From the Cliff Mass Weather Blog
Cliff Mass,
Midway through May is a good time to check on the status of El Nino/La Nina, since its status becomes clearer at this time of the year and will have a major impact on the weather of next winter.
NOAA’s latest forecast is out….and I will describe it below.
El Nino and La Nina are on the opposite poles of the same phenomenon: the shift of the waters of the central tropical Pacific from warmer than normal (El Nino), to near normal (Neutral of La Nada), to below normal (La Nina).
A plot of the sea surface temperatures in this critical area (the Niño3.4 area) is shown below (actually the differences from normal). After experiencing the cool waters this winter (La Nina), we are now in neutral territory.
The correlation of the tropical water temperature with our weather during the summer is weak in any case, but winter is a different story.
So what do the latest forecasts suggest? As shown below, although there is quite a range in predictions, the general trend is towards continued neutral conditions for the remainder of the year.
What are the implications of neutral conditions for next winter?
Increased chances of a major wind event from an approaching midlatitude low-pressure system.
Increased chance of a strong atmospheric river that produces major flooding.
Bottom line: neutral years are known for their meteorological action.
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OK, off-topic, but I am curious. That picture fools me. It sure looks like an automatic tranny gear shift, and “B” must be what is called “P-ark” in the US. And that makes me wonder … how does the traditional US PRNDL change in other countries? Not worried about trannies with more than 3-4 gears, just curious in general. I’ve never driven a car outside the US.
it looks similar to the shift in my Prius, so I’d say it something similar. There was only forward, reverse, and park.
No neutral? I rented a second gen Prius for a week around Christmas many years ago, and do not remember the shifter.
It might have. It got totaled a year and a half ago, so I don’t remember.
Apparently this was the same shifter in my 2012 Prius, but honestly don’t remember the B, never used it.
According to Bing, it stands for Braking. Assuming I read it right, it’s like down shifting a standard to provide engine braking for going down hills.
According to images.google.com, one of many hits says it’s a “Genuine 2012 2013 2014 2015 TOYOTA PRIUS Shift Knob blue Automatic Shifter OEM.”
[If the text in this comment is huge, I have no good idea why.]
https://www.ebay.com/itm/276655915697
Google’s first hit has the actual image, but doesn’t identify it. https://www.rsm.nl/discovery/2019/automation-is-your-product-too-good/
Hint, if you are copying text with formatting you want to remove…
… first paste it into a Notepad file, then copy-paste from there.
Also, if you copy-paste, just right click in the comment box and then click on, Paste Without Formatting.
Learn something new every day around here! I can skip going through Notepad 🙂
In Windows, Ctrl-Shift-V does the same thing.
Thanks. I gave up on image search last time I used it. Guess it’s time to try again.
It’s engine braking on automatics
That makes sense with so many gears in modern automatics.
Trannies in the UK are suffering a setback as the woke era turns and begins its decline. Perhaps you are describing a different kind of tranny.
El Nino is Spanish for “little boy” and La Nina means “little girl”. If the temperature anomaly in the East Pacific is neither positive (El Nino) nor negative (La Nina), is this a “tranny”? /sarc
“B” mode on a hybrid enables one-pedal driving. When you lift off the accelerator pedal it simulates engine braking by applying regeneration, which turns the forward motion of the vehicle back into electrical energy, charging the traction battery. In “D”, regeneration only happens when you use the brake pedal – which is less effective as the brakes will also apply, as the system has to allow you to stop unconditionally when you apply pressure.
Finally, a good explanation! 🙂
WUWT readers are a fascinating bunch. Love it!
How accurate are the individual forecasts and should they all still be there influencing the average?
I follow ENSO a little because I used to trade natural gas futures, but I am certainly NOT an expert.
I believe the forecasts are not very accurate when it is wobbling around the neutral line.
When it starts to pick up momentum and the patterns from the particular regions start to match the historical patterns that indicate an impending shift to either El Nino or La Nina, then I think the forecasts have fairly decent predictive power.
Has anyone blamed CO2 for the oscillations of the pacific ocean’s heat flows yet?
I am sure there would be state funding available to prove such a connection…..
I have access to a friends sea going boat and would happily undertake the study, over say a two year period/ Sampling the water temps in the South Pacific and of course spending long study weekends at the various islands that dot that part of the world
I am even prepared to bring my own grass skirt if that helps. Where do I apply for the money?
Don’t remember the last time that I saw a NINO region SST prediction that flat for that long. Usually, the MEI doesn’t remain neutral for very long. At any rate, I’ve noticed that ENSO tends to stack the weather deck, but the Arctic Oscillation deals the hand. If ENSO, AO, and NAO are all neutral this winter, then the only guaranteed prediction is that NOAA is going to once again predict a warmer than average winter pretty much everywhere, per usual.
Don’t forget to look at the SOI to add to the confusion on where we are headed (not an https://)
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/soi/
So far, the Spring, Summer weather pattern in the United States is typical for this time of year.
The focus for big, destructive storms starts out centered in Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas in the early spring and as time goes along, this focus shifts to the east, and to the northeast as the weather warms up. And this happens whether we have an El Nino or a La Nina.
I have seen this weather pattern for many years.
Currently, there are two jet streams coming across the United States. One from the northwest, undulating down across the plains, and one from the southwest, and where they combine is where the strongest storms will occur.
Nullschool Image:
https://earth.nullschool.net/#2025/05/18/1200Z/wind/isobaric/500hPa/orthographic=-106.48,32.62,421
Might be related to the Hunga Tonga eruption
The above article inadvertently has, perhaps, the best joke of the year. It is this statement immediately above the final graph in that article:
“As shown below, although there is quite a range in predictions, the general trend is towards continued neutral conditions for the remainder of the year.”
“Quite a range of predictions”??? Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!
The range of predictions for SST anomaly is from +1.3 to -1.4 deg-C. One has to assume that GLAT will be driven somewhat by whatever variation occurs in SST.
For the humor, put this degree of uncertainty coming from humanity’s best supercomputer models against the IPCC and so many other AGW/CAGW alarmists claims portending the equivalent of a climate apocalypse if GLAT rises by just 1.5 deg-C from its current average.
There’s a chance WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE!
/sarc
An even better joke will be if further research* establishes that ‘El Niño’ events originate in underseas Ring-of-Fire activity, so that improved seismology is required to predict ’em. Stranger things have happened!
*this is the (hypo)thesis favored by the geophysical groups out of SE Asia / Oceana, was it Hong Kong – Philippines – Singapore or where?
Yeah, there’s at least one article going back to 2017 that asserts El Niños are driven by heat released from ocean floor thermal venting/fissures/volcanoes (https://www.plateclimatology.com/further-proof-el-nios-are-fueled-by-deepsea-geological-heat-flow ).
However, the accumulated science data of Pacific Ocean temperature variations with depth—particularly that available from the distribution of Argo floats in their periodic sampling to ocean depths down to about 2000 meters*—argues strongly against that hypothesis. El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) events strongly correlate to temperature variations in the upper 600 meters of the ocean, while the deeper ocean (below 700 meters) shows correlated temperatures variations of lower magnitude and smoother variation over time.
This is just the opposite of what would expect logically if heat variations from the ocean floor had to travel through the full ocean depth to reach the 600 m of “surface waters” to thereby cause El Niños.
*Some Argo floats are designed to record data down to 6000 meter ocean depths
In southern AZ. We could use some good monsoons this summer. It’s been quite dry. The predictions for this coming summer are mixed.
“Southern AZ” means what, Pima-Cochise-…-Yuma Counties? Or Maricopa-Pinal-Gila-Graham?
In Central- & Northern AZ it has been a very wet May, was still snowing (!) as of early this morning, up on the Mogollon Rim & Grand-CYN region (+ up into SW-Utah & SW-Colorado mountains around the Colorado Plateau). Very wet & green below the snowlines.
This reminds of the late-Spring / Summer of ’22, when the Monsoon started in mid-June and ran all the way into October (first snowstorms), something like ~ 80 consecutive days of PM-showers. There were reports that Tucson* stations recorded ’22 as the rainiest Monsoon Season in a century, or was it for its whole recorded history?
Let’s hope so!
*Tucson is reportedly the oldest continuously populated urban area in North America (above Central Mexico).
That ENSO predictions graph is a fine example of Chaotic results from re-iterated non-linear equations. Each model is prediting the same thing, from basically the same data, yet they diverge almost immediately. Within six months they are opposite signs. Averaging them is a nonsensical endeavor resulting in the “average of chaos”.
But they are correct in that there will be either El Nino or La Nina conditions in the future or somewhere on the spectrum between the two.