ENSO Updates (2007 thru 2023)

[cycloneye]

Very good blog from CPC on why they took down La Nina watch.

Extract from blog:

What didn’t happen?

Here at the ENSO Blog, we talk a lot about the response of the atmosphere to the change in sea surface temperatures. That’s because it’s critical—you can’t have ENSO without the Southern Oscillation. Just like El Niño, La Niña requires an atmospheric response, and it just hasn’t happened over this summer.

The La Niña response is a stronger Walker Circulation. Even more than usual, cooler air sinks toward the surface over the cooler-than-average waters of the central and eastern Pacific. Meanwhile, the perpetually warm waters near Indonesia warm further, and the overlying air becomes even more warm and buoyant than usual, leading to more vigorous convection (rising air).

These opposing areas of vigorous rising and sinking air amp up the normal circulation across the tropical Pacific: at the surface, stronger-than-average winds blowing east to west, and high up in the atmosphere, corresponding stronger-than-average winds blowing west to east. More rain falls over Indonesia, and less falls over the Central Pacific.

So far, there have only been some very weak indications of this intensification, like a small area of stronger-than-average upper level winds over a localized region of the central Pacific. Also, some extra rain over western Indonesia, and a narrow, but weak, strip of drier-than-average conditions over the cooler waters of the central Pacific.

https://www.climate.gov/news-features/b ... -our-heels

[Ntxw]

The past half decade or so has taught us that preconditioning (the parameters setting up a La Nina/El Nino such as PDO/SOI/Spatial SST's in the extratropics) is crucial in getting a decent event going especially if you're trying to get a moderate or greater event. This year has been no different. Years that flipped from strong El Nino to La Nina (even when the El Nino was at it's last legs) already had signs and support of a 180 flip.

[Ntxw]

That is pretty crazy if another super El Nino happened in 2017 like that cfsv2 run. I highly doubt it though, its unprecedented to get super Ninos in the same decade.

One of the consequences of global warming that has so far failed to verify is an increase in frequency and intensity of el Niño events.

Partially because an El Nino event is an anomaly against the base climo state. So if the oceans are warmer then you would need even warmer waters to qualify. Also it is the sloshing of the equatorial Pacific waters mostly driven by winds and currents. It's hard to pin simply warming oceans to it. This is why the CPC recently instated a 30 year average updated every 5 years for the new ONI and thus 2014 is now back to being a weak El Nino prior to the super Nino.

[Hunabku]

In the past 30 years, we've seen a more than doubling of ocean heat content (OHC). The whole idea of a 30-year average lowering the calculated intensity of upcoming El Ninos only works if the rates of change and non-linearity of OHC during that time-frame are weighted and forecasted accordingly. The averaging does not work that way, and that is one of the reasons why multiple studies suggest an increasing of calculated El Nino intensity due to climate change, which is most closely associated with increasing OHC. Also, the rates of OHC change, particularly in the upper ocean of the equatorial central-eastern Pacific, look to only increase due primarily to upcoming decadal time-scale atmospheric forcing. The fact that the updated CPC ONI averaging made 2014 a weak El Nino again, only gives credence to a trend that will bring us ever more intense Ninos.

[Hunabku]

Speaking of the CPC



I think a big part of the reason for the continual low-balling of ENSO is the CPC/IRI's models inability to properly account for trends in the larger climatic base state, especially in regard to decadal ENSO variations. The following is from a previous comment:

According to a 2012 study by Barnston et al http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10. ... 11-00111.1 “results indicate (ENSO forecasting) skills somewhat lower than those found for the less advanced models of the 1980s and 1990s” “This finding” “suggests that decadal variations in the character of ENSO variability are a greater skill-determining factor than the steady but gradual trend toward improved ENSO prediction science and models.”

[WeatherGuesser]

Don't know or care about the hows, whys or whens as long as I get a mild winter with no snow or ice and a couple of freezes to kill off some of the bugs.

[Macrocane]

This La Niña bust is like the 2012 El Niño that never developed.
We still have a lot to learn.

[tolakram]

No, I too am incredibly worried by global warming. The main reason I'm worried about it is because if that happened, we could breach the +1.5C limit over a decade early and be thrust into an even more dangerous climate state. I honestly don't care about the Atlantic that much and I become slightly afraid every time a strong cyclone/typhoon/hurricane threatens to make landfall, especially as we get further into the 21st century with accelerating sea level rise and the resulting more and more intense storm surges.

All that heat pumped into the oceans already has begun what is likely a permanent global coral bleaching event, so coral reef environments are now going to decay into the future until they no longer exist, and the state of the Arctic sea ice is its worst ever (not the smallest extent, but the most vulnerable as the floes that are there have the smallest average size on record) and it's only going to get worse. So no, it is not because the 2017 Atlantic hurricane season would be inactive, it is because 2017 and beyond would be dangerous for humanity.

I don't want to say much here but some of what you wrote is false and needs to be clarified. You crossed into my other hobby, raising corals.

We are not experiencing a permanent coral bleaching event, this event is similar to 98 and most corals will recover just fine. They have not died, just expelled their zooxanthellae, making them appear ghostly white and putting them at risk, but not killing them outright. It's a defense mechanism for the corals and more than half will recover, similar to the 98 bleaching event.

http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories201 ... event.html

Of course there is concern and should be concern, but it's not accurate to say we've started what will likely be a permanent event and reefs are going to decay until they no longer exist. Corals are amazing animals and much more adaptable than we give them credit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coral_bleaching

The Great Barrier Reef along the coast of Australia experienced bleaching events in 1980, 1982, 1992, 1994, 1998, 2002, 2006, and 2016.[47][48] Some locations suffered severe damage, with up to 90% mortality.[49] The most widespread and intense events occurred in the summers of 1998 and 2002, with 42% and 54% respectively of reefs bleached to some extent, and 18% strongly bleached.[50][51] However coral losses on the reef between 1995 and 2009 were largely offset by growth of new corals.[52] An overall analysis of coral loss found that coral populations on the Great Barrier Reef had declined by 50.7% from 1985 to 2012, but with only about 10% of that decline attributable to bleaching, and the remaining 90% caused about equally by tropical cyclones and by predation by crown-of-thorns starfishes.[53]

The IPCC's moderate warming scenarios (B1 to A1T, 2 °C by 2100, IPCC, 2007, Table SPM.3, p. 13[54]) forecast that corals on the Great Barrier Reef are very likely to regularly experience summer temperatures high enough to induce bleaching.[50]

It's a very complex subject, as most of these are, and there are more threats to corals than just temperature alone.

[Hunabku]

This La Niña bust is like the 2012 El Niño that never developed.
We still have a lot to learn.

Hmm interesting how 2012 Nino forecast was a bust during a strongly negative PDO, and 2016 Nina forecast is a bust during a strongly positive PDO. see my previous comment.

[dexterlabio]

Hmm interesting how 2012 Nino forecast was a bust during a strongly negative PDO, and 2016 Nina forecast is a bust during a strongly positive PDO. see my previous comment.

Perhaps it's hard to go against the tide.

[Darvince]

I don't want to say much here but some of what you wrote is false and needs to be clarified. You crossed into my other hobby, raising corals.

We are not experiencing a permanent coral bleaching event, this event is similar to 98 and most corals will recover just fine. They have not died, just expelled their zooxanthellae, making them appear ghostly white and putting them at risk, but not killing them outright. It's a defense mechanism for the corals and more than half will recover, similar to the 98 bleaching event.

http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories201 ... event.html

Of course there is concern and should be concern, but it's not accurate to say we've started what will likely be a permanent event and reefs are going to decay until they no longer exist. Corals are amazing animals and much more adaptable than we give them credit.

As that reply was simply a very short one, simply trying to show how the effects of global warming are more severe than most think, I didn't want to make it much longer than it was (as the average length of replies on this forum isn't very long to begin with). I do acknowledge that corals and the species are more complicated than I stated there, and that we are likely to experience a few times in the future where there is no global coral bleaching event, but the only three global coral bleaching events so far have been in 1997-98, 2010, and 2014-16. The bleaching event this year has been the longest on record, stretching from late 2014 (!) to present.

http://coralreefwatch.noaa.gov/satellit ... status.php

The threat of a 2017-18 El Niño event would put to rest any possibility of this event ending. Now, while it is global, there are a great deal of reefs which will escape this during some years and others which will find themselves under the gun for years in a row, and I do not believe that all corals will go extinct but rather that we will see most reefs becoming very sickly and dying off and new species to replace them and take over the reefs.

http://news.stanford.edu/2016/06/15/sta ... -thriving/

After all, the Earth has recently been through very strong ice ages yet coral reefs globally are near the surface and thriving despite the global temperature swings from as high as the present temperature to as low as 8C below the 1951-80 average.

[Darvince]

Please God no, not another one.
We all know about the spring time barrier for ENSO forecast, but how good does it verify this time of year?

very poorly

After just two days, CFS doesn't think that anymore

[Macrocane]

After just two days, CFS doesn't think that anymore

well, we'll have several months of back and forth to watch.

[Ntxw]

Holds steady at -0.7C this week. We've been straggling in the weak readings, it will be interesting if we hold it long enough to just brush La Nina territory on ONI come Feb or March. It will be a very close task. ONI likes to smooth values though so much tougher on that vs the weeklies

[cycloneye]

 https://twitter.com/BigJoeBastardi/status/775640917751504896

[Ntxw]

Comparing 2016 (La Nada so far) to some recent notable La Ninas

2016


2010


2007


1998


Biggest difference continues to to be the waters immediately above and below the ENSO regions.

[Ntxw]

Nudged back up to -0.6C

[cycloneye]

Text of CPC update of 9/19/16 that has Nino 3.4 at -0.6C.

http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/a ... ts-web.pdf

[Ntxw]

The recent burst of trades have ended. SOI responded some but subsurface and surface ssts didn't seem to have reacted. If we manage to sneak in an official La Nina it will be extremely close, but more likely remain neutral.

[Kingarabian]

8 days away from October and no August PDO reading yet.