snowman19

Shades of 2001: Final sunspot number for July….over 250. Even more activity coming. Also, very high geomag

@brooklynwx99 I think the best case is a La Niña does develop. If we go cold-neutral, then we are at the mercy of all the other antecedent and background conditions in the absence of a signal from ENSO. And the best match for that is 2001-02 with this record breaking solar max. The strong Niña background state won’t be denied, the west PAC warm pool/MJO 4-6 won’t be denied, the -PDO won’t be denied and neither will the high solar flux. People made that mistake (ignoring solar flux) back in 2001

Of the recent Nina’s, over the last 30 years, where a similar scenario happened, you only had one translate into a really favorable AO winter (1995), the rest (2001, 2011, 2007), not so much…..

If you take a look at the animation, you can see the tropical instability waves (cooling) diffuse throughout region 3.4, pushing into region 4. That is not indicative of an east-based event. If you look at how a true east-based Niña develops (i.e. 2017), it was strictly confined to regions 1+2, 3 and the far eastern portion of 3.4. This one however, clearly is not…..

Textbook tropical instability waves. Beautiful. Also, this is NOT developing as an east-based event:

@Gawx

Yes there was -NAO blocking at that point but there was no arctic air to be had on our side of the pole. The UV was off the charts from September through late March, it heated the mid-latitude tropopause, shrunk and strengthened the SPV the AO went ++ and resulted in roaring zonal flow for months. The strong Niña background state, -PDO, etc. didn’t help matters either

Yep the good old days of the GFS. It would show blizzards into June

That is true. Back in Dec. 2001, JB was hemming and hawing that a huge winter was coming because of that -NAO Dec. That was his infamous “vodka cold” winter. Nothing but screaming zonal and semizonal flow off the PAC for months on end courtesy of the relentless high solar onslaught

Really since 19-20, we haven’t had an overall robust +NAO/+AO winter. Given the signals so far this year however, that may change this coming winter. It’s a rather ugly picture getting painted

I was kind of joking lol I’m still confident we see a La Niña. However, if it fails and we really do go cold-neutral/La Nada, then my analog becomes 01-02. That part wasn’t a joke

Yep. Cold-neutral coming. 01-02 analog

Looks like a steady rise in the QBO this month. It officially just went positive (westerly) in June: https://acd-ext.gsfc.nasa.gov/Data_services/met/qbo/qbo_phase_plot.png

Said it yesterday, if this is a cold-neutral Niña fail, 01-02 becomes an analog

@Gawx Yet another major geomag storm on the way:

93-94 is not a good option if we go ENSO neutral IMO. Nothing matches other than neutral. And the fact that we had a strong Niña extratropical background with Niña MJO forcing last year, to me is the equivalent of having had a Niña. The other factors…cool-neutral, -PDO, -PMM, QBO going positive, -IOD, solar, +AMO, match 2001 exactly. The big elephant in the room (assuming we go neutral) is the record high solar flux we have. It was the elephant in the room back in 01-02 that was completely overlooked and ignored. Remember “Vodka cold is coming!!”? @bluewave

People had better hope you’re right about definitely seeing a Niña because the neutral option looks real ugly. Even high Atlantic ACE didn’t help that cluster f***

A full-scale, sustained change of the blazing SSTs out that way looks extremely unlikely at the moment. My point is this….if we don’t have a La Niña and instead are La Nada/cold-neutral, then we are at the mercy of all the other factors I just mentioned, which actually closely mirror 2001-02. And 01-02 was a very active Atlantic hurricane season, 17 tropical depressions, of which 15 became named storms and 4 major hurricanes, 9 hurricanes all together. ACE was over 110

I’m still confident that we see a La Niña. If we end up cool-neutral however, it may be a case of “be careful what you wish for”. We are and have been in a default extratropical strong La Niña state for years, even last year with the Nino, we were in a La Niña extratropical state with La Niña MJO forcing (4-6). So, that said, if there is in fact a cool-neutral ENSO, then 2001-2002 becomes an analog IMO….cool-neutral/lack of a distinct ENSO signal, -PDO, -PMM, QBO turning positive, -IOD, +AMO (although not nearly as strong) and record high solar flux

That write up Ben did a few days ago on the RONI was good. I agree that it would be the go to metric to use for this event given all the warm around. It looks like the MEI is dead in the water so to speak for now