raindancewx

The major cool-off / wetter period we're seeing now in New Mexico, back to seasonal conditions, is consistent with the subsurface flat-lining. Once we get a burst in subsurface temps, it should get very cold pretty quickly. But I don't really expect the flat subsurface period to end for a bit. I know everyone likes to talk about how warm the Indian Ocean warm pool is v. the ENSO regions...but surely the incredible heat in the Gulf of Mexico matters too? There have been 100F observed waters near Florida this Summer. Indian Ocean is nowhere near that warm. Small places off Western Mexico are also super warm.

The actual 2023 US temperature profile looks a lot like 1991 and 1982 in the sequential three month "seasons" since 1/1. No one has really noticed because the MJO cycle has been different all year. So the months individually are not great matches. But seasonally, Jan-Mar, Feb-Apr, Mar-May, etc are close to 2023. Especially if you add a degree or so for 1982. The research I've seen on volcanism suggests that the ITCZ moves north/south of normal ENSO positions in response to major tropical eruptions. So it makes sense that you have essentially half of the "correct" rainfall response at the equator in July. I would say 2018 had half the response as well - but in the opposite way. Dry by Indonesia, no wet signal to the east. Essentially, the "wetness" that is moved off the equator in the older strong events is now at the equator - that's been my working theory. The research is that +aerosol net eruptions push the wetness north - so with Tonga I've assumed the opposite. For reference, here is 1972-73, and roughly what I expect for winter - The CFS moves the wettest area in the tropics east through Feb-Apr. I think it's just a bit slow - what it has for Jan-Mar is very similar to what I just showed. The Canadian has the 2009-10 look, of 175W as the center-point for DJF instead of 160W.

To be honest, there isn't much support for the Hadley Circulation definitively expanding from Global Warming either. I don't really care what the Tip guy says, IPCC says it's still behaving within natural variation in the Northern Hemisphere. Go look into the section for the Hadley Cell. It's page 37 at the bottom. The Hadley and Walker cells really seem to behave fairly independently, and honestly the southern portion is probably responding more violently to the QBO because of the hole in the Ozone layer. https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_WGI_Chapter03.pdf The human-induced change has not yet clearly emerged out of the internal variability range in the Northern Hemisphere (Quan et al., 2018; Grise et al., 2019), whereas the trend in the annual-mean Southern Hemisphere edge is outside the 5th–95th percentile range of internal variability in CMIP6 in three out of the four reanalyses (Figure 3.16b). For the Southern Hemisphere summer when the simulated human influence is strongest, the 1981–2000 trend in three out of the four reanalyses falls outside the 5th–95th percentile range of internal variability (Figure 3.16c; L. Tao et al., 2016; Grise et al., 2018, 2019). So much of the discussion in here is idiotic. It doesn't matter if the Hadley Cell is wobbling, contracting, expanding, moving east/west and impacting ENSO development. The vast majority of the forum is outside the rising air / sinking air placement of the circulation, whether it's advanced north/south/east/west by a few tenths of a degree. IPCC has it moving 0.1-0.3 degrees per decade on the net. That's not a big deal for someone at 42N. Your weather in the East is determined not by ENSO strength but by placement, as that links to the PDO and other Pacific patterns that make you warm or cold. RONI is just another toy for estimating strength using poorly defined estimates for how the other oceans should be behaving in the tropics.

I keep trying to tell you this but you seem to miss out: ENSO was never predictive for temperatures or precipitation in your region. The correlations for RONI are even worse. Go look - I dare you. We both know you won't.

The 'RONI' stuff you guys are talking about looks like it is pretty useless for seasonal forecasting. The correlations to anything you'd want to forecast for Fall/Winter/Spring are lower than the SST figures. In other words, PNA, WPO/EPO, PDO, temperatures, whatever - it all corresponds more cleanly to actual temperatures and especially changes in temperatures. The other more basic issue with using RONI is that CPC has no actual idea how warm the tropics are in a centered sense in the current 30-year period....because only half the period has happened. They're essentially guessing how warm the tropics are outside 120-170W, 5N-5S should be in La Nina v. an El Nino for 2011-2040 and then subtracting out the current warmth/coolness in the tropics against that imagined baseline. I think it's generally understood that the Indian Ocean at low latitudes warms faster than the others. So for me I just to try carefully match up the Indian Ocean tendency with the Pacific. You need the entire circumference of the tropical oceans to be ballpark in terms of tendencies to have a shot at a decent seasonal forecast.

Still looks like we're on target for a ~2.0C warm up in Nino 3.4 year/year in Dec-Feb. Rare historically for single year warms up at that magnitude. It's a good list of years for me: 1957-58, 1965-66, 1972-73, 1976-77, 1982-83, 1997-98, 2009-10. I updated my statistical testing today. Albuquerque winter (DJF) highs respond very strongly (0.3 r-squared) to y/y changes in Nino 3.4. Spring is a strong response too (0.22 r-squared). But when you look at the month by month data, it's really only December and April that respond in a statistically significant way (p<0.05). I was surprised to see how many cold Decembers we have following hot July El Nino years. R-squared for 25 El Ninos by y/y change is about 0.34 in December, for highs locally - a relationship that would occur by chance like 0.2% of the time. If we finish with a very dry (under 50% of normal) of July-Sept precipitation locally, the favored subsequent wet periods locally are October & April, with an all-or-nothing tendency for both November & March. The look for the big "warm up" El Nino years is essentially the opposite of now, where it has been very hot in the blue area and cold in the yellow area. But it does match as the flip of the +PDO, -ENSO years I've looked at. It's the type of look I expect for winter overall, though I am still refining details.

July subsurface for 100-180W fell back to +1.0 from 1.4 in June. Pretty major drop actually. https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/ocean/index/heat_content_index.txt I've been wondering how the hell we pulled off a record hot month here, but sure enough, you had a big drop off in 1980 too: 7/1980 ABQ: 99.1F (mean high) 7/2023 ABQ: 99.0F (mean high) June/July 1980: +1.17 / +0.27 June/July 2023: +1.40 / +1.02 Since 1979, 1980 & 2023 are the only years in the +1 to +1.5 range that had major 100-180w subsurface heat content drops June-July. Jun-Jul 1997 did too, but really, it's less of a shock. The 1997 fall off is a ~17% loss in subsurface heat, but 1980 and 2023 were much larger on a percentage basis. One of the other great heat wave years globally, 2003, also had a huge loss in subsurface heat from July to August. We're still in a weird spot for timing of developing events so the subsurface is volatile. 1982, 1989, and 2012 all have very similar subsurface readings in July, and the winters are...just a wee bit different. This is a decent blend for May-July subsurface conditions - not really a match v. models for August though. 1.11 / 1.40 / 1.02 2023 2.01 / 2.25 / 1.83 1997 2.01 / 2.25 / 1.83 1997 2.01 / 2.25 / 1.83 1997 0.07 / 0.24 / 0.13 2019 0.07 / 0.24 / 0.13 2019 0.88 / 0.86 / 0.81 2018 -------------------------- 1.18 / 1.35 / 1.09 Blend

Even with that look, most of the Southern US isn't cold. I don't know how to explain it but the Canadian looks off to me. Should be wetter with that look too. Canadian does have a -PDO still for winter. The warm tongue east of Japan remains very pronounced, and continues to warm on Tropical Tidbits week after week. Looking back, the El Ninos with -PDO or neutral PDO conditions in winter tend to be sandwiched between La Ninas / cold Neutrals. I don't really expect this to be a double El Nino, so that makes sense to me (we've just had two in an SST sense: 2018-19/2019-20, and 2014-15/2015-16, and they aren't real common). This event is going to peak and weaken pretty early. If that's the case, the patterns will do weird shit as ENSO weakens if the weakening is uneven. The patterns late winter and beyond will behave erratically depending on what weakens where, relative to everything else. The subsurface in this event has already shown that it can weaken without immediately limiting the surface. July cooled all month as an example. El Nino marches on at the surface. March is a good candidate for a particularly large spread between SSTs and the subsurface like early 1973 or 1988 or 2005. So that remains my pick for a particularly wacky month. Saw this making the rounds as well -

If the CFS is even halfway right about a wet August here...March should be pretty interesting again. Wet August / Wet October in the Southwest is a very strong storm signal for the following March. Often tied to an MJO impulse in the right spot. Last year had the wettest Aug/Oct combo here in like 20 years, preceding the madness of March. The only comparable period was 2018 in recent years, with March 2019 somewhat similar to last March. 8/1-->9/15-->10/31-->12/15-->2/1-->3/15 is your typical MJO timing cycle 8/15-->9/30-->11/15-->12/31-->2/15->3/31 is often a bit off 8/31-->10/15-->11/30-->1/15-->3/1 also usually a bit off Here is what I found a long time ago in El Nino looking at solar activity and March snowfall. This is observable in many high elevation Western cities. The correlation isn't super strong, but we have an outside shot at finishing around 175-225 sunspots per month for July 2023-June 2024. Recent El Ninos like 2018-19, 2019-20 were both near 0 sunspots, when you'd expect only an inch or so of snow. ABQ is something like 1/36 for low-solar heavy snow in March v. 18/56 in high-solar years. "Heavy" here means 3"+ in March. Guess what year the 13.9" March is in?

August on the CFS looks like a cooler version of the analogs I like for winter. Good sign. Also now shows up as a pretty wet month in the Southwest. That's consistent with high solar activity. I read a paper a long time ago talking about the mechanisms for how solar activity can modulate the onset/peak/weakening of monsoon timing in India, Western Mexico, West Africa and a few other places. When I looked locally, I was able to replicate the effects. Above 100-150 sunspots annualized, there basically are no years with active July monsoons in the Southwest US. We were flirting with 200+ sunspots a few days in the past month. When I run my model to try to fix/modernize the issues with 1972-73, it essentially comes up with 1991-92/2009-10 as the closest ENSO match. But since volcanic, solar, and Atlantic conditions are fairly bad matches to 1972-73 and 2009-10, 1991-92 actually works quite well at fixing the issues. I'll likely throw in 1997-98 at weak weight to drag the center of the East east of 2009-10, and then subtract out 1993-94 for the winter to fix the PDO and warm up the Atlantic more. For now 1993-94 isn't really an anti-log (it was literally warmer in 1993 than 2023 in Nino 3.4 as recently as May). One thing to watch is the PDO. It now looks just negative of neutral to me. Nino 1.2 tends to lead changes in the PDO areas. I don't think we'll see a complete breakdown in the negative features of the PDO until at least the Fall. But it is possible it flips at least somewhat positive in Sept/Oct.

For all the eastern optimists, like 95% of you. Here are the most recent 10 El Nino winters minus the prior 10 El Nino winters. These are the winters that finish over 27.0C in DJF. Recent: 1994-95, 1997-98, 2002-03, 2004-05, 2006-07, 2009-10, 2014-15, 2015-16, 2018-19, 2019-20 Older: (-)1965-66, 1968-69, 1969-70, 1972-73, 1976-77, 1977-78, 1982-83, 1986-87, 1987-88, 1991-92 I would say for most people in the East, 1994, 1997, 2006, 2015, 2018, 2019 kind of suck. 2014-15 was also very warm before mid-winter. 2004 is ok, not amazing. On the scale, orange is 2-3 degrees warmer in F. Deep red is over 3 degrees warmer. Locally, six of the ten most recent El Ninos still have average or below average highs against the past 100 year means (49.6F high for DJF). The winters of 1997-98 (#36 coldest), 2006-07 (#32), 2009-10 (#38), 2018-19 (#49) are actually somewhat cold here even against the 1923-2022 winter average temperatures.

My guess is there will be some kind of rebound wave of warmth in the subsurface starting sometime in September / October. There should be a transitional flattening first. The warming wave should last 4-8 weeks, and coincide relatively immediately with a pretty cold period. Mid-Feb to Apr first saw the incredible period of snow for the West, with the big wave of warmth in the Fall coinciding with a severely cold West November 2022.

For the last several years, we've had remarkable tendencies locally for cold / hot periods to coincide with the opposite trend below the surface. Rapid cooling below the surface from a high-level heat almost always coincides with a very hot month here. But the opposite holds true as well. We had very cold Nov/Mar periods locally with the rapid warming.

I don't understand the point in using heat waves or cool snaps as a climate change argument either way. We had a severe cold snap in most of the West in June, and now we're seeing a severe heat wave. I say "severe" but in truth our highs and lows even in the greatest heat waves in the Summer are only actually 8-12 degrees above average for periods of 2-3 weeks. There are signs already that August will be a much wetter/cooler month, probably still warm, but nothing like July. So the Summer isn't even going to finish too warm for the West really. Using an exceptional two-three week period as an example of the devastation of climate change is idiotic. Most people know that over a longer period, 3 months, 6 months, a year, the temperatures are still only slightly warmer than before. As long as that is true, climate change is an annoyance and will continue to be so for most people. Nothing more, nothing less. It's more akin to a bicycle running down the train tracks than a locomotive. If you truly had existential threat permanently in the Southeast or Southwest you wouldn't see 70% of US population in the areas that are hottest, FL, SC, TN, GA, NC, AZ, TX, for the past few decades. Climate change is the science of averages, so playing the heat wave game cuts both ways. If we're playing the average game, shouldn't we be more shocked at how warm the East has been? Last I checked, we got too much water in the cold season, and now the heat is burning it off essentially for the West. Are we really pretending a Summer that's running -1F net for AZ half way through is the worst thing ever?

Just about time for New Mexico to get more publicity once again. I'm hoping the movie shows Oppenheimer riding a horse on his ranch. Anyway - there are a lot of videos popping up on Youtube with El Nino / winter ideas now. I'm not convinced this is really going to be a basin-wide event in the way you guys mean it. You'll see Nino 1.2 warmth spread West. But it's not moving particularly fast. Just multiply the rate of change from June to July by four. By that point it's near December, and time is up. I expect the warmest waters to be around 120W, with some extension east and west. The +PDO / El Nino Modoki and -PDO / La Nina Modoki events tend to go together. You can just about see the link visually on the month over month change below - the cold gaining off he West Coast connects with the Nino 4 (160E-150W) water holding off the Nino 3 gains (100-150W).

I've been talking about 1993-94 as an anti-log because it specifically fixes some of the issues with 1972-73. It's coldest where the models have the Atlantic warmest, and warmest where the NE Pacific is forecast coldest. So subtracting it out from the analogs fixes some of the issues - The N Atlantic (10N, 30W) and N Pacific around 140W are fixed specifically with 1993-94 included. I was doing more testing today. Actual US weather matches pretty well to a 1972, 1991, 1997, 2009, 2019 blend - if you recognize that the 1972 and 2023 El Ninos started at different points in Spring. So Feb-Mar works better with anti-1972. But you can more or less replicate the spatial placement of the heat / cold each month with that blend. January is a poor match though. You do generally also have to warm up temps by 1F or so since the analogs are centered on 1998. The QBO/Solar stuff works fairly well those five. 1972, 1991, 2009, 2019 are all neutral to very negative QBO winters, with 1997 barely positive. PDO is basically neutral. Solar is very high in 1991 and fairly high in 1972 which offset the very low 2009 and 2019. The issue with this winter is the temperature magnitudes. I'm relatively confident in some kind of north / south split for US temperature anomalies. The matches I have all look like the opposites of the +PDO / La Nina winters, which makes sense to me. I could see someone in the Northern US finish 5-10F above normal. But I also wouldn't be shocked at +1 to +3F for both cold / warm departures.

Summer highs locally filtered by ENSO third (La/N/El) tend to predict snow totals pretty well locally. I got 15 inches for Albuquerque with a slightly cool June, blazing July, and average August. If that's about right, it'd be a decent season for snow in the NE US. Snow totals are pretty strongly negatively correlated between ABQ and Philly in El Nino. I saw a video on Youtube where Bastardi said his tentative winter analogs are 1957-58, 1965-66, 1994-95, 2002-03, 2009-10. I generally think the pool of ~28C ish El Ninos are right. He's at the right strength level with that group. It's just not the PDO/Modoki setup I expect.

Here is how we look in July 2023 v. some other major events. I generally look for "red" in Nino 1.2 as a requirement for a good visual match. July sort of looks like a 1972, 1991, 2009 mix to me. Sprinkled in 1997 and -1993 as well to fix some stuff - Winter is about right conceptually - very warm Atlantic. 28C ish El Nino. -PDO. Some cold water relatively west of Australia and by India.

Some of my conceptual stuff is starting to firm up for winter. May as well share. - December in the Southwest tends to be cold following cold/wet July. We don't have that this year. - The ( +ENSO / -PDO ) subtracting out (-ENSO / +PDO) years have a strong signature for a pretty severe cold period in the Fall, likely after mid-October. - Record upper level moisture (Tonga), with a strong subtropical jet should lead to a very wet winter almost everywhere in the US. But for most places, I don't see many particularly cold storms if the PDO remains negative, especially with the AMO/Atlantic so warm. - There should eventually be decent snow pack though in cold areas, and when storms can pull in those air-masses while vacuuming up all the extra moisture around, it's not hard to imagine 5-6 explosively powerful storms in Fall and March. - I'm not expecting major temperature deviations this year for the US in winter. November and March are different. I expect large portions of the US to see top 10 type wet winters though. - I think the QBO is kind of dumb as a factor, but the -QBO El Ninos are interesting (these are yours +5 to +20 starts in January, that were negative by winter) 1958-59, 1972-73, 1976-77, 1986-87, 1991-92, 2009-10, 2014-15, 2019-20 Super cold Fall does show up with the QBO though. The US is actually pretty cold for once in Nov-Jan, but the cold is more of a Mexico thing for Jan-Mar. - El Ninos following major (VEI4+ tropical) volcanic eruptions (0-3 years after): 1963, 1965, 1982, 1991, 1994 - Warm AMO / Summer Heat Wave El Ninos / El Nino-ish years: 1951, 1953, 1957, 1994, 2003, 2006, 2015, 2018, 2019 (Generally, 1930, 1939, 1940, 1941, 1945, 1958, 1963, 1997, 2002, 2004, 2009, 2014 were not bad for heat waves) - Currently evaluating these years for winter: 1951-52, -1957-58, 1963-64, 1965-66, 1972-73, 1979-80, -1980-81, 1982-83, 1986-87, 1991-92, 1992-93, -1993-94, 1994-95, -1995-96, 1997-98, 2002-03, 2003-04, 2006-07, 2012-13, -2014-15, 2015-16, 2016-17, -2017-18, 2018-19, 2019-20.

It's interesting looking at the warm ENSO events here with very hot July weather following cool-ish June weather. Not real common. I reckon we finish the month at 94-98 degrees for the high, +2 to +6. July has very little variability here long-term, so persistence without rain is necessary for that level of heat. Year Jun/Jul/Aug 2003 88.4 / 96.7 / 90.3 1951 89.6 / 96.2 / 88.8 1979 89.1 / 96.1 / 90.9 1963 90.3 / 95.2 / 87.9 The four great warm ENSO heat waves tend to collapse here to near average in August. We'll see how that goes. Looks familiar? Those four years combined would be a pretty interesting winter blend. Just about everyone would be happy - heat, warmth, it's all there in different places at different times. But I don't buy the blend. I do think it's increasingly likely that both 2003-04, and 1951-52 are among the better winter analogs. Will probably combine those two with one or two strong El Ninos, and subtract out cold ENSO events with a +PDO to fix the PDO.

Here is an example of the anti-ENSO v PDO looks I mentioned above. July 1-11 1983 (La Nina following El Nino, rapidly declining solar, +PDO, after a traditional net-aerosol gain volcanic eruption, i.e. net cooling.) About as opposite as possible. It's a cold/warm/cold split left to right in early July 1983. 1951 if you assume +1 to +2 of warming given the ocean gain in heat content, is warm/cold/warm from left to right, like this year.

I've been experimenting with the incoherent PDO / ENSO set of winters. In other words: (El Nino w/ -PDO) - (La Nina w/ +PDO). Just to see what it looks like. Still not many good matches. If you're a bit generous with "anti" PDO years. You get something like: 1951-52, 1953-54, 1963-64, 1965-66, 1972-73, 1994-95, 2004-05, 2006-07, 2018-19, 2019-20 for -PDO / El Nino. and 1983-84, 1984-85, 1985-86, 1995-96, 1996-97, 2000-01, 2005-06, 2016-17 for +PDO / La Nina. The strongest -PDO v. +ENSO years are 1951-52, 1953-54, 2019-20, and 1983-84, 1984-85, 1995-96 for -ENSO. So... 1951-52 (x3), 1953-54 (x2), 1963-64, 1965-66 (x2), 1972-73, 1994-95, 2004-05, 2006-07, 2018-19, 2019-20 (x3) minus 1983-84 (x3), 1984-85 (x2), 1995-96 (x3), 1996-97, 2000-01, 2005-06, 2016-17 (x2). This isn't a forecast, it's just to see how the unusual opposites blend, since PDO/ENSO opposite winters occur 1/3 of years or less. The blend looks like the 1972-73, 1997-98, -2014-15 blend I used for June doesn't it?

The best part of not living in the South is when we have strong high pressure/heat in the Summer...we still have mountains. Big mountains. This was 7/9 when it was near 100 in ABQ. Angel Fire is 8,600 feet up - I've not been terribly impressed with the high temperatures with the current ~600 decameter non-sense we get semi-often. But the lows have been a lot warmer than normal - mid and upper 70s. That actually is pretty rare here especially with dew points still mostly in the 30-50 range. We'd typically fall into the 60s even on a 100 degree day.

PDO held firmly negative in June. https://oceanview.pfeg.noaa.gov/erddap/tabledap/cciea_OC_PDO.htmlTable?time,PDO 2023-01-01T00:00:00Z -0.92 2023-02-01T00:00:00Z -1.1 2023-03-01T00:00:00Z -1.63 2023-04-01T00:00:00Z -2.18 2023-05-01T00:00:00Z -1.69 2023-06-01T00:00:00Z -1.9 Since 1950, the developing El Nino years following multiple negative ENSO events are 1951, 1957, 1963, 1968, 1972, 1976, 1982, 1986, 1997, 2002, 2009, 2014, 2018. 1951, 1963, 1972, 1976, 1982, 2002, 2018 were still very negative PDO looks in June (-0.5 or less). Others were within 0.5 of 0 or positive. 1951-52 remained pretty negative for the PDO into Nov-Apr. The other years flipped to near neutral or positive for Nov-Apr. I was playing around with SSTs again today. 1980-81 is pretty solidly opposite of forecast conditions. This is one of the better matches I've come up with for trying to match both current conditions and what the Canadian has in winter. I do expect the warmest anomalies at the surface to be at 120W though, Canadian has 135-145W. Cold pockets are kind of there west of Australia and North America like now. 1979 and 2003 are both notorious for strong Summer heat waves (I believe we had 20 days+ 100F or hotter here in 1979 - at 5,350 feet up - average is three) in borderline El Nino conditions. Blend is decent on ENSO order and solar conditions (pretty high blended).

The link for my analog scoring model seems to have died pretty quickly after I uploaded it before. This one should last for 30 days if anyone wants it. You literally enter what you think will happen on the right and it automatically scores all the years since 1931 as matches on seven factors. The data for Solar, AMO, PDO, ENSO, Modoki, ENSO prior, etc is in there with weightings. Also allows you to quickly see how matching years would change if most conditions were similar, but one of the variables changed. https://easyupload.io/zajyq9 https://t.co/XMMwn7g23u I still like a ~ +2.0C peak or Oct-Nov, steady or falling starting in Nov-Dec, and only around +1.5 for DJF (28.0C) in Nino 3.4. In prior El Ninos following three cold ENSO years, the PDO has flipped mid-year. Typically May-August. So if it is going to happen, it should be anytime now. Still looks negative to me. The fluky flooding in the NE US reminds of Agnes in 1972 by the way. I've been looking for some kind of heavy-rainer up there, whether tropical or not.