E.N.S.O. Discussion

[Gray-Wolf]

Hi S.B.!

What is your take on QBO behaviour and ENSO? I though convection over the equator was favoured by one direction of QBO flow which aided Nino ( easterly) whilst also allowing SSW's to occur over the Arctic?

With last years failure to flip ( even though the flip east would have probably aided it's continuation into summer?) will its westerly direction also mangle with Nino's chances of forming?

As an aside if 'background Pacific warmth can wash out a Nina could such 'bleeding in' of heat from N/S of the regions spark a nino call?

 

[Gael_Force]

See the CFS is also upping the Nino forecast for next summer.

 

 

Not showing in the summer SST forecast just released but the Baffin -Davis Strait cold anomaly is odd.... the arctic ice guys posting in here ... what's that suggesting?

[Gray-Wolf]

https://www.climate.gov/news-features/blogs/enso/january-2017-enso-update-happy-new-year

NOAA give its Nina its marching orders but also picks up on the chances of Nino later in the year.

[Matthew.]

Good news for summer maybe

[Singularity]

On 1/14/2017 at 15:52, Gael_Force said:

See the CFS is also upping the Nino forecast for next summer.

 

 

Not showing in the summer SST forecast just released but the Baffin -Davis Strait cold anomaly is odd.... the arctic ice guys posting in here ... what's that suggesting?

Prior to the usual runaway convective feedback in the model mid-summer onward, CFS is seeing continued very low sea ice extent and perhaps there's a lot of melt pressure on Greenland too.

Not sure it can really be that simple, though!

 

[Matthew.]

Issued 4th February:

[Gray-Wolf]

On 20/01/2017 at 19:34, Singularity said:

Prior to the usual runaway convective feedback in the model mid-summer onward, CFS is seeing continued very low sea ice extent and perhaps there's a lot of melt pressure on Greenland too.

Not sure it can really be that simple, though!

 

I think it has to be a reflection of melt water across the surface? Nares would not flood Baffin like that so it has to be run off from Greenland? Looking at the Hudson Bay Anom it would suggest a lot of heat over the land to the west?

[Gray-Wolf]

https://www.climate.gov/news-features/department/enso-blog

Well that was the nina that was!

I was not very impressed with it and its influence seems to have been over ridden by background warming by November?

I think that same 'back ground warming will leave us in the high neutral for the rest of the year with us seeing a move toward another Nino by late 2018.

[summer blizzard]

1.2: 1.5C

3.4: -0.3

Subsurface is seeing weakening cool anomolies but there's no real strong burst of warm water waiting to surface so i suspect the official numbers can't peak above weak as things stand. Easterlies in the central pacific are also pretty solid so we're not going to see a big swing. 

 

[Gray-Wolf]

The path toward nino is going to be instructive this time around. The last time we saw a Nino form it was a rather stop start affair with two failed attempts as the then supercharged trades blasted any attempts of the nino to form up. This time with IPO positive we will not have to deal with interruptions over any formation period the nino goes through? What we need to see growing is a warm pool out west ready to collapse into the regions . What we have are nino temps hugging the South American coast?

Maybe the forcings that made Modoki more common (i.e. strong trades pinning the warm pool out west only allowing 'slosh back' Nino splurges when the wind eased back?) have now disappeared as IPO flipped positive so we might see this eastern based warming become more common?

I always thought we had a cold current running along the coast of the america's?

[summer blizzard]

54 minutes ago, Gray-Wolf said:

The path toward nino is going to be instructive this time around. The last time we saw a Nino form it was a rather stop start affair with two failed attempts as the then supercharged trades blasted any attempts of the nino to form up. This time with IPO positive we will not have to deal with interruptions over any formation period the nino goes through? What we need to see growing is a warm pool out west ready to collapse into the regions . What we have are nino temps hugging the South American coast?

Maybe the forcings that made Modoki more common (i.e. strong trades pinning the warm pool out west only allowing 'slosh back' Nino splurges when the wind eased back?) have now disappeared as IPO flipped positive so we might see this eastern based warming become more common?

I always thought we had a cold current running along the coast of the america's?

I suspect that instead of a pending Nino event this is more a response to the lack of a proper Nina (see sawing around neutral). If the PDO goes negative again, i would expect this coming event to be replaced pretty quickly. 

[Gray-Wolf]

4 hours ago, summer blizzard said:

I suspect that instead of a pending Nino event this is more a response to the lack of a proper Nina (see sawing around neutral). If the PDO goes negative again, i would expect this coming event to be replaced pretty quickly. 

Why would PDO go negative? It has only just gone positive ( 3 years) and so would have plenty of time to run if a 'normal' phase? The last negative ran from 1998 until 2014 so we should still have 12 years of positive to go???

If IPO/PDO are also responding to 'novel forcings' then you could have a point of normal phase lengths being modified but any forcings I can envisage would tend toward positive forcings? If China's headlong rush into cleaning up its particulate/sulphate pollution by retro fitting all smoke stacks with scrubbers and employing 'clean technology in new builds then the impacts on the downwind regions will be near instant with particulates washed out in the first rains. If the blooming of new China had increased dimming over the Pacific ( Tropical and sub tropical in the northern Pacific?) then we will see increased sst's as a direct result of the once dimmed out energy now reaching the surface. A warm surface means an IPO positive ( as opposed to the heat being buried in the upper ocean as in IPO negative).

The cold blasts rolling out of the Eurasian snow fields ploughed a cold furrow through the Pacific PDO region enhancing the 'warm horse shoe' that denotes PDO positive ( hence the spike in values over the past couple of months? ) so it is hard for me to see this altering in a hurry.

PDO positive loads the dice in favour of Nino events.

The other player is the QBO. What will we see over the current attempt at reversal easterly? If it again aborts then we must take Nino forcing out our thinking and look more to polar Strat peturbations and the decimation of the old Arctic basin into the new polar maritime climate ( from the cold desert of our youths).

What chances Nina with PDO positve, IPO driven positive, a broken QBO and Arctic temps rocketing ?

[Catacol]

8 hours ago, Gray-Wolf said:

The other player is the QBO. What will we see over the current attempt at reversal easterly? If it again aborts then we must take Nino forcing out our thinking and look more to polar Strat peturbations and the decimation of the old Arctic basin into the new polar maritime climate ( from the cold desert of our youths).

 

If the QBO fails to reverse again then a lot of people are going to be left wondering quite where we go from here. National debt, hard Brexit and climate chaos - and with ISIL not far away. Truly it would be time to head for the hills....

[Matthew.]

So here's the latest probabilistic pattern for ENSO for 2017. I thought it was interesting when looking at the figures for quite a few of the most sunny/settled summers in the last 70 years. Here's a few:                   

1959: AMJ= 0.1   MJJ= -0.2   JJA= -0.3   JAS= -0.3

1976: AMJ= -0.3  MJJ= -0.1   JJA= 0.1   JAS=   0.3

1984: AMJ= -0.4  MJJ= -0.4   JJA= -0.3  JAS= -0.2

1989: AMJ= -0.6. MJJ= -0.4   JJA= -0.3  JAS= -0.3

1995: AMJ=  0.2  MJJ=  0.0   JJA= -0.2   JAS= -0.5

2003: AMJ= -0.2. MJJ= -0.1   JJA=  0.1   JAS=  0.2

2006: AMJ=  0.0  MJJ=  0.0   JJA=  0.1   JAS=  0.3

2013: AMJ= -0.2  MJJ= -0.2   JJA= -0.3  JAS=  -0.3

So around neutral seems to coincide with many of these

[BornFromTheVoid]

CFS now going for a rapid transition to a weak/moderate El Nino

 

The latest weekly El Nino update (yesterday) is here http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/lanina/enso_evolution-status-fcsts-web.pdf

[knocker]

Another El Niño on the way?

https://blog.metoffice.gov.uk/2017/02/16/another-el-nino-on-the-way/

[Matthew.]

3 hours ago, knocker said:

Another El Niño on the way?

https://blog.metoffice.gov.uk/2017/02/16/another-el-nino-on-the-way/

Could this be another 2015 pattern ENSO. If it does follow the same pattern it will be interesting to see the weather similarities if there are any. Hopefully not throwing up ridges west of the UK for summer! The difference here however the QBO potentially switching west to east rather than east to west like in 2015 

[Gray-Wolf]

Well that is one heck of an increase!!!!

[Matthew.]

Yes a big warm up especially to the east compared to just last month!

Edited February 17, 2017 by Matthew Wilson

[Gael_Force]

On 17/02/2017 at 17:28, Gray-Wolf said:

Well that is one heck of an increase!!!!

One of the tropical scientists saying it is MJO driven and should fall back now as no underpinning from subsurface and wind direction. If a nino does develop, it will be pretty much unprecedented according to this exchange.

 

[Gray-Wolf]

That is why I doubt a 'true Nino' will form? If you look at the far west of the regions in 2013 you'll see a huge warm pool that had built up over the 'unprecedentedly strong trade winds'  that we had been seeing whilst IPO/PDO was negative and the trpopial Atlantic/Pacific were showing imbalance ( driving the winds that both buried the heat in the upper 200m of the Pacific and drove the super speed trade winds  along with causing record upper level shear over the Caribbean?) . We saw two failed attempts to have Nino form up as 'record' WWB's drove the water back east only for a resurgence in the trades over summer to knock it back.

We have no big warm pool out west waiting to flow back into the regions.

We do have warming at the American coasts that appears to be growing west but this is not the way I've ever seen a Nino form before? With IPO now positive we should see positive sst anoms around the regions and this to may bleed into the regions giving us Nino like temps but not a traditional Nino.

And what is the atmosphere looking like insofar as supporting a nino?

[Gael_Force]

16 minutes ago, Gray-Wolf said:

And what is the atmosphere looking like insofar as supporting a nino?

 I've read over the winter the atmosphere was more like nino base state rather than nina.

The ECM is going for moderate nino but we know how wrong the models were last spring when forecasting a sudden drop to strong nina over the summer.

[Matthew.]

A weak El Niño looking probable for April through August from a forecast issued on the 20th February

[Eugene]

3 hours ago, Matthew Wilson said:

A weak El Niño looking probable for April through August from a forecast issued on the 20th February

 

Weak to moderate El Nino would enhance the UK's chances of a colder 2017/18 winter?......And with sun spot activity forecasted to be low from now on surely the run of above average winters for the UK has to end in the next five years or so?

[Matthew.]

1 hour ago, Eugene said:

 

Weak to moderate El Nino would enhance the UK's chances of a colder 2017/18 winter?......And with sun spot activity forecasted to be low from now on surely the run of above average winters for the UK has to end in the next five years or so?

Can't we concentrate on Summer first? But yes from what I gather if we have a weak El Niño going into winter is a good roll of the dice( 5 or 6) Solar minimum begins around 2019 but late this year would be well on its way so we could score that with a 4 maybe? A easterly QBO should be here by late this year also. I agree that a cold winter should come within the next 3 years. Just depends on how all the many variables interact with each other to where the highs and lows sit in relation to the Uk.