Guest Post by Bob Tisdale
La Niña conditions are typically defined by NOAA as sea surface temperature anomalies less than or equal to -0.5 deg C for the NINO3.4 region of the east/central equatorial Pacific. The NINO3.4 sea surface temperature anomaly for the week of August 31, 2016 from NOAA’s Monthly Atmospheric and SST Indices webpage (data here) is -0.7 deg C, well into weak La Niña conditions.
Regardless of the existing (and strengthening) La Niña conditions, NOAA has canceled its La Niña Watch, which had been in effect since April. According to the NOAA ENSO Diagnostic Discussion, updated September 8, the “forecaster consensus” is now favoring ENSO-neutral conditions:
ENSO Alert System Status: Not Active
Synopsis: ENSO-Neutral conditions are slightly favored (between 55-60%) during the upcoming Northern Hemisphere fall and winter 2016-17.
ENSO-Neutral conditions were observed over the past month, although sea surface temperatures (SSTs) were below-average over the east-central equatorial Pacific Ocean (Fig. 1). While the Niño-3.4 and Niño-3 regions remained around -0.5°C for most of the month, Niño-4 and Niño 1+2 were -0.1°C and +0.3°C, respectively, by the end of the month (Fig. 2). Subsurface temperatures across the eastern and central Pacific remained below average (Fig. 3), and negative temperature anomalies remained weak across the western Pacific (Fig. 4). Atmospheric anomalies over the tropical Pacific Ocean largely indicated ENSO-Neutral conditions. The traditional Southern Oscillation index and the equatorial Southern Oscillation index were weakly positive during August. The lower-level winds were near average, while the upper-level winds were anomalously westerly in a small region to the east of the International Date Line. Convection was suppressed over the western and central tropical Pacific, although less suppressed compared to last month (Fig. 5). Overall, the combined ocean and atmosphere system continues to reflect ENSO-Neutral.
The multi-model averages favor borderline Neutral-La Niña conditions (3-month average Niño- 3.4 index less than or equal to -0.5°C) during the Northern Hemisphere fall, continuing into winter (Fig. 6). However, the more recently updated model runs from the North American Multi-Model Ensemble (NMME) more strongly favor ENSO-Neutral (Fig. 7). The forecaster consensus prefers this outcome, which is supported by the lack of significant anomalies in several indicators over the past month (winds, convection, subsurface temperatures). Overall, ENSO-Neutral conditions are slightly favored (between 55-60%) during the upcoming Northern Hemisphere fall and winter 2016-17 (click CPC/IRI consensus forecast for the chance of each outcome for each 3-month period).
We’ll keep an eye on the tropical Pacific in months to come regardless of NOAA’s “forecaster consensus”.
My full sea surface temperature update for August 2016 is here. The Blob (elevated sea surface temperature anomalies in the eastern extratropical North Pacific) appears to be returning (reemerging).
The almost constant rain here in north queensland, normally bone dry at this time, indicates to me that la nina is alive & well.
¡Viva La Niña!
Oh, and the current “wild weather” (aka rain in the real world) being shrilly reported on further south is probably further evidence.
Re: ptolemy2 September 9, 2016 at 8:37 am
Having a coffee with a mate this morning. His son came in after a morning surf. “Man, the water was cold!” This guy has been surfing all seasons through the last 20 years. They know!! Place? : Raglan, New Zealand
Very slow spring here, little grass growth, too cold. Where’s those lovely warm spring rains? Still waiting
From about September 15 circulation in the Pacific will be conducive to the development of La Niña.
https://earth.nullschool.net/#2016/09/15/0600Z/wind/isobaric/500hPa/orthographic=-180.02,-3.99,512
Bob Tisdale clearly is WUWT’s ENSO expert, and I understand his clear warning here.
But according to BOM’s ENSO Wrapup
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/#tabs=SOI
with its 30 day running mean:
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/monitoring/soi30.png
it becomes visible that ¡Viva La Niña! will take some more time to become really visible.
A few days ago, this manifestly tired SOI managed to lazily move (for the first time since the last Niña decline in july 2014) above level +7, but immediately dropped down.
Only a sustained keeping above +7 indicates La Niña conditions.
MEI is still on the decline, but has not entered the negative level yet.
And Nick informed us about something similar:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/09/09/noaa-cancels-la-nina-watch-while-la-nina-conditions-exist/#comment-2296181
So… wait and see!
I like that your comment linked to Nick’s comment. If you scroll down just a bit from his link I did post a comment where I analyzed the Nino region data and managed to find cyclic behavior.
I apologize to all of you for not being able to put graphs directly in my comments. I can only furnish onedrive links.
Perhaps, If I only include one link it might entice someone to give the longer comment a look.
https://1drv.ms/i/s!AkPliAI0REKhgP4QAXT8xYFt1tCmUw
I am not adverse to critical comments but some feedback is always appreciated.
I wish I knew how to get pictures in my comments. A picture is worth a thousand words.
BTW, your ending said watt and see. I could not agree more. I hope that within a month or two of data this might just be made clear.
Normally, charplum, it’s quite easy: you see a picture somewhere on the web, click on the right button and then a pulldown menu appears with a field like “copy graphic’s address” or the like. That address you then simply paste into your comment.
?psid=1
But here is an exception. Your link points to an image stored on Microsoft’s ‘onedrive.live.com’. Right clicking on the mouse gives you nothing; ctrk+click instead on the top menu’s right field (I see it in german; for you may be it is ‘Show original’ or the like).
You get a new tab with the same image; now rightclicking gives the menu I told above, ans selecting “copy graphic’s address” a link to the image which is exanded inline by WordPress’ software:
In theory, the image now should have appeared above this line.
Even that didn’t work! That’s Microsoft’s information hiding. Sorry…
If you go above my comment there is another link to a comment that is very close to my original comment. Scroll down a bit and look for another charplum comment.
What I have done for all four nino regions is employ Dr. Evans Optimal Fourier Transform (OFT) to initially identify the frequencies involved. I then use those as an input that goes through a Marquardt process that comes up with a fit to the data. It is surprising how good a fit I get.
Simple visual inspection of the whole record back to the 1850s on nino region data would make you suspect that I can get cycles to match that. Anyway, that is what I have done for all sorts of datasets including all four nino regions, H4, RSS, and UAH.
I fit the satellite records with a correlation coefficient of about 0.95 and it includes a contribution from CO2.
I am not a climate scientist but I did spend 35 years solving rotating equipment problems looking at FFTs.
I am so old I go back to one of the original FFT analyzers, the Nicolet 444 or was it 446.
On the picture problem, I got so frustrated with this I sent off an email to Microsoft on this. I received a reply saying they would try to get me an answer.
Because I have solved so many issues by discerning information from data measurements I believe better evaluation of the data we have can give us the answers we all seek on climate change.
I solved my rotating equipment problems without having a good rotor dynamics model. In fact, I would argue that before you try to construct your model maybe you should spend some time trying to better understand what needs to be in your model. That understanding, at least in my case, came from gaining and understanding of the data.
Now to your graph: it is surprising.Where does the projection originate from?
It looks somewhat like an average of the predictions plotted for several months from april till september.
It is observed on a regular basis.
https://www.longpaddock.qld.gov.au/seasonalclimateoutlook/southernoscillationindex/30daysoivalues/
Obviously, we just know so little still about oceanic predictions(much less Global “climate change”).
“Strongly favors,” “slightly favors,” which is it, anyway? This is a shining example of how very unscientific mainstream scientists can be in letting their biases determine conclusions rather than real data from the Earth system.