ENSO Updates (2007 thru 2023)

[xtyphooncyclonex]

I still have some hope left for 98W. GFS is so bullish on its development.

[hurricanes1234]

Hi everyone, I don't understand 90% of the things to do with El Niño. Does this mean we won't have one or the chances have dropped? Does anyone think it will be neutral for another year again? Thanks.

[Yellow Evan]

Hi everyone, I don't understand 90% of the things to do with El Niño. Does this mean we won't have one or the chances have dropped? Does anyone think it will be neutral for another year again? Thanks.

We're getting an El Nino. It's virtually a lock. The question is when and will it be on par with 1997?

[stormlover2013]

I think alot of people are going overboard about el Nino this year, I believe we will have a above average hurricane year, this isn't a forecast just my opinion.

[Ntxw]

Hi everyone, I don't understand 90% of the things to do with El Niño. Does this mean we won't have one or the chances have dropped? Does anyone think it will be neutral for another year again? Thanks.

We're getting an El Nino. It's virtually a lock. The question is when and will it be on par with 1997?

Yeah, its a matter of when and how much. All this really does it delay our first reading of 0.5C or more at least a week. Even with today's dip we are still within 0.1C of 97 but we need to do some warming the next few weeks to keep up.

Its also a testament to warm pool that we are even comparing to 97, the biggest modern Nino and seeing questions about not keeping pace.

[xtyphooncyclonex]

What I have observed in the subsurface is that the warm water is pushing the cooler water towards the surface and the warm water is dominating and killing the cool waters off the coast of South America, which means we could see rapid cooling in the equatorial Pacific followed by rapid, continuous warming afterwards. So which means that this cooling trend will just be brief and we will get at least +0.5ºC temperatures by late-April.

[cycloneye]

Speaking of comparing the past El Nino events,even with the delay going on as our friend Ntxw said, 2014 is still slightly ahead of the 1997 pace in April.

[euro6208]

Speaking of comparing the past El Nino events,even with the delay going on as our friend Ntxw said, 2014 is still slightly ahead of the 1997 pace in April.

to my eyes, 2014 looks a bit weaker with a smaller area of warmest anomaly and 1997 is warmer in the west and 2014 warmer in the east but much warmer at the surface this year...

Going to be interesting to see if this continues to develop or not ...

[Yellow Evan]

Speaking of comparing the past El Nino events,even with the delay going on as our friend Ntxw said, 2014 is still slightly ahead of the 1997 pace in April.

to my eyes, 2014 looks a bit weaker with a smaller area of warmest anomaly and 1997 is warmer in the west and 2014 warmer in the east but much warmer at the surface this year...

Going to be interesting to see if this continues to develop or not ...

It's light years ahead of 2002, 2006, and 2009. All things considered I'd say we're on par with 1997.

SST's this week in 1997 was +0.3C. By the last week in April, it +0.6C.

[cycloneye]

I had a conversation on Twitter with Dr Michael Ventrice about the WWB's and this is the result that may clear things in terms of when will the real warming will start in Nino 3.4 and the other areas.

Michael Ventrice ‏@MJVentrice · Apr 13
Historic downwelling oceanic Kelvin wave close to surfacing in East Pac. One more WWB may only be needed for El Nino

Luis Martinez ‏@windburst · 2h
@MJVentrice Is the next WWB in motion right now or is still in Indian Ocean?

Michael Ventrice ‏@MJVentrice · 9m
@windburst Currently in motion- not sure how well GFS op is handling it but this WWB looks to be prolonged in nature

[cycloneye]

New data of the 30 day SOI index continues the rising trend of the past few days. Is now up to -4.3.

http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/soi.txt

[Ptarmigan]

Fluctuations in SST and SOI are going to happen.

[Yellow Evan]

Fluctuations in SST and SOI are going to happen.

I agree, but the rise in SOI is somewhat concerning now that Ita out of the way.

[Ptarmigan]

I agree, but the rise in SOI is somewhat concerning now that Ita out of the way.

I have seen weak El Ninos with really low SOI.

[xtyphooncyclonex]

Well, Ita's covection was huge. Darwin may have gotten some rains but it was outside It's wind radius. Now, I don't understand why the SOI level is currently in an upward time. It might be just normal for an El Niño.

[xtyphooncyclonex]

2004 had a really negative SOI.

[Yellow Evan]

I agree, but the rise in SOI is somewhat concerning now that Ita out of the way.

I have seen weak El Ninos with really low SOI.

low as in very negative or low as in near positive?

[Kingarabian]

I agree, but the rise in SOI is somewhat concerning now that Ita out of the way.

I have seen weak El Ninos with really low SOI.

low as in very negative or low as in near positive?

[Kingarabian]

FWIW, the ENSO CLIPER was not forecasting a major niño. It's verification tends to be as good if not better than the dynamical models, like the EC which forecasts a niño EVERY year (at least it has the last 3 years... why we even give the EC any ENSO weight is beyond me)

To answer your question:

John,Im pretty sure that ENSO-CLIPER does not have any sub-surface data in it, correct?
Phil Klotzbach wrote:No, ENSO Cliper does not contain subsurface information

I also took the time to search up how the ENSO-CLIPER works and what Phil Klotzback said is true:

The real merit of predicting El Nino with a GCM is clearly its ability to predict the onset of El Nino and La Nina correctly. This becomes visible when the seasonal dependence of the prediction skill is shown. Once an El Nino event is developing (in northern hemisphere autumn, winter and spring) it can be predicted relatively easily through the rst, fourth and third quadrants of gure 1.12. The onset in spring is much harder to predict: persistence of SST is low during this season, this is often called the fispring barrierfl. Figure 1.16 shows the skill of the different models in pre-dicting the Nino3.4 index (computed as the correlation coefcient between observa-tion and simulation, 0 is no skill, 1 is perfect) at a lead time of +3 months, as a func-tion of the season. During the spring barrier (June/July predicted in March/April) the Cliper model has a skill of » 0:2, whereas the System-2 model has a skill of » 0:8. The Gmodel performs much better than the Cliper model with a minimum skill of » 0:7, but is outperformed by the GCM. The skill scores have large error margins due to the short period (there are only 5 El Nino events between 1987 and 2002), however the increase in skill from statistical models to intermediate complex-ity models to GCM's is robust. Models based on persistence of SST (Cliper) clearly cannot predict through the spring barrier. The reason why intermediate complexity models and GCM's perform better is that they contain subsurface information: there is persistence and predictability in the simulated thermocline depth and subsurface temperature elds. Another important benefit of using a coupled GCM for ENSO fore-casts, is that the detailed SST forecast combined with the atmosphere model make it possible to compute the effects of anomalous SST on the atmospheric circulation in more detail. In principle this leads to better seasonal forecasts of the weather around the world than simple ENSO teleconnections.

http://www.icce.rug.nl/~hein/thesis/pro ... -zelle.pdf

So to sum it up, since the ENSO-CLIPER model does not use sub-surface temperatures and only sea-surface temperatures, it is only natural for it to forecast a weaker El-Nino as the sea-surface temperatures are pretty much weak-warm neutral.

[Alyono]

so what

the point is the other models have close to, if not zero skill in predicting ENSO. CLIPER is the baseline for skill. We're giving the models far too much weight when they have not exactly shown any skill