Reposted from The Cliff Mass Weather Blog
This winter has been dominated by La Nina. a period of below-normal sea surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific. The implications of La Nina have been profound for the West Coast, with above-normal snowpack in the Northwest and dry conditions over the southwest U.S.
Typical conditions during a La Nina Winter
But there is major news on the La Nina front. La Nina is now collapsing and should be history in a few months.
To show this, let’s start by looking at the sea surface temperature anomaly (difference from normal) for the central tropical Pacific, an area called the Nino 3.4 region (see map).
As shown below, the sea surface temperatures in this area have been colder than normal (blue colors), hitting a maximum of 1.8C below normal in late October. Anytime the temperature is .5C or more colder than normal, we consider it a La Nina period.
But look closely: the cold temperature anomaly has weakened considerably, down to about .6C. La Nina has radically weakened.
In fact, if it gets much lower (less than .5C below normal) then we would call it a neutral or normal period.
Another way to see the situation is to look at the sea surface temperatures under the waves–in the upper few hundred meters of the ocean. This is shown by east-west vertical cross-sections along the equator over the upper 300 meters of the Pacific for 7 February through late March. Orange/red signify above-normal ocean temperatures and blue below normal.
In early February there was substantial cold water in the upper portions of the Pacific, with warm water limited to the western portion of the ocean. But by the end of March, almost all the cold water was gone and warm water has surged eastward below the surface about three-quarters of the way across the Pacific. As this warm water mixes to the surface, La Nina will rapidly become history.
Nearly all of the latest atmosphere-ocean model forecast ( see below) are projecting that the central Pacific sea surface temperatures in the Nino 3.4 area will warm, resulting in a transition to Neutral or La Nada conditions. I should note that such forecasts are not reliable in spring, a phenomenon known as the “spring forecast barrier.” But by July we should have a very good idea of what next winter will bring.
These rapid changes out of La Nina conditions are good news for California, which has experienced two dry winters in a row, since neutral conditions should bring increased chances of moist atmospheric river conditions to the Golden State. And such neutral years are often associated with the most active weather in the Northwest, something appreciated by meteorologists.
I’ve been watching that 100-300 meter deep warm anomaly blob creep eastward too on the weekly ENSO updates.
That said, for reasons of empirical (historical) matching, I think the coming ENSO neutral summer-fall 2021 period will quickly revert back to more La Nina conditions by December. That may help both with increasing rainfall in the SW US and California, and also keeping the Atlantic basin hurricane season in the “normal” range (not high or low).
It’ll be interesting to see if the NHC updates their 2021 outlook.
Joel,
So La Niña will increase the probability of increased moisture in the SW U.S.? It’s been quite dry here. More moisture would be appreciated. Thanks. I enjoy the comments and feedback as much as these articles.
La Nina increases the chance for western US drought and increases Atlantic hurricane activity…
Off Topic. There is a belief, a degree of wishful thinking by those who understand that global warming / climate change / whatever will be disproved or debunked by presenting scientific fact. This is an illusion. The article by Prof Richard Lindzen recently posted on this site and the work of Willis Eschenbach will never see the light of day.
The naïvety and lack of understanding by sceptics is alarming. Posting on this site, or any of the other sceptic sites – and I follow many of them – is preaching to the converted and unproductive. Look at outfits like Extinction Rebellion that, I have read raised $90m from big tech and major US corporations. Until there is some leadership and a willingness to go out and take on the politicians and fake scientists things are only going to get worse.
President Donald Trump was the only beacon of light and he is gone. Who could replace him? Any ideas?
Trump was a fake Messiah, his only objection to the Paris Accord, was that it disadvantaged the USA, in comparison to China. He’s too thick to argue the toss between models, the issues with historical temperature proxies, RCPs or any other technicality.
Terrible misinterpretation of Trump policy. The “disadvantage” argument was a brilliant strategy to sidestep the ‘settled science’ crapologists.
Presumably, Adam, according to this argument, any alarmist could state that Joe Biden is a brilliant analyst and has all of the solutions. You miss the point of my post. The AGW propagandists are making all the running.
President Trump did not need to study models or anything else. He was advised by Michael Chrichton (before his death), Steve Milloy of junkscience.com and others and at least he acknowledged two sides of the argument and gave some latitude to sceptics.
Actually, Adam Gallon, the Paris Accord was flawed in that Iran did not permit International Inspectors, like from the IAEA, to inspect any area designated as a “Military Zone”. Also, the Paris Accord only streched out the time to assemble an atomic bomb, it did not eliminate the effort. But don’t worry, Israel will not permit Iran to have a deliverable bomb, and then you can get in more bs comments.
Off topic, but still an “interesting” subject in its own right.
1) You are conflating the Paris (climate) agreement and the JCPOA, AKA “The (Iran) nuclear agreement”.
2) According to Articles 26 and 36 of the JCPOA, as long as the US keeps imposing the sanctions they agreed to lift in 2015 by signing the JCPOA, then Iran can unilaterally “cease performing its commitments under this JCPOA in whole or in part”, or restart abiding by bits and pieces of it, as and when Iran wishes.
NB : They can do so and still be “in compliance with” the JCPOA !
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3) Iran is a signatory to the NPT. That completely separate treaty is the “legally binding” one that stops Iran from “assembling an atomic bomb“, not the JCPOA (which just stops them accumulating enough enriched uranium, or plutonium, to theoretically be able to assemble an atomic warhead around that “core / pit”).
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4) You are correct, however, in that if Iran were ever to :
– Withdraw from the NPT (like North Korea did)
– Enrich enough U-235 to make two atomic warheads
– Build and test one warhead
– In parallel, adapt a missile to transport the second warhead (or, more realistically, load it into a standard [ / lead-lined ? ] shipping container behind a 40-ton truck with a full tank of diesel …)
then Israel would indeed promptly (or, more likely, preemptively … Mossad is very good at intelligence gathering …) use a large fraction of their 80 (to 200 ?) existing warheads to convert Iran, which is in large part a sandy desert, into “a set of circular mirrors visible from space”.
You can’t have your yellow cake and eat it too.
True but I like the image of a glass floored self lighting gas station that was popular during the hostage crisis.
Trump actually made science great again — follow the data and not the consensus. On the other hand, this guy can’t even intelligently lie about the climate …
https://newtube.app/user/RAOB/KX3Jgsm
He’s lost his ability to comprehend numbers, at least large ones. His lies still flow as freely.
Is that the same guy that said that 500 million people lost their jobs in a year–about 1.5 times the entire US population? Thousand, million, as Hillary Clinton would say, what difference does it make?
Says the ultra-far-left idea log with a deep case of TDS. !
Former President Trump was correct that the Paris Accord disadvantaged the USA in comparison to China and India, which are the two largest emitters of CO2, and the Paris Accord required NOTHING from them until 2035. In recent years, the fracking boom in PA and OH has made natural gas cheap and plentiful in the USA, so that USA’s CO2 emissions decreased by market forces alone (natural gas replacing coal in power plants), while China continues to build multiple coal-fired power plants every month.
Had the USA remained in the Paris Accord, any reductions in our CO2 emissions would have been dwarfed by the increase in emissions from unregulated China and India, so why should we dismantle our economy while our manufacturing jobs move to China and India, home of cheap unlimited electricity?
Interestingly enough, the Paris Accord does not disadvantage its home country of France, which gets over 75% of its electricity from nuclear power plants, and most of the rest from hydroelectric plants near snowy mountains in the Pyrenees and Alps.
Besides, if rising sea levels may be a problem in the distant future, there is more than one solution. You can stop burning fossil fuels, and go back to the 19th century full of horse-drawn carriages, bicycles, and windmills. Or you can build seawalls around low-lying cities or move to higher ground. Which is cheaper in the long run?
In good olde days, this was never a problem. Back then, the natives just picked up their huts and moved them inland. And then when the seas started to lower again, they just moved the huts back closer to the sea. Eze-Peze. And we think we’re an advanced society.
what he did know, Adam- -was that the ‘crisis caused by increased CO2 was crap- -all he had to do was look at what climate radicals predicted and what actually happened- –
I don’t agree. In his speech when announcing the withdrawal from the Paris suicide pact, President Trump specifically mentioned that any temperature reductions achieved by the pact would be trivially small. As president he made quite a few ststements about climate change and they were pretty well spot on – they put him right in the mainstream of sceptical opinion. For example, he did state that there had been warming but it was natural and might be temporary.
I am disappointed that he simply made statements of opinion without quoting the actual scientific data, which is largely on his side (whether he actually realised that I’m not sure). For example, when Biden was spouting all that alarmist nonsense about wildfires Trump could easily make Biden look like a fool by simply holding up a graph showing the official US wildfire data, which shows that wildfires in the US were far worse during the 1930’s.
Chris
The zombies will only wake up slowly and one by one. As for naivety and lack of understanding by sceptics, it goes double for most alarmists. The very notion of scepticism is one of reason. That of progressives – vague.
And a little too late to make a difference….
‘Zombie’ genes? Research shows some genes come to life in the brain after death: Post-mortem changes may shed light on important brain studies — ScienceDaily
True, unfortunately. The only way that would work is to treat them (public and mainstreamers) as little children:
Obviously, the coverage of this is huge and I do not have a comprehensive knowledge of who says what on all media outlets. However, I have yet to hear any sceptic ask any alarmist, on any platform, to give empirical evidence of AGW. There is none.
It is then easy to undermine their models.
Yes Ariadaeus, but then you would fall back in arguing about the matter. The bottom line is that any reasoning has been proven a dead end. They avoid the content, so must we. Just attack them hard! There’s lots of ammunition; just simply travesty their foolish global warming hypothesis when it’s freezing, tell them sunny and warm whether is nice, not evil. And repeat, and repeat, just like they do. Get down to their level is enough I think. Attempt to win with arguments has been tried and failed. Attack and ridicule is the way we should go. I believe Ian Plimer’s way is most favourable.
Almost all major platforms have been closed to skeptics for some time.
as you say –
” The AGW propagandists are making all the running.”
They control – the media, the language, the purse strings & education;
with that lot under their belts, why should they worry about actual physics & data results ? … these are easily manipulated for sheeple consumption.
The AGW propagandists got it right early on, with the ‘never debate a skeptic’ policy.
We skeptics naively thought that facts & logic would prevail (how dumb was that ! )
All we can do now is follow Arjan Duiker’s list .
until the next big war (well overdue for one) when all this nonsense will be forgotten & the earth will continue to do it’s thing.
Saveenergy,
It’s the least elegant way, but there’s not much left…
If someone shouts at you, shout back but louder!
The problem is, he gets his models from Authoritive, Fack-Checked Experts, yours come from a bunch of deniers.
Empirical facts will only become relevant after you have freed your audience from the mesmerising glamour of feeling included by a favourite celebrity speaking directly to their fears and hopes.
Maybe we should start building our own “database” of emotional triggers to pull on, the way our enemy is doing? You know, like “vaccinate before you kill granny”? Who can compete with that?
There is no Alarmist interested to speak sincerly and open minded with any skeptic.
Why ?
Alarmists have no, null, zero arguments what will be shown in these discussions, thats why they avoid the discussion,
Thank you for that. May I add, we should do this for all issues regarding eugenics; Climastrology, vaccinsanity, muddened monetary theory, wokeness, scientific nonsensus, GMO my god, the War by Terror, gender diasporadicals…
One cannot win an argument based on logic, if your opponent values authority over thinking. One warning, though: by ridiculing their stupid alternate truths, you undermine their sense of order and belonging, which leads to cognitive dysfunction. People confronted with sudden and unavoidable reality, go into fight-or-flight mode, and violence is the Bolshevik’s favourite expression of his innate victimhood.
Summation: Ridicule an idiot’s world view, and the bastard is likely to clout you one, all the while complaining that you are the bully.
After all, he gets his “data” from People In Authority, Authority that feels you are overpopulating Their earth.
Doesn’t it seem like we must be closing in on peak insanity? If they don’t succeed in jailing and doing away with us soon, then the globalist leftist movement should wane (hopefully).
Hah! Now that is crazy. There is no such thing as Peak Insanity. It will never wane because the goal of the founders is total global domination. For the governments and scientists feeding at the trough, the income has never been better. For the Jurinalists global doom sells the story every week. For the useful idiots, the Earth hangs in the balance, and only they can save the world.
not gonna be no wane; nope
Given the forces aligned against them, sceptics are doing remarkably well. A lot of people in the western world vote against carbon taxes, etc. It’s the wet (USA: RINO) right-wing leaders like Boris Johnson and Scott Morrison who are making it so difficult. If they could just see the flood of votes they would get simply by saying that reliable electricity is more important than a possible degree of warming in a hundred years time, then this whole scam would be over.
It’s hard for sceptics, certainly, and the system is loaded against them, but Anthony and the others are having a much greater impact than a reading of MSM publications would suggest. It’s important to stay honest and perservere, and not descend into the lies and corruption of the alarmists.
There have been two reports now, saying that Energiewende is close to collapse. Something like that could bring a swift end to the nightmare. Let’s hope so, and the sooner the better.
“There have been two reports now, saying that Energiewende is close to collapse. Something like that could bring a swift end to the nightmare. Let’s hope so, and the sooner the better.”
A big failure of a powergrid would give skeptics an argument to make.
It almost happened with the Texas grid disaster, but the message has been deluted by the alarmists who focus on coventional power plants failing and not on the failing windmills, that were useless in bringing the grid back up to speed after it went haywire.
But, I have a feeling we are going to be seeing more of this kind of failure in the future and eventually it is going to sink in to ordinary folks, that this windmill/renewable plan isn’t working.
Human genetics got us here and, unfortunately, that won’t change in a hurry. I look at it a different way. If supposed grown-ups want to believe in something equivalent to the tooth fairy, you’re not going to stop them, but that’s their punishment. Wasted lives and you only get one.
I, as many other free market people I know, deal with the “other people’s money” part of the problem by just making more for myself. ….. and those f-wits can’t understand why wealth disparity exists. Hello f-wits it’s in response to you cretins.
You cannot match the success of a currently popular hysteria by trying to duplicate it into an antihysteria campaign built on facts. At least I cannot think of any examples to the contrary. These things have to run their course, and we hope to simply stay off the shoals by navigating nimbly until they do. A reading of Charles Mackay’s book should convince you about how irrational these are, and how they are often funded by the belief system of the elite.
Steering nimbly around the shoals is fine, but Their religion tells them:
So, choose your trench, friend, this is not about the weather, this whole mess is Endgame stuff, and they want only one winner, around him a circle of psychophants (sic), then lots of guardsmen, and all the rest must live like grazing animals, “submissive brutes”, governed by the only thing we understand: Brute force. From there, is no coming back. Nothing will ever again “blow over”, or “burn itself out”.
Steer nimbly around those shoals… while tanning on deck, pass some time reading that only book that actually has bearing on Warmunism, a political theory, which means the same as religion, so you really should consult the Learned Elders, they will even explain to you why we dont recognise climastrology as real science; it is not supposed to be, it is dogma. Dogma unassailable under their rules, but only under their rules. Don’t you want to at least just try to make some contribution? Just not play by their rules?
I agree with you and have said so more than once but you cannot debate in a vacuum and the one thing climate activists will not do is debate.They will walk out of a studio rather than debate/argue with a sceptic.
As far as the UK is concerned don’t try writing to your MP. You will get a “boilerplate” reply — science is settled, best scientists in the world, must reduce CO2, etc., etc. Don’t complain about the biased reporting on the BBC; they held a seminar 15 years ago that told them the science was settled and there was no requirement to give air time to nutjobs who were no better than flat-earthers. (The irony is that the Flat Earth Society is fully signed up to the scam.)
When the UK parliament passed the Climate Change Act 11 years ago, three MPs out of 650 voted against it.
Don’t think we don’t try. Where you can get a believer to sit down and listen there is at least a 50:50 chance you’ll make a convert — provided your pitch is right. But what layman is going to assume that climate scientists are crooks? How many people are going to disbelieve the environmental NGOs when they say plastic is killing the environment and produce “evidence” to “prove it”. I mean, “it stands to reason, dunnit??” No it doesn’t (which is why I ran a blog of that name off and on for years) but people tend to believe what they are told by “experts” like scientists or the “good guys” like environmentalists.
The message will get through eventually. See this post by Pierre Gosselin as a starter: https://notrickszone.com/2021/04/08/48-of-79-catastrophic-climate-change-predictions-have-failed-the-other-31-just-havent-expired-yet/
But only when it becomes so obvious that even a blind man can see it!
Given the limited text available in posts and the limited attention span of alarmists, I try to point out a few quick points with only limited success. If you have improvements to my short list please share. I use:
1. Co2 is a poor ghg water vapor is the strongest
2. co2 is greening and feeding the earth.
3. No claim by alarmists has ever come true, polar bears are thriving and islands are growing.
4. Alarmists base everything on inaccurate models.
5. The US has not warmed since 2005 and even if there is a high temperature its weather. AGW predicts about 1F change.
Etc. But I’d love help.
In re #4:
Only in climate science is averaging of models advocated.
Imagine advocating that both geocentric and heliocentric models can be taken as true by averaging them together to produce a model wherein the sun and the earth trace opposite sides of a figure-8, with the earth passing through the sun when both reach the intersection point.
Your words are good. Sometimes it helps to have images or pictures. Maybe this will be useful to you since the entire climate hoax is based on CO2 misinformation … https://newtube.app/user/RAOB/aGqDEVt
It’s all about the money. It’s about carbon taxing to feed gov and organized carbon exchanges so that grifters like algore can line their pockets.
The masses won’t wake up to the con until the weather is colder than normal for at least a decade. Even then, many useful idiots will believe that all cold weather is a result of global warming.
The historical temperature data has been so heavily altered that it’s easy for the warmunists to build a case against CO2. Just look at Australia’s temperature history. The adjustments in Acorn 2 raised the amount of warming by 23% IIRC. It’s damned hard to fight that kind of ‘warming’ with any factual data.
Objection!
This forum, and others like Judith Curry’s, provide ammunition and coaching, for individuals to use far beyond it.
From confusion & chaos comes consensus. With such a large range covering the predictions, they can still be close and yet so far. If a model is not consistently right then it should be rejected. Why do they leave them in? Maybe these make the models in the middle look far better than blind guesses.
Last time when they tried to make predictions they describe the ENSO index staying low as “stubbornly persisted”. It makes it sound like the predictions are assumed accurate and they blame the observations for not following their ‘models’, or should I say ‘orders’.
“This neutral, or ‘La Nada’ event, has stubbornly persisted for 16 months, since spring 2012”
https://climate.nasa.gov/news/981/la-nada-climate-pattern-lingers-in-the-pacific/
The return of winter in the northern and midwestern US.
Sorry.
The return of winter in the northwestern and midwestern US.
The weakening of La Niña is good news for Chile and Argentina as the El Niño associated weather pattern is more favorable for agriculture. It appears to me that La Niña conditions produce weak latitude winds and do not block (south) polar outbreaks. Remember the cold rain and snow event (closed the pass between Chile and Argentina) in the middle of our summer? It was jsut announced that the <Province of Mendoza, Argentina, had the coldest March since records were kept. Bring on the good boy, El Niño.
La Nina is not giving up without a fight here on the east coast of Australia. Rain, rain and more rain.
“Nearly all of the latest atmosphere-ocean model forecast ( see below) are projecting that the central Pacific sea surface temperatures in the Nino 3.4 area will warm, resulting in a transition to Neutral or La Nada conditions.”
Hmm..
Anyway, La Nina will be back the next winter and PDO will follow this time around. The same will happen in 2022/23.
Actual state
NASA forcast as from April 4th
Whether we see neutral or La Nina this summer is probably dependent on what happens to the equatorial Pacific thermocline over the next few weeks. It has been dropping from west to east creating the room for warmer water. However, if the wave reflects off South America and returns to the west then colder water will replace the warm blob.
I have no idea what drives the movement of the thermocline but it is critical to ENSO function.
The trade winds do. They remain strong and the SOI has stalled at neutral and may be moving positive again, both of which favor La Nina development.
Joe Bastardi said in one of his public podcasts that La Nina was prb’ly going to re-energize soon (maybe late in the year).
http://www.weatherbell.com/premium
It can go back down, too. Thanks for the update!
Doesn’t signify much, it’s possible to have consecutive Niñas.
Joe’s dream.
Don’t get me wrong, I do appreciate this post. However, I miss Bob.
Sorry to go off topic, but air from Greenland is approaching the UK.
http://tropic.ssec.wisc.edu/real-time/mtpw2/product.php?color_type=tpw_nrl_colors&prod=europe×pan=24hrs&anim=anigf
California isn’t the only state hurt by La Nina. Here in Utah, the weather has been unusually dry since April 2020, with no end in sight so far, and the mountain snowpack is below normal depth. Based on historical averages, the wettest months should be March, April, and May, but March 2021 was drier than average, as is April 2021 so far, with no rain in sight for the next week. Que La Nina se vaya de prisa, and we get some rain!
The weak La Niña will work.
http://tropic.ssec.wisc.edu/real-time/mtpw2/webAnims/tpw_nrl_colors/samer2/mimictpw_samer2_latest.gif
In a bid to ward off the frost, French winemakers have lit thousands of small fires which have caused a layer of smog in the southeast of the country.
The practice of lighting fires or candles near vines or fruit trees to prevent the formation of frost is a long-standing technique used in early spring when the first green shoots are vulnerable to the cold.
Whole hillsides look as if they are ablaze, creating a striking visual effect, with winemakers scrambling this week as temperatures plunged to below freezing, particularly in the fertile Rhone valley in southeast France.
https://phys.org/news/2021-04-france-declare-agricultural-disaster-frost.html
Out of the link:
“Specifically, we will implement a regime of agricultural disaster,” saying tax breaks could be envisaged as well as help from banks and insurance and warning that more cold weather could be on the way.
Global warming is so bad…..
La Niña looks alive and well to me
https://www.ospo.noaa.gov/Products/ocean/sst/anomaly/
Current Nino chart
Really?
Still cold at night here at sea level on the wet coast of North Amerkca.
:-o)