cbmclean

I didn't really get the impression that the PDO was the number one villain this year. Sure it didn't help, but if I had to pick my number failure mechanism it could be the frequency/strength/duration of pacific trough jet extensions. The first event took out four weeks of good climo and was primarily the cause of the failure of the otherwise promising early January period. The second event killed late January and early Feb. Likewise the collapse of the modeled epic pattern in late Feb was due to the failure of the advertised HL blocking. Is that connected to the PDO?

Just curious, what is the risk?

They are definitely already working on this. Several AI or AI/physics hybrid models have been posted on the site this winter. They have the potential to be powerful but one thing to remember is that many AI methodologies (e.g. artificial neural networks) have to by definition "learn" by using past data. As has been mentioned many time here past data may have limited relevance in a changing climate. That may limit their effectiveness going forward.

I try to be open-minded. I agree that we probably place too much confidence in modeling in d10+. And I understand that human knowledge can do a lot from simple analysis roll forward say to ~ day 3. But from day 3 through day 10 I truly don't see any alternative to model-based forecasting. If you have a different alternative to propose I would honestly like to hear you out.

What, in detail, is your proposed alternative to model-based forecasting?

Maybe at some point we can max out the register and cause it to roll over into colds again.

I admit I am still curious to see what a nice strong Modoki Nino could do. I suspect I'd be disappointed but I am still curious. ETA: apparently Modokis were at one time thought to be becoming more common due to Babar. Can;t say I have seen it lately though. https://www.aoml.noaa.gov/ftp/hrd/annane/DIS/Q3.pdf

There's quite a bit of variability in the "snow response" to ENSO. Because I love to graph things I have made a scatter plot of ONI values vs snow at IAD. For the ONI values I have taken the data from here: https://origin.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/ensostuff/ONI_v5.php I have averaged the DJF and JFM values for each year to obtain the single "winter ONI" value for my plot. I got IAD snow data here: https://www.weather.gov/media/lwx/climate/iadsnow.pdf In the plot you can see the general trend for low ONIs to be lower in snow but there is still a ton of variation. The red point is 1996. The green point is 2010

Eh median is not out of the question then. I'll be rooting for you!

Yeah I guess we're just stuck waiting for the PDO flip to occur to see what happens. I don't really have a good feel as to what happens then. If a time traveler came from 30 years in the future and said "Yeah it flipped but it didn't help much and DCI is now Myrtle Beach", I wouldn't be surprised. On the other hand if they said "Yeah it flipped and we got back to maybe 85% of what we had" I wouldn't be shocked either.

What are you at for this season? My home forum is pretty much closing up shop and I'm just staying on here to try to help will you to at least median.

In today's base-state, between the two which do you guys think is more destructive to east CONUS snow: Pac Puke (Pacific Trough regime) or SER/-PNA/Pacific Ridge regime? They both suck ass, and the three previous winters had nearly endless -PNA but overall I think the SER is less evil than Pac Puke. At least in the SER regime the source regions are still cold and a nice -EPO can cause it to get shunted our way from time to time. For Pack Puke, once it sets in we're punting a bare minimum of the next three weeks (often four or five) as the source regions are completely scoured of cold and after it relaxes we have to gradually build it back up. On the other hand of course, when the -PNA is dominant and immobile like it was last year it is obviously a complete killer. While I'm hopeful that a switch to +PDO might help with the SER, will it do anything to improve the Hadley cell/pacific jet situation that seems to be making Pack Puke episodes longer and more severe?

kneel before King Babar.

i don't know what he knows that you know about Chuck.

I see. So by the same token, in today's warmer, wetter base state a +PDO/-NAO may be less dry and therefore better. OK, how much would it cost me to have you flip the PDO? Do you take Venmo?

I have learned my lesson. If, Chuck isn't onboard, it isn't real.

What bothers me about that though, note that the mythical 60s were -PDO dominant, while the 80s and 90s were +PDO. Just from that graph what would make one think a +PDO was preferable?

We'll be well past fossil fuels, but the extra atmospheric CO2 will linger for several hundred thousand years and some are even theorizing that we have killed the glacial cycles altogether. I'm too depressed to look up the references but they are there. Of course I could easily see atmospheric carbon extraction becoming a viable technology in the next few hundred years. Wouldn't it be funny if people started harvesting CO2 from the atmosphere to make carbon nanotubes or some such and accidentally took too much!!

The thing is, even if you guys luck into something significant before the end, I think we have the "answer" you have been referring to. The Pacific base state is dominant. El Nino is powerless to help (to be fair, maybe it improves "shit the blinds" to simple "shut the blinds"). Kneel before King Babar.

As a churchgoer myself, not sure how I feel about Jesus having a Superbowl add.

Actually, Heavy water freezes at about 38.9 F, so we just need to replace all normal hydrogen with deuterium.

Might be time to break out the Downfall video: Das snow ist befell!!

I blame Canada.

Need to get him treatment immediately. Do you want him chasing snow in the base state of the 2040s?

The LR thread: