Guest Post by Bob Tisdale
Back in April of this year NOAA added the 2014/15 El Niño to their Oceanic NINO Index (a.k.a. ONI). See the former version of ONI here. Last week, with NOAA’s switch to their new Extended Reconstructed Sea Surface Temperature dataset version 4 (ERSST.v4), the 2014/15 El Niño has now disappeared from their list of “official” El Niño and La Niña events. See the present (ERSST.v4) version of ONI here.
But the 2014/15 El Niño isn’t the only ENSO event to have disappeared from ONI with the change to the new ERSST.v4 dataset. The 2005/06 La Niña also dropped off ONI, and so did the 1983/84 La Niña. On the other hand, the 1967/68 La Niña and the 1979/80 El Niño became official ENSO events with the new ERSST.v4 data, where they weren’t qualified with the ERSST.v3b data.
The weaker, short-term El Niño and La Niña events (based on NINO3.4 region surface temperatures) appear and disappear from the NOAA Oceanic NINO Index with each revision and with changes in how anomalies are calculated for ONI. Tables 1 and 2 include the 5 versions of NOAA’s Oceanic NINO Index that have existed over the past decade or so. (Click on them for larger versions.) The ERSST.v3b data with the base years of 1971-2000 for anomalies are included on both tables. The older versions of the Oceanic NINO Index are available through the Wayback Machine archives.
Table 1
# # #
Table 2
On Table 2, you’ll note that there are two Ocean NINO Indices using the ERSST.v3b data. The left-hand ONI uses the base years of 1971-2000 for sea surface temperature anomalies, while the middle (and right-hand, ERSST.v4-based) ONI uses multiple climatologies that shift every 5 years. Yes, that means the anomalies are not referenced to a common base period.
NOAA discusses the reasoning behind this in their Description of Changes to Oceanic NINO Index (ONI) webpage, which was revised for the new ERSST.v4 data. The first two paragraphs there read (my boldface):
Due to a significant warming trend in the Niño-3.4 region since 1950, El Niño and La Niña episodes that are defined by a single fixed 30-year base period (e.g. 1971-2000) are increasingly incorporating longer-term trends that do not reflect interannual ENSO variability. In order to remove this warming trend, CPC is adopting a new strategy to update the base period.
There will be multiple centered 30-year base periods that will be used to define the Oceanic Niño index (as a departure from average or “anomaly”). These 30-year base periods will be used to calculate the anomalies for successive 5-year periods in the historical record…
We discussed the flaw in their assumption that there had been a “significant warming trend in the Niño-3.4 region since 1950” in the June 2012 post Comments on NOAA’s Recent Changes to the Oceanic NINO Index (ONI). In the real world, the “significant warming trend in the Niño-3.4 region since 1950” was a response to the 1976/77 Pacific Climate Shift, not some anthropogenic warming signal. So NOAA deleted the effect of the 1976/77 Pacific shift with the change in how they calculate anomalies for ONI.
CLOSING
The Oceanic NINO Index has been referenced in numerous climate studies. How and if these multiple revisions have impacted those studies is for the authors to determine. Sometimes, even after June 2012 when NOAA revised their method for calculating ONI, authors relied on the older version of the Oceanic NINO Index with the fixed base years of 1971-2000…like Trenberth et al. (2014) Earth’s Energy Imbalance. In other words, even the climate science community appears not to have bought into using multiple base periods for an ENSO index.
And just in case you’re wondering, the 2014/15 El Niño would appear on ONI if NOAA had continued to use 1971-2000 for the base years with the new ERSST.v4 data. Then again, NOAA has switched to the base years of 1981-2010 for many indices, so the 2014/15 El Niño would not exist in ONI with those base years using the new ERSST.v4 data.
The NOAA Oceanic NINO Index is used by some persons when they attempt to make claims about the causes of record-warm surface temperatures. So expect there to be some alarmist nonsense about the absence of an El Niño in the 2014/15 season from the standard sources, including NOAA.
We discussed the reasons for the reported record warm global sea surfaces in the post Did ENSO and the “Monster” Kelvin Wave Contribute to the Record High Global Sea Surface Temperatures in 2014? And as I’ll show in an upcoming post, the 2014/15 El Niño was stronger than most El Niño events during the satellite era if we look at the tropical Pacific as a whole.
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Climate ‘science’ is all about tormenting data. This endless shifting of data, ‘refining’ it, redesigning it, redefining what words means, this reminds me of Alice in Wonderland.
This mania to control the narrative is irritating and dangerous. Trust is collapsing as events don’t match theory. Right now, we are still in a transition from warming to cooling. So the weather vacillates as energy begins to drain from the oceans and a few last blasts of high energy from the sun (one swiped us this week) fool people into thinking we still are in a warming cycle.
If, according to solar scientists, the sun is going into a quiet phase, this means definite cooling like so many times before. We must prepare for this and the opposite is happening.
They have to lied and cheated with the data because they are completely wrong at the base of their beliefs. (faith in science?)
It is simple. CO2 does not warm earth at all. On net it cools, but even then H2O is much, much more important. CO2 is a bit player and it does not even do what they think. So — frack it, let us cheat!
George Orwell’s 1984 nails pretty much all of the behavior we are seeing.
“Those who control the present, control the past and those who control the past control the future.”
― George Orwell, 1984
I am reminded of the old Stalinist method of eradicating any official from History once he falls out of favor. We are doing the same with climate data. Except for people’s memory, the history of past weather events are being expunged.
Why don’t they use a much longer mean for comparison, say: 1900-2010?
Yes. 120 years.
Try telling anyone from Texas that there was no El Nino.
Is gone. See direction of the wind.
http://www.accuweather.com/en/us/national/satellite?play=1
academics can come up with all the fancy definitions of el nino they like. the simple fact is whether a real el nino is occurring will be decided by the fish and the fishermen who target them. this is how the el nino was discovered in the first place.
Anchovies, anyone?
Latest from AUSTRALIA
Niño consolidates
Issued on 23 June 2015 | Product Code IDCKGEWW00
The 2015 El Niño continues to strengthen. Central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean sea surface temperature indices are more than 1 °C above average for the sixth consecutive week. International climate models surveyed by the Bureau of Meteorology indicate further consolidation is likely. El Niño events typically strengthen during the second half of the year, reaching full strength during late spring or early summer. It is not possible at this stage to determine how strong this El Niño will be.
This must be very embarrassing for NOAA who deny that an El NINO has been existing for some time now.. No one believes their science anymore.
Another example of the persistent alteration of past records to achieve non-scientific goals.
This is part of the trickle down effect in action.
Who will know of this change 5 years from now?
Here is what the WMO or WORLD METEOROLOGICAL ORGANIZATION says about the existence of the 2014/15 EL NINO that NOAA denies it exists
News
15 June 2015
Current Situation and Outlook
The tropical Pacific atmosphere and ocean are currently at moderate El Niño levels. The majority of international El-Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) climate models suggest that tropical Pacific temperatures are likely to continue warming, and possibly reach strong El Niño levels, in the coming months. However, model outlooks made at this time are not as accurate as those made during the second half of the year, and hence more confident estimates of event strength will be available after mid-year. National Meteorological and Hydrological Services and other agencies will continue to monitor the conditions over the tropical Pacific for further El Niño development and will assess the most likely local impacts.
This only matters for people who are concerned with a “precise” demarcation between El Niño and other “extreme but less extreme” excursion of the ENSO. Understanding, or rather partial understandings, of the heat transfers, mass transfers, and oscillations of the continuous (or rapidly sampled) measures is unaffected. For the idea that El Niño is merely an extreme and not an additional “category”, I cite Henk Dijkstra, “Nonlinear Climate Dynamics”, 2013, Ca,bridge University Press (“source”, not necessarily “authority”, though I would call the book “authoritative”). I recommend the book as a companion to Bob Tisdale’s informative books, such as “Who Turned on the Heat?”.
So if NOAA tells four different versions of the existence or non existence of an El NINO , can you believe anything they say about the existence or non existence of the HIATUS .
NOAA in their article posted at their NATIONAL CLIMATE DATA CENTER entitled The RECENT GLOBAL SURFACE WARMING HIATUS claim that their recent study “refutes the notion that there has been a slowdown or hiatus in the rate of global warming in recent years
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/news/recent-global-surface-warming-hiatus
Yet NOAA’s own records show this to be incorrect. The hiatus is still happening globally on land despite NOAA gyrations to hide it.
• There is clearly very little if any global warming happening since 2005 when it comes to global land area.
• Global land area temperature annual anomalies during the last 10 years show a flat or negative( cooling )trend of -0.02 C / decade according to NOAA own Climate at A Glance data. UAH satellite data confirm this
• Northern Hemisphere land area 12 month temperature anomalies during the last 10 years show a flat or slightly negative or cooling trend -0.05/ C/decade respectively according to NOAA own Climate at A Glance data.
• In North America, Contiguous US annual temperature anomalies show a negative or cooling trend since 2005 at -0.69 F/decade and a cooling trend of -0.48/decade since 1998 according to NOAA own Climate at a Glance data
• A similar pattern appears to be in Canada where 7 out of 11 climate regions show declining annual temperature departures since 1998; one is flat and 3 show warming . In other words 70 % of North American climate regions are not experiencing global warming but cooling.
So how could global warming HIATUS be refuted when it is clearly still happening on most land areas globally or where people live .the last 10 years
BILL Illis
“The entire climate science community should repudiate these adjustments and ask for changes to be made at the NCDC leadership.”
I agree 100% the data coming from this organization is agenda driven.
The wonders of adjustments. The 1982/3 El Niño and the 1983/4 La Niña were the the perfect ENSO climate flip years in Australia. A drastic drought first and then a year of plenty. Obviously I must first suspend disbelief and embrace the “new truth”. Anyone over the age of fifty are “expertly” advised to disregard their own experience.
1. Adjust and Homogenize the data – cool earlier temps
2. Karl study warms the oceans
3. Remove most Nino’s to ensure humans caused any adjusted warming
Science in its finest hour.
The Australian Bureau of Meteorology headline “El Niño consolidates. Issued on 23 June 2015.
The 2015 El Niño continues to strengthen.”
Whoops! Hey Gavin and co you have let your Aussie mates down, and they are about as warmist as you get! Could have given them a heads up old boy???
Anthony – Your damn commercials are interfering with reading and writing comments. Are you trying to get rid of your clients?
Arno, try using the Chrome browser with the adblock plus extension (free). I see no ads, but that 10 have been blocked.
Thanks!!!
Yes, this is recent
In Safari, for example, if you scroll down the page to the comments, the page jerks back to the dumb video commercial over and over again. This began about 4 days ago. It is very irritating. This doesn’t happen to me at other sites with video ads.
with the old unadjusted data set one can make predictions about the next ONI turn dates; as there was a clear ~300months +/-5 months relationship. Using this OLD data I am able to predict when ONI will turn over the next 30yrs!!!! within a few months! The NEW data has totally corrupted this predictability as now ONI turns (start, end, peak of el nino’ and la nina’s) have disappeared of the record… instead of trying to learn something about climatic cycles and making reliable predictions that serve society NOAA is pursuing a short term political agenda that serves only a few, and leads to disaster for many.