the analysis either SM, it often seems to bais the temps towards warmer than they eventually show.