so_whats_happening

Now I know these don't always happen as planned but just by looking at this there is not an expected WWB event in the near future even trying to pop up. Also notice the nice uptick in trades across the maritime and Indian ocean.

I tried other dates as well around multi year La Ninas expecting to go into Warm ENSO regardless of strength. Found 1951, 1957, and 1986 had a similar look. 2001 was similar as well but did not go into Warm ENSO until 2002 and 2009 did not have this look as well. So quite all over the board as far as what the Nino looked like.

I thought this was cool to see, since we don't have September yet did June through August. Here is 2021, 2022, and 2023. Notice the +VP anomaly in the EPAC. I went back to 2010 when we had similar in magnitude to current PDO state in summer to see if it was indeed a -PDO thing. Definitely is not a -PDO thing as the +VP were throughout the entire Central Pacific during that time. Surprisingly the years that had this were 1972, 1976,1977 (this one was odd to see as we had already had a warm ENSO event the year before)... years coming off a multi year La Nina into a warm ENSO state. Ill post them in another post with this quoted then.

Maybe for the PDO comment but Hilary still made a decent run and Jova as well, of course they didn't last too long after hitting the cooler than normal region but that is about as typical as it gets. If we look at just the top Nino years 2015 and 1997 saw a large amount of activity. This was due to the atmospheric state allowing tropical activity to go nuts, 2009 and 1972 two years with neutral to -PDO state still managed decent activity 20/ 14 storms respectively. The atmospheric state (-VP) was a little less conducive in 1972 than the other 3 years mentioned hence the lower tropical storm count the -VP anomaly was around 150W averaged over June through Sept and shut off rather abruptly along Central American pacific coastal waters. The other years had -VP over much of the central and eastern PAC with 2009 having a much stronger west lean out of all the years. The anomaly maps are all over the place honestly, it really depends on which one you use. CRW is probably the warmest overall while CDAS tends to be the coolest overall. I have not checked to see what OISST and this UKMO one are like and what baselines they use (it usually falls to what baseline they use that causes the sometimes large changes in anomaly placement) so I guess in that sense use which one you want? Preferably just like we do with most other things is to average things out which probably gets us much closer to ERSST estimates. As for the quietness in the GOM and Caribbean that is expected in an El Nino not the two storms that formed last month in the northern Caribbean, that is quite unusual. In fact any tropical activity avoided the Caribbean in 1997 and 2015, not so much in 1972 and 2009 even 1982 had 0 activity in the Caribbean. I certainly hope we are done after the N storm forms but if models continue to show us looping back to 3 or through 2-3 before the end of the month expect another round of tropical activity to occur toward the end of the month early October.

What i find rather crazy still is the lack of an EPAC season. Had a similar occurrence to last year where it started decent then just stopped. Typically in el nino EPAC is firing on all cylinders right now. Should be getting to R or S storms by mid to late september. Atlantic should be barely crossing the I storm maybe at most to the L storm in an el nino. The storms should be recurving out to sea like margot yet we have had several sneak through and cause issues close to home. We had two storms form in the north Caribbean which is very unusual in an el nino. Again all this is just a sign that something is not coupling right with the el nino. We have the warm waters just not everything aligning right. If we legit end the EPAC with Jova i would be very surprised but nothing in the pipeline for the next two weeks atleast showing up. I mean even the SOI may make a run at positive levels with the amount of high pressure showing up in the south pacific. In a few days we will have hit mid september leaving us 1.5 months away at most from typical peak time for OHC and Nino peak (which tends to happen just a little earlier). If we are lucky we see one more KW come through but that keeps getting pushed back in time and the effects would be in October at this point if one occurs, meaningfully. This is looking more and more like the june into early july level off/cool down period. Maybe we see a stark change come October but time is definitely running out.

Definitely getting the core much more stable than it has been. See if we can get convection surrounding the eye and we may start the process of strengthening.

Here is the latest 24 hour microwave, looks like it finally dropped the old eyewall and can start on a new one.

Better organized does not mean intensification has begun.

Does look to be getting more organized see if we can fire off some convection to kick start the process.

I question where the KW is? Here is the translation " Decrease in sea warming #ElNiñoCostero observed in the last 30 days. Data: MW (microwave) #ElNiñoCostero continues, but less intense. A warm #KelvinWave is still ahead, but its impacts to re-boost warming would be attenuated if the #Anticiclone remains activated. We continue monitoring... "

It just updated with the last two hours and does show the core has taken a beating definitely feels like ERC is taking place lets see what happens overnight as the shear continues to relax overall it still is a pretty solid storm just needs to finish what most likely is wind expansion at this point. We may see a surge back to those levels earlier but would need to really deepen to do that.

That is such an interesting way to put the values I assume these are anomalies? Thanks for both the sites!

Yea you can see cooling taking shape in the WPAC finally which has been soo slow and the far EPAC around 1+2 and very eastern edge of 3 have cooled as well. We need to see a strong WWB again to take that next big jump but until then the trades are holding on decent across the area with a minor weakening showing up around region 4 by the end of the month, may spark a small KW that induces a small spike in temps. Otherwise things should hold steady or slightly cool for the time being. waiting for when that next strong push is coming and with the cooling of the WPAC starting up that warm pool is fading to feed this ENSO. How things react the next 3 weeks should tell us a lot how things go forward. Would have included prior times but I don't believe they have an archive with TAO data. In another post Ill include prior sst/subsurface in past strong EL Nino for what September averaged.

Lol more blanket statements 97 was 2.4 for two consecutive ONI and 82 was 2.2 for 3 consecutive ONI. What is your point? I also don't understand how you can say don't trust models far out but yet explicitly talk about how models are predicting the peak near record highs... Edit: I guess Ill have to wait till tomorrow when you have more posts or just edit another post.

Dude ONI for 2015/16 hit twice at 2.6...

personally still like the call of 1.7 ONI max (OND) in November with monthly temp around 1.9 max in November and RONI around 1.3-1.4 MEI should be close to those values as well. As mentioned in the prediction thread if any month like Oct coming in 1.7 vs 1.6 or November coming in 2 instead of 1.9 or December 1.8 vs 1.7 we bump it up to 1.8 ONI for OND. Let us see how it plays out either way it does not seem the atmosphere and ENSO will be quite on the same wave length.

I mean this makes sense you would hope that the super nino would actually be able to take hold of the atmosphere and that the MJO would just fall in line with being in the warm ENSO region low amplitude in a way to enhance the background state at times. You also want to see interference continually in the CPAC with trades so you want the WPAC to start off strong and die as the summer goes on so it can generate WWB events across the pacific. 1997 and 2015 WWB from (https://www.climate.gov/news-features/blogs/enso/december-el-niño-update-phenomenal-cosmic-powers?page=0) Was having the hardest time finding 1997 850 U anoms so this article should do well. Besides the WWB event in March/April this was the first one across the dateline that had impact. June was definitely there but feel this was more of a spreading of waters westward from the already record warm EPAC that helped enhance 3.4. The consistency of the WWB events is also important 2015 already had strong starting point with warm waters already across the equator so it was primed. 1997 had a cool ENSO state beforehand not quite similar but similarish to what we had just gone through but the frequency and strength of the WWB events was on another level helping drive an extremely strong Nino event. I really do believe the already extremely warm waters globally are playing a significant role here. If we didn't have the near record levels of warmth in the WPAC would we have had a strong ENSO event given the atmospheric state we are seeing? I personally believe it would have been along the lines of a moderate event given the atmospheric state of things, but with already extremely warm waters it is much easier to attain these high levels of SSTs and anomalies compared to 1997, 1982, and pre 1980s el Nino events. Basically like stating the atmosphere doesn't have to work nearly as hard to induce an El Nino state but if the atmosphere doesn't work nearly as hard does it have the same impact even with SST anoms at these upper levels? Lets hope the +IOD holds and WPAC continues to cool otherwise will still be many fighting components here even if ONI goes above 2C.

Thanks for the info and wow at 200-250 ACE potential.

Yea agree SST's aren't everything but typically the shear profile in El Nino tends to be just a bit too much to allow extensive tropical formation like so far. It is very possible at this point we get to near 20 named storms with 7-9 hurricanes and at least 3-4 majors before the season is over which again is just not normally seen with El Nino atmosphere. At that the machine just does not want to turn off either especially if there is even any semblance of MJO going back into 8/1/2 which is still looking to happen maybe end of the month early October? This would induce a warming episode for ENSO regions and ultimately another KW into October but would this be the last one considering we would be rather close to typical peak ENSO timeframe, time will tell of course. Need to watch how the western portion of the subsurface evolves with that idea. A nice surge in ENSO both oceanic and atmospherically would definitely cut off the Atlantic but exactly when does that happen? Certainly we should not be going into late October/November with storms.

Yes the more latent heat release the stronger the ridge is north of the storm. Would ultimately bring it further west, how far west before the turn is of course the question at hand. Also very cool yea Centerville still a mess but getting better, I dont frequent around there too much but they are building a second bridge not sure what the plan is with that but anything will probably help out that situation. lol Yea good ol Millersville I was in classes with the current Mu wx center director, Kyle Elliott, also nice to see Dr. Clark representing Millersville as the current president of AMS! I hope to be able to go to the conference this year in Baltimore.

Latent heat release can be rather large and intense in strong systems so they tend to not be modeled all that well and some key things can get missed. That is the idea of a mind of its own because it can change up the atmosphere around the system given the right conditions. Just like in winter sometimes the thunderstorms off the east coast can be misrepresented thus leading to a stronger ridge than modeled.

Yea just looking at super ninos you can see less impact from peak MEI standpoint to what ONI was, ONI increased every super nino at that too. Small amount of data but an interesting occurrence none the less. To me it just sounds like the same thing we have been saying all summer that there are competing factors holding the true Nino potential back.

That seems like a reasonable thought but in general the fact that you have to have ONI that high to attain an MEI/RONI large enough to support a more fluid El Nino response is saying a lot for this year. That is also not to say that every MEI/RONI in the future will follow in the same path as this has but there certainly is something off about this year. Would love to see a post mortem of this event after the winter is done.

Yea we have pulled ahead of the EPAC which is unusual in an El Nino and if Lee does its thing likely get pretty close on ACE as well which is just above normal as of now. We should not have gotten Franklin and Idalia forming where they did in an El Nino year.