ENSO Updates (2007 thru 2023)

[Ntxw]

Regardless of the SST's, SOI is nearing cold neutral/Nina-like values.

Average for last 30 days: 5.2
Average for last 90 days: 3.7
Daily contribution to SOI calculation: 17.8

[cycloneye]

Regardless of the SST's, SOI is nearing cold neutral/Nina-like values.

Average for last 30 days: 5.2
Average for last 90 days: 3.7
Daily contribution to SOI calculation: 17.8

Mix bag going on.

[Kingarabian]

I'm so confused now. What's going on, are they going to raise 3.4 or jut leave it at 0.5...?

[LarryWx]

I'm so confused now. What's going on, are they going to raise 3.4 or jut leave it at 0.5...?

No, they determined it was +0.5 after the debugging. So, I assume they will very likely leave it at +0.5.

[Kingarabian]

I'm so confused now. What's going on, are they going to raise 3.4 or jut leave it at 0.5...?

No, they determined it was +0.5 after the debugging. So, I assume they will very likely leave it at +0.5.

Ah so the maps were wrong that depicted warming.

[cycloneye]

I'm so confused now. What's going on, are they going to raise 3.4 or jut leave it at 0.5...?

No, they determined it was +0.5 after the debugging. So, I assume they will very likely leave it at +0.5.

Ah so the maps were wrong that depicted warming.

Last week was at +0.4C so some warming occured.

[Ntxw]

^ Cycloneye is correct.

The real question now is how accurate is data regarding SST's since we have problems in many places across the board. First it was ONI being in question, then buoy's going out of service or not working properly in the Pacific (see TAO), and now the heavily (at least publicly) used information for sea temps from OISST. A lot of this should be on the hands of NCDC. I guess we'll have to charter a storm2k ship out to the waters and test the temps ourselves to be sure

Recently we saw the GOES-13 problems. Yet funding for this information is being cut or considered.

[LarryWx]

I'm so confused now. What's going on, are they going to raise 3.4 or jut leave it at 0.5...?

No, they determined it was +0.5 after the debugging. So, I assume they will very likely leave it at +0.5.

Ah so the maps were wrong that depicted warming.

Cycloneye and Ntxw are correct..it did warm slightly from +0.4 to +0.5. However, the OISST was suggesting massive warming to as much as ~+1.0! So, the 0.1 warming is nothing in comparison to what may have been.

I'm still trying to investigate what went wrong. My 2nd call hasn't been returned yet. I plan to write an update here when I discover what happened.

[NDG]

My question is, with the SOI so positive and running positive for so long now, would it not be proof that the OISST may have been erronous last couple of weeks of showing such a warm up at Nino 3.4?

[LarryWx]

My question is, with the SOI so positive and running positive for so long now, would it not be proof that the OISST may have been erronous last couple of weeks of showing such a warm up at Nino 3.4?

Proof is too strong a word. However, I'd say it was an indication that suggested it may have been too warm. Then again, there isn't anything close to a perfect correlation between -SOI's and ENSO SST anomaly warming, especially in the short term.

[cycloneye]

My question is, with the SOI so positive and running positive for so long now, would it not be proof that the OISST may have been erronous last couple of weeks of showing such a warm up at Nino 3.4?

Proof is too strong a word. However, I'd say it was an indication that suggested it may have been too warm. Then again, there isn't anything close to a perfect correlation between -SOI's and ENSO SST anomaly warming, especially in the short term.

The 30 day SOI index has been in positive territory since early September and has stayed that way until now.

[Cyclenall]

I have this sinking feeling now that 2013 could be similar to 2005 in this pattern...

Well that would certainly fit right in with my equilibrium prediction for 2013's Atlantic Hurricane Season. I've been saying that for years that the elastic band is about to snap back harder than ever before and no major landfalls on the US coastline this year is unbelievably ominous for the future. My estimation for the build-up is that of which would be even worse than 2005 overall. I'm starting to think that its not just the lack of major hurricane landfalls on the US, but other areas of measurement for activity like ACE. Even though its been 3 straight years of 19 named storms which is very impressive, they have been low quality for the most part across the board.

Folks,
El Nino is NOT even close to being dead now!

Ntxw is on the right track imho. I recently found that NOAA uses the maps from the SST anom. loop that I've been looking at as opposed to TAO. I just found out that the loop is based on OISST data. TAO and this loop, which is based on OISST data, have not been in synch recently. Link to loop of OISST anom.'s:

http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/map/clim/s ... .week.html

Eyeballing the latest map's anomalies for 3.4 (for 11/16) from that loop, I see some cooling back vs. yesterday's +1.50, which is the estimate per StormVista (SV), an internet wx site. However, I'm roughly estimating that it is still up at ~+1.30-5. Based on the SV #'s, my estimates for today and Sunday 11/11, and my guess that tomorrow will be a little cooler than today (say ~+1.15), I'm estimating that StormVista's weekly average for 11/11-17 will be ~+1.10 to 1.15.

Assuming that the released NOAA 3.4 weekly will be a little below that (based on precedent), I'm thinking that Monday's 3.4 release may be as warm as +1.0! IF that were to occur, it would mean a warming of 0.6 in just one week from +0.4, which would be a larger weekly warming than that for any that occurred during the seven oncoming Ninos between 1991 and 2009 and it would tie for the strongest weekly warming of ANY week since records began in 1990! The current largest warming for any oncoming Nino week is 0.5.

At the very least, I'd think it would rise to 0.8 and likely at least 0.9. Even just a +0.8 would be a big game changer for Nino chances compared to how it looked only one week ago. That would mean that only an average of +0.7 would be needed for the subsequent two Monday reports to get the weekies to average +0.5 for SON and keep the +0.5+ streak going at four trimonths in a row with Dec. still to go to see what the fifth trimonth does. If Monday's weekly turns out to be a +1.0, it would be the warmest week of the year to date, the warmest week since 3/24/2010, warmer than ANY week of the 2004-5 weak Nino, only 0.1 cooler than the same weeks both in 1994 (oncoming moderate Nino) and 1991(oncoming strong Nino), and only 0.2 cooler than the same week in 2006 (oncoming borderline moderate/weak Nino).

So, if Monday's release were to be +1.0, I'd probably raise the odds for a Nino to at least 60%. As it stands now, I'm already raising the chance for El Nino from 40% to 50%. I had it at only 15% one week ago after it had been as high as 40% as of ~11/1! This week has represented such a huge move toward a Nino being that just one week ago it was bordering on being declared dead. As a matter of fact, about one week ago I had posted at another BB that I could come close to declaring it dead during next week absent any warming during the current week ending today. My have things changed in a hurry! November is such a crucial month.

It does look like we've held on long enough to the warm anomalies all week to likely see a significant warming as of the update tomorrow at 3.4.

As with the sub-surface, a new region of growing warm anomalies is once again building in the west of 3c+. What this likely means that somewhere down the road we'll see perhaps another warming period after this one. But it will take awhile for that to propagate. I don't think the warming we had last week will be sustained in the near future, but that doesn't mean we can't hold on to the already warm anomalies for a week or two at least.

The global wind pattern is shifting (finally) away from favoring easterlies, as long as it remains in high amplitude region, we'll continue to see periods of warming. *Image Cut*

Oops. While I enjoy reading all your in-depth analysis on ENSO and that includes other posters, this must have been the largest prediction bust on ENSO weeklies I've ever seen. Not a criticism at all but its just fascinating to see such intelligent users get it so wrong so close to the data being released. I did read that the datasets might be messed up right now between the OISST and the TAO but what I don't understand is how that could be a issue on such a major climatological data stream. The scientists measuring and studying this can't possibly be confused on which baseline to use for such a critical part of the worldwide picture of the weather. They would have figured that out a very long time ago for such important data.

. We should look back at the other weeks that showed warming yet didn't happen with the CPC, very fishy.

Or very crowy .

A. decided not to believe it and use an alternate source like TAO or whatever; B. adjusted/corrected OISST and used that; or C. arbitrarily assumed slight warming without having anything to back them up.

They used a combination of A and C maybe. I would be suspicious of extremely fast rapid warming like that too but if the data says it and its vetted that's it. Since the data is vetted and it shouldn't be overly complicated to get the values I can't imagine a gap this huge.

i am excited at the same time worried for our next eastern based el nino like 1997...10 cat 5 in one year like 1997? i doubt it but activity should be very very active...although central based can be very active too...el nino just fuels the fire in what we know as the west pacific!

We're talking about El Nino being on the verge of not happening at all and your speculating 1997 type stuff? I know you doubt it but why bring up the strongest El Nino when we might not have any El Nino? Also it would very likely be a central based El Nino as the eastern part of the Pacific is nearing La Nina values.

Regardless of the SST's, SOI is nearing cold neutral/Nina-like values.

Average for last 30 days: 5.2
Average for last 90 days: 3.7
Daily contribution to SOI calculation: 17.8

I was wondering about this too, more fuel to the anti-El Nino lovers .

We have a +0.1ºC increase in Nino 3.4 and two others and a decrease in Nino 1+2 which overall doesn't change much. Its in limbo. Something else I noticed is in the latest ENSO evolution status report that contains today's values is the global SST map. Every ocean on earth except maybe the south Atlantic is warmer than normal overall with the south Atlantic looking average. I never heard much about this but what if every ocean like the Atlantic and Pacific are both really above average at once, what does that do?

[Ntxw]

Oops. While I enjoy reading all your in-depth analysis on ENSO and that includes other posters, this must have been the largest prediction bust on ENSO weeklies I've ever seen. Not a criticism at all but its just fascinating to see such intelligent users get it so wrong so close to the data being released. I did read that the datasets might be messed up right now between the OISST and the TAO but what I don't understand is how that could be a issue on such a major climatological data stream. The scientists measuring and studying this can't possibly be confused on which baseline to use for such a critical part of the worldwide picture of the weather. They would have figured that out a very long time ago for such important data.

It was a very puzzling week. Everyone has a bias towards something, even us . But I will say usually I will give CPC being right everytime over what I think. They are the pros and I am not. They have access to information that us amateurs can't even begin to use. All we can do is go by the data that is provided for free and when it is wildly different, there is nothing we can do. In general we usually assume satellite data and on ground observation as legit over modelling when looking at short term. It was a very big bust, but to the defense it was all we had to use.

[LarryWx]

Oops. While I enjoy reading all your in-depth analysis on ENSO and that includes other posters, this must have been the largest prediction bust on ENSO weeklies I've ever seen. Not a criticism at all but its just fascinating to see such intelligent users get it so wrong so close to the data being released. I did read that the datasets might be messed up right now between the OISST and the TAO but what I don't understand is how that could be a issue on such a major climatological data stream. The scientists measuring and studying this can't possibly be confused on which baseline to use for such a critical part of the worldwide picture of the weather. They would have figured that out a very long time ago for such important data.

It was a very puzzling week. Everyone has a bias towards something, even us . But I will say usually I will give CPC being right everytime over what I think. They are the pros and I am not. They have access to information that us amateurs can't even begin to use. All we can do is go by the data that is provided for free and when it is wildly different, there is nothing we can do. In general we usually assume satellite data and on ground observation as legit over modelling when looking at short term. It was a very big bust, but to the defense it was all we had to use.

This is especially the case when one considers that CPC told me they use OISST data for the weeklies, and those very warm maps are OISST. Had CPC not rerun the data, I firmly believe that they would have released anything from +0.8 to +1.0 since that's what the data suggested. Actually the wekly avg. was about a whopping +1.15 per the StormVista site! The ironic thing is that I just started using that loop to estimate the weeklies this past week. Prior to that, I was using TAO before I found out that that loop is OISST based.

[euro6208]

i am excited at the same time worried for our next eastern based el nino like 1997...10 cat 5 in one year like 1997? i doubt it but activity should be very very active...although central based can be very active too...el nino just fuels the fire in what we know as the west pacific!

We're talking about El Nino being on the verge of not happening at all and your speculating 1997 type stuff? I know you doubt it but why bring up the strongest El Nino when we might not have any El Nino? Also it would very likely be a central based El Nino as the eastern part of the Pacific is nearing La Nina values.

read again...i said NEXT eastern based el nino like 1997...it could be 2013 or 2014 but who knows...time will tell...

[dexterlabio]

It's really fascinating to see how ENSO predictions before didn't see this sustained neutral thing happening in winter. I remember the last Nino we had, and the agencies/experts got it right in predicting a moderate El Nino in 2009. I think the bias of the majority against El Nino won this time.

It would be interesting to see another La Nina after a year. But with the early ENSO forecast 'bust' this year, it's better to just wait and see.

[Ntxw]

Not sure which reliable source to go by, but it appears no changes will be made in the next update as this week has remained stagnant in the ENSO regions according to buoys. + or - a few points maybe but nothing of importance.

[cycloneye]

The Eurosip November forecast is out and is pretty much in Neutral for the next few months.

[NDG]

I all fairness the Eurosip did horrible with forecasting ENSO conditions this year.
Not that the Euro Seasonal Range Forecast model did any better.
I remember clearly a few months ago pointing out that I thought that the Euro model was being warm bias, and here is the proof.

[Ntxw]

This is the write up this month (back on the 6th) from Wolter Klaus at NOAA about the current enso event and what to look forward to, included in his monthly MEI calculation discussions.

Stay tuned for the next update by 8 December 2012 (hopefully sooner) to see where the MEI will be heading next. While it is too early to write an obituary for the short-lived El Niño event of 2012, the odds for a rebound have dwindled since last month. Therefore, we are facing our first ENSO-neutral winter since 2003-04. Furthermore, every 'double-dip' La Niña of the last century has been followed by either one more La Niña winter or a switch to El Niño, so this is even more unusual. Meanwhile, we will have a few months before a return to La Niña becomes a possibility in 2013.

http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/enso/mei/mei.html

We are definitely in uncharted territory when trying to use for forecasting long term.