so_whats_happening

please post would love to read

Im game for whichever metric you would like to use I have no issue with that but when comparing it to ambient weather I have yet to see RONI take the lead in that aspect, ONI still seems like a much more reasonable fit. The bold I would assume you are saying comparing tropics to subtropic or are you comparing one tropical region to a different basin? If waters warm globally the same amount (of course this is not the case but averaging it out) the effects are still felt from an ENSO event but since mid latitudes to the poles are warming much faster than Equatorial regions there has to be some effect that this causes. I think this is what you were maybe trying to allude to? Im just not seeing RONI as the answer for this explanation is all. This year should have acted very similar to 1965-66 and 1972-73 both strong/super in a -PDO state (multi year -PDO surrounding) but it just didnt. It is possible to explain this year may have had extremely bad luck in that the +AMO (which was nearly triple the value we saw back in 1997/98) was to blame? Both 65-66 and 72-73 saw the PDO values go to neutral over the winter versus 82-83, 97-98, and 15-16 where they all were positive. 2015/16 I think was able to get a bit closer to the classic look of strong/super ENSO because it was on another level with SST anomalies.

Im not saying it is the wrong metric if RONI was to be the metric last year it very much should have ended up like a moderate El Nino and it just didn't. The consistency of overstating that this was going to be a super Nino last year per ONI was a lot and yes the RONI was mentioned over time for sure. Was RONI the true metric if so this should have very much acted like a moderate Nino which it actually didn't now we go do down this path so far this year where RONI is still well below the ONI values and now we want to use this as the metric? Im all for consistency but one needs to be used. I personally just see RONI as taking out the background noise of Oceanic warming but water temps are water temps regardless of the surrounding oceanic warmth. I know we had a major discussion on this last year. If the waters are still consistently +2 above normal even with a warmer state the atmosphere should still respond in the same way even at a higher point.

I get what you are saying but im personally not a fan of picking and choosing years for different metrics how we can go from last year using ONI and saying that was the true metric, to this year and saying RONI is the true metric is not befitting. There needs to be consistency.

Has there been an overall increase in moisture seen over the SW, not necessarily rain but have dew points been higher in recent years to help really push these means higher?

The stronger trades are starting to have an impact on the warming that did occur into the second half of June. This has allowed the thermocline to also rise, but the biggest problem I am seeing is where the extra juice in the tank will come from as we head through summer and into fall for the developing La Nina. It does seem as though things are taking time to establish. We slowly are pushing VP further west to the maritime continent and eroding what little remnants of Nino were left. Just don't know if there will be enough to forcibly put us solidly, even RONI levels, into moderate/ strong like I have been reading. I would like to see some real positive changes to make me think it is reasonable we can attain anywhere near those levels. We saw that this happened earnest last year with the El Nino around end of July into August after months of rather low confidence in the potential. This is also in the wake of me making that prediction of us attaining moderate status via ONI (thinking maybe -1 to -1.2 area at best). Still have plenty of time and would like to see how things react to the upcoming MJO wave movement, which has been extremely stagnant for a La Nina thus far.

Always fun to see what happened a year ago to now. This will change day to day unfortunately because we are locked with how much we can upload a hard copy. 140kb lol

You can see the regions that have not had strong ice melt from how the 500mb pattern has setup. The region of the Beaufort was already rather worrisome as we left winter ~1.5 meter thick ice as we were heading into spring spells for bad results in the summer. Strange to see the Kara sea holding up rather well still. I know it is the Navy model some folks do not like but still believe it shows how things are going relatively well.

Huh never took the chance to graph it like this but it is interesting to see that before 1994 RONI was typically warmer than ONI itself.

DCA _ NYC _ BOS __ ORD _ ATL _ IAH __ DEN _ PHX _ SEA +2.4 +2.2 +2.7 +1.8 +1.2 +1 +1.3 +1.9 +1.1

Yep and an increase or decrease in cloud cover plays a very important part in radiative balance. Even something as small as 2% can make a large difference, cloud height also plays such an important role. Was discussing with one of my colleagues on the situation (he works with NOAA) they are not even sure what is going on with the rather abrupt increase over the last decade or so. To be higher continuously from a warming average is something we surely have not recorded take place. Truly something interesting to see happen.

Definitely will see the surface cooling as for the subsurface that will certainly be interesting to watch setup. I wish I had hovmollers from back around spring/summer of 2020.

Thanks for the site Ill keep that in my bookmarks. The GODAS has only updated to the 17th so TAO around then was like this. You can see on GODAS it did warm a bit toward the end not as much as what TAO is showing but will be interested to see if it follows suit in the next update (should be later today or tomorrow). Another thing though is GODAS, im pretty certain goes 5N-5S whereas TAO is only 2N-2S so it is showing a fairly narrow band right around the equator versus a broader region which could in fact be cooler over all. Intricacies like this though don't mean much in the broader sense. I would expect TAO to cool in the coming updates as we close out June and July to be a little more inline with scope of GODAS. Especially when seeing the hovmollers actually showing signs of a nice Easterly event through the first half of July. What I also did find interesting from that site is the CFS SST forecast for the western Caribbean, July it is just on fire but as we go through to October/November it cools quite a bit this tells me there is potentially quite the Caribbean hurricane season being projected from that model. Just something to watch going forward.

Here is a comparison date to date 2024 and 1998. I only use TAO as it looks cleaner with displaying purposes versus this which you kind of have to do some extra steps to get a similar look. This site also uses monthly data versus 5 day, monthly, and quarterly that TAO uses. TAO has limitations in date range though as it only goes back to I think 1988. https://ds.data.jma.go.jp/gmd/tcc/tcc/products/elnino/ocean/t-eq_tcc.html This is not to say we are experiencing something completely different as the moving average is still very real, so 1998 would look colder on a warming average (1991-2020 as the current average).

This is what I use from 1953- present https://www.atmohub.kit.edu/data/qbo.dat

Yea it is still early yet I do wonder still how strong we get though. The Subsurface looks to be warming up again toward the WPAC so it would seem maybe a quick blip into Nina territory. If I had to take a guess this early I would say we could push to -1 to -1.1 area with ONI just not sure it will last all too long yet. Gotta wait to see if the trades do enhance quite a bit.

My guess is due to the WWB event that took place through late May. You can see that trades weakened quite a bit during that time giving a very Nino like response to the ocean. Most sources see that warming that occurred not quite to the levels of TAO and CPC T depths did warm a little at the surface. That should erode rather quickly if we do indeed see trades strengthen coming up here into early July.

Quick Update on Subsurface via TAO with hovmolllers about over the same time period. Does look like we finally are starting to see possibilities of enhanced trades over the central and eastern Pac as mentioned early.

Rough lol

Month to date we see this is not terribly far off, especially with these plots being low reliability. Much higher heights over the north pole though which is throwing some differences in looks. Much warmer in the east than I had originally thought thought the cold shots earlier in the month would have been more pronounced, oh well you live and you learn.

This is about as typical as it gets for summer though. I will say this is a bit earlier then we typically see these temps in the East/ Mid Atlantic, we usually wait until right around the 4th of July to mid July to really set in the heat. Surprisingly the dew points across the country are not too bad right now not use to seeing dews points in the mid 50's like this in June with a heat dome nearby. Since we barely have a noticeable wave with the MJO I would not be surprised if the pattern kind of recycles on itself for the foreseeable future. We essentially dropped in null around 4/5, I used la nada since technically this where we are still there. I could see by beginning of July we may start to change things up a little maybe before a reset mid to late July as always still rather early though.

Nothing as of yet they still seem to be having some issues. I hope this can be resolved by the end of the summer but have this feeling we may not see it this go around of ENSO. It will be interesting to see as we get toward the end of summer if we can start to enhance trades at all, right now that is a piece that seems to be lacking specifically over the East/ Central Pac.

I wonder if this will have an influence on the development of the La Nina at all again typically you would want an Atlantic El Nino with a Pacific La Nina and vice versa but I still do wonder if the the WPAC still being rather warm is playing a role in shifting how things set up. Lets give it to the end of July to see if this holds or strengthens in any meaningful way. I think it is still too early to call it a dud of a season for hurricanes and development of La Nina. Personally Im rooting for a neutral year but if the La Nina pattern really takes hold could easily see low end moderate via ONI.

Thanks that is where I meant, Baffin Bay. For some reason that completely slipped my mind, appreciate the correction.

This is a visual/graphical perspective for folks for each region. I am kind of surprised to see the Kara sea region holding a bit more ice than past seasons (at least of recent) for this time of year. One thing for sure that seems to be helping it out is the snow in the surrounding lands has not melted out yet so another visual of how snow impacts the overall health of the ice into summer time. Snow near the Chukchi/ ESS region also holding on a bit. https://cryospherecomputing.com/regional.html Things may try to steady out a bit coming up here in the CAA and Beaufort regions maybe leading to less overall decline but that region is looking rather ragged. Is the Labrador sea grouped in with CAA data?