#11376 Postby CyclonicFury » Thu Apr 09, 2020 11:37 pm
JFM trimonthly came in at +0.5°C. That's the fourth such trimonthly that meets the El Niño threshold in a row. Yet, the CPC or BOM has never declared an El Niño, and the atmospheric response has been weak.
It's going to be interesting to see what CPC ends up classifying 2019-20 as. If FMA comes in at +0.5°C (which is a possibility), 2019-20 could be retroactively classified as a weak El Niño year by ONI - which would technically make 2018-19 and 2019-20 back to back El Niños. This is hard to consider a "two year Niño" considering the brief dip into cool neutral territory last fall. For most of 2019, the tropics did not behave like a typical El Niño either.
If 2019-20 does get classified as a weak El Niño, the prospects of La Niña for 2020-21 make more sense. It would also mean we would not have had a true ENSO neutral year since 2013-14.
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NCSU B.S. in Meteorology Class of 2021. Tropical weather blogger at
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