so_whats_happening

I will say he isn't just saying it for nothing, probably not the best way to approach it but here nor there. Nino 3.4 correlation to SLP for June through August and each particular warm ENSO event with weak, moderate, strong, and super events during the summer time period. Edit: It goes moderate, strong, super, weak in descending order

Woof someone is angry for some reason. Anyway CPC did actually update on the subsurface and this gives us a much broader look.

As always thanks for this Roger. Sorry I have been removed a bit from doing these it has been quite a busy few months dealing with work (the 1st comes and goes real quick!). I should hopefully be able to finish out the rest of the year.

Yea CFS does seem off it does seem like it is trying to capture the real time situation but going a bit too much. If I remember correctly, I would have to look back in the pages to find it, but I do remember some models were having a leveling off around this point they had another bump up as we got to November. Now will this happen honestly no clue but we also don't have many clues yet for how long this current situation will last. We definitely seem to be sloshing the waters in the East/ Eastern Central Pacific quite a bit so it is not unreasonable to think there may a slight uptick in OHC because of this again whether that adds to 3.4 and other regions is something that will need to be watched. As you posted the U anom map earlier I don't see a WWB event propagating east or west showing up yet as we have seen in the past couple of months. We do not see the EPAC firing off any more hurricanes so that season is probably done, this helped aid in some west propagating minor WWB events some coincided with the WPAC event and constructively worked together. So it remains that status quo is probably the best idea for now but lack of any events will ultimately eat up heat content until such an event can help re-enforce a warming timeframe. Still have been holding onto the idea for awhile now that end of October may feature such an event to re-establish itself but that remains to be seen. The September event that was talked about has failed and models just didn't quite get it right. Either way we definitely have slowed momentum for the time being let us see what happens in the next 2-3 weeks as that will definitely tell us a lot going forward.

I get that and maybe it is just me but I tend to see that region under 200m (between 200-300m) as rather negligible as there tends to not be too much change that occurs at those levels on the positive or negative side of things. We should get a better sense by the end of the month what is happening.

Latest SST anomaly 30 day animation Near Japan has taken a bit of a hit in the recent week or two, west coast of the US also cooling a bit. Western IOD holding its own for now but some areas around the maritime continent are warming a bit. WPAC along the equator still not seeing decent surface or subsurface cooling while the EPAC has in fact cooled since the August time frame. Would like to see a more La Nina like tongue in the Atlantic Equatorial region and cooling of the WPAC to go on the idea of a more canonical El Nino stance SST wise. Nothing MJO wise through at least the first week of October is showing up and when it does it is rather weak in 4-5-6 lets see if this changes coming up as we get to mid month of October. MJO forecast from various models: https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/MJO/CLIVAR/clivar_wh.shtml

Maybe but notice the area west of the warmest anomalies has shrunk over time not to say those warm anomalies can not accomplish a similar thing to back in late August early September. If we are to see OHC rise it would need to be an expansion of the warm anomalies in the eastern portion and a deepening of the thermocline much more than it is especially folks who expect this to go to around 2C for OHC.

Latest update on subsurface while the region around 120W has seen some warming of anomalies we have overall decreased the coverage of warmth across the area from 100-180 over the last few weeks. In order to push back up to those levels in August we need another decent WWB event and associated KW. Otherwise we will just continue to use up the subsurface heat to maintain status quo. Unfortunately CPC has not updated yet and expect sometime next week for this to happen.

This does seem to be the case for this Nino, in past Nino events we don't often see the stronger subsidence in this region it tends to be weaker and further displaced into SA and tropical Atlantic while the stronger subsidence tends to be more located in the maritime region. I would have to look at past years with similar stronger subsidence regardless of ENSO state to see if we had similar results to that. Maybe a project for the rainy day tomorrow. How would this compare to a different climo baseline? Just curious if these changes occur differently in say the 1981-2010 or 1971-2000 base lines. It would make sense for earlier times to look cooler based on a much higher climo baseline than previous. Basically the signatures may still be there but not as extreme?

Happen to have one for the EPAC and WPAC? Also there at least looks to be another hurricane on the horizon for the last week of the month. After that is anybody's guess.

While looking for pictures to save in my folder I stumbled upon this doesn't seem it has strayed too far off the idea. I don't have monthly numbers but judging where we are now we have pushed into the middle of the ranges compared to the lower end back in June/July area. Lets see what it can muster up here in the next 1-2 months. Totally based this thought on the idea of an October peak looks likely still a November peak but will have to wait and see. Looks like my monthly thought in the other thread of 1.6 for October may be a bit off depending on how things shake out.

I mean yea it is impressive but it also has been done before, unfortunately this year does not have the amount of crazy KW/ WWB events to allow the subsurface to take it to that upper echelon like 1997 and 2015. Unless we see a rather shocking change of events come about we probably won't hit much of those upper levels that some models are showing. Still got a solid month though.

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.