so_whats_happening

Maybe? Unfortunately I have not followed much about how models have been predicting things over the spring and summer other than what is posted on here. There have been a few instances in which the 3.4 region has peaked early, but im not sold yet that has occurred this go around. Almost feel like what may happen is overall rate of warming may be slowing a bit and subsurface continues to slosh around helping sustain things, maybe we poke close to 2C for a month but at this point I would bet the under to come to fruition. If we do indeed see any bit of cooling occur in 3.4 over the next 2-3 weeks we can safely assume we probably are damn near peak. The lack of anything showing up in long range is rather interesting to watch unfold though, have yet to see the typical westerly anomalies show up in the eastern IO which has been the thing for this season. Just the very idea that WWB have been originating in the Eastern IO versus maritime/ extreme west Pacific tells me already the forcing is going to be west of the typical El Nino placement.

I would assume these values are based off the BOMM/ BOMA model? If so this is the same model that has been having wild MJO swings when we did have MJO activity it showed amplitudes much greater than anything actually occurring and when we had null or very low amplitude for MJO the model was always pushing it to go over to 7-8-1-2 region with moderate amplitude when we have barely poked out from null most of late spring and summer. I respect BOM as they have a great catalogue of information to use and monitor everything within their website instead of going to several different sites for info, but I will say the model has been off by quite a bit all season just as much as the infamous CFS has been off. It is still reasonable to think that models just happened to get this one wrong and that is perfectly fine. Models are meant to be used as guidance for an outcome not certainties for a forecast. I will personally wait to see how things go but if by mid to late October (which is a little less than month from now) we don't see rather drastic changes having occurred into more persistent WWB events (which are a rather important aspect in El Nino formation and sustainability) to sustain subsurface and surface temps regardless of SOI or IOD connections we can surely look back and say models were a little too overzealous. What this means for winter well that is anyone's guess as we have very few scenarios with such an occurrence as we have seen.

Yea Ill continue to keep gathering the images and making a gif from them. I honestly wish I had the images from March through now. As of now the WPAC is in steady state no warming or cooling taking place. The EPAC is cooling from some upwelling the expansion of the 2C subsurface temps has been interesting to watch but we seem to be losing that +4 to +5C subsurface again. I don't wanna make the statement that we have peaked in oceanic heat content but going from last year at this time to the peak heat content this year has been about 2.4C change which is impressive if we had been more coupled early on I believe we could have easily been sitting firmly in Super Nino range. I think the best thing to come of this is to maintain SST anomalies as we move into Fall and the early portion of winter. October still to come but at this point September does not show any support for a WWB event to try and start up. The EPAC hurricane season continues to be dead which is another weird sign for an El Nino in progress. The Atlantic may need to be watched still coming up here as we move into the end of the month early October. As Bluewave has stated there are just too many mixed signals competing right now I guess it goes to say MEI may have the right tune in how things are even with how warm the waters are globally and at the equator. Either way going to be very interesting to see what happens this winter. Even if we don't get a decent MJO response, which should be the case if we do indeed have a strong ENSO event, I would want to see it weak and over in 8-1-2 not hanging out in 3-4 and null like it has been recently that just helps allow a more Nina like atmosphere take hold. Most forecasts keep it in null at this point to about the first week of October. I personally am not a big fan of using super long range modeling forecasts hence my issues from the wildly large 3.4 peaks many models were showing but the lead up is still important to watch take hold. I am actually rooting for the Atlantic to have one more hurricane, maybe major, that can knock the waters down more across the West Atlantic. Preferably a Gulf/ Caribbean storm would be great but that leads to landfall issues so do not want it for those individuals. Latest U wind totals and forecast to the end of the month. These do not typically work out to what is shown but the idea still stands of trades staying put with no westerlies in the IO or Maritime region to potentially start something.

I sure hope the warm anomalies can hold along the west coast from BC down to Cali. Also here is the latest TAO subsurface animation August 27th to Sept 17th.

Why are they comparing it to 2019? Because this was the last big +IOD pattern, wouldn't it be better to compare it to a stronger Nino pattern?

Yea the issue still remains even when you change the interval and range you still don't get a bar. Unfortunately they do not list what default settings they use in their info. I can guesstimate it but can't get it to quite look like theirs but it at least gives me a better idea knowing the interval and ranges when I change it up, so that helps.

So only issue I have with this is where are the anomaly ranges?

For DJF purposes this was the 1956 to their baseline climo as compared to 2023 compared to the default used. Tried to use a similar difference in comparison between the two.

Wonderful! Thank you very much. You can see how the pressure tendencies change with water temps.

Bolded: absolutely that should be a well known idea at this point no differentiation in opinion on that subject. Higher heights unfortunately all year round in conjunction warming oceans leaves with less severe cold outbreaks. What dictates trough orientation is other things involved and most certainly the pacific pattern influenced it this past year in comparison to a year of similar status. You can see the difference in temp profiles across the US between the two years although scale is different, on the colder end as already discussed, but here nor there you get the idea. Here are the pressure anomalies in comparison you can see weaker pacific high pressure potential and more prominent troughing pattern across the north pacific from Sea of Okhotsk to much of the Bering sea driving it right down the west coast. Where as in 55/56 you had a much stronger high pressure region having cold spill into West Pacific/ Japan and another coming from the north Canada/Alaska region to the Pac NW.

I think we can both agree the west Pacific played a significant role in how the winter went down in both scenarios given a fairly similar stance in large scale patterns such as ENSO/PDO. The only thing I have ever found with higher heights over the poles is less cold to work with.

Fair points all around

The polar domain having higher heights means less cold is able to stay up north and be produced versus 1955/56 so in that sense cold air would have spilled through much of the lower latitudes you can see the difference in the amount of cold air. Think this really could have played a major role as there was no issue with precip across the area and many times down this way we were right on the edge of getting snow just ended up too warm. So it is very possible we could have had similar results had the overall atmosphere and polar domain not been warmer. Again wish I had an SST reanalysis for 55/56. +WPO versus -WPO winter also played a significant role long sustained jet versus a wavier jet. There also seems to be some counter balance situation between northern hemisphere and southern hemisphere that is interesting to note, probably on a decadal scale of sorts.

55/56 gave us in the mid atlantic around 28" of snow that winter 22-23 gave us 0.9" both solidly negative PDO signals and both in a moderate La Nina pattern. I unfortunately don't have SST reanalysis for 55/56. By far the biggest difference was the Pacific 55/56 could have a similar ish look had we not had a +WPO pattern this past year.

Going solely off the idea of 1955/56 being a moderate/strong La Nina and having a -PDO of near -3 to last year having a moderate La Nina and a -PDO of about -2.5