GaWx

I became aware of coral reef bleaching with the terrible event that affected the reef near the FL Keys in the summer of 2023, when there was a marine heatwave. I clearly remember that the heating of the waters there was made worse by a lack of rainfall/clouds. I think winds were mainly pretty light. Even not so shallow waters near the coral warmed into the low to mid 90s! This was like the SW US heatwave. There were these unique conditions that when superimposed on overall already warmer than avg waters due to GW favored heating the waters to record high levels. I posted about this many times in the warming oceans thread of this CC section. This extreme warmth lasted for many weeks, which was much too long for the coral to avoid bleaching, when the stressed coral expels the beneficial algae that it feeds on. The good news is that scientists supposedly moved portions of most, if not just about every, species to safety into much better conditions allowing them to thrive and prevent extinction. https://science.nasa.gov/earth/earth-observatory/confronting-floridas-coral-collapse-153304/ Good news was that 2024 and 2025 FL Keys waters weren’t nearly as warm since the conditions favoring the marine heatwave weren’t present. I also read that there are some coral species in other parts of the world where normal SSTs are warmer that tolerate much warmer temperatures, which will help as the oceans continue to warm since some of these species could be placed elsewhere to help combat the bleaching problem. Ultimately though, the hope of course is for oceans to stop warming. https://eos.org/articles/some-corals-are-more-heat-resistant-than-thought

To get the strongest Nino in 140 years, the ONI would probably need to get up to ~3.0 to allow RONI to exceed the 2.5 RONI peak of 1982-3 and thus become the strongest since 1887-8. Keep in mind the Euro longterm warm bias that could possibly be causing its April prog to be too warm.

Happy Easter to the forum members! Hopefully it’s a joyous one. We have the successful rescue in Iran of a downed U.S. airman to help celebrate it. Also, Happy Passover! One more warm humid day before a several day cooldown with highs in the upper 60s or low 70s. But before that, I’m hoping for some good rainfall amounts later today and this evening as it is extremely dry here.

Thanks, Charlie. 1. Isn’t the range of science based predictions of the amount of GW in the very longterm in a pretty wide range as opposed to a narrow range? My understanding is that he’s near the lower end of that range. 2. In addition to the warming effect of increased CO2, there are other factors that could come into play. Spencer believes that there are negative feedback factors that will ultimately limit the amount of GW compared to most model projections. That’s supposedly why he’s near the lower end of the range. 3. He said it MAY even be beneficial not that it would definitely be beneficial. There’s the potential benefit of larger global crop sizes due to a greener planet resulting from a combo of longer growing seasons where they’re currently grown, an increase in the amount of crops grown in higher latitudes, and the increased CO2 photosynthesis effect. Also, cold has killed a good bit more than heat from what I’ve read. However, I do realize that eventually deaths from heat will rise enough to potentially start killing more than cold though that would likely still be a long ways off if that were to happen. Could these good things outweigh the bad things and make it net beneficial? I’m not saying that but it could be debated. Personally, I’m worried about rising sea levels. 4. A greener Earth could be one of the negative feedbacks that Spencer has cited since greener means cooler highs such as has occurred in the Midwest. In addition, drought frequency in the Midwest has dropped since the 1990s.

Thanks, Chris. 1. The April run comes in a bit stronger for ONI than the Mar run for the same months compared. For example, the Mar run had Sep at ~+2.1 vs the Apr run having Sep at ~+2.25. So, that’s clearly a bullish trend since the prior run for a stronger ONI. 2. RONI is still ~0.5 cooler than ONI. So, ~0.5 still needs to be subtracted off of the Euro output to approximate its implied RONI prog. 3. It’s important to still keep in mind a longterm warm bias of the Euro ONI progs based on the avg of ~20 years of progs though those that verify as El Niño have averaged a lower warm bias. Examples: -the April ‘17 run progged moderate El Niño (+1.1) for ASO (see below) vs it verifying way down at -0.3 for ONI, a whopping +1.4 miss. That’s an extreme, of course, but one doesn’t find misses anywhere near that same magnitude the other way. In addition, the April ‘14 run had ASO up at +1.5 vs verification of only +0.3, another big miss of +1.2. Furthermore, the April ‘12 run had ASO up at +1.0 vs verification of only +0.4 for a +0.6 miss. Some recent April run ASO ONI misses have also been large to the too warm side: -2025: ASO prog of +0.4 vs actual of -0.4 for miss of +0.8 -2022: ASO prog of -0.3 vs actual of -1.0 for miss of +0.7 -2021: ASO prog of 0 vs actual of -0.6 for a miss of +0.6 2020: ASO prog of -0.1 vs actual of -0.9 for a miss of +0.8 So, based on the -0.5 RONI adj. and the notable Euro warm bias, the actual RONI peak could easily verify as only a moderate peak. My current wild guess is for low to middle end strong RONI peak.

-March ‘26’s NAO came in at +2.69, obliterating as expected the old March record of +1.85 from 1969. -This +2.69 is the new 2nd highest on record with only Nov ‘78’s +3.04 higher for any month since 1950. https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/pna/norm.nao.monthly.b5001.current.ascii.table @Stormchaserchuck1

March PDO: -1.44 down from -1 in Feb https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/monitoring/pdo/

Tip, I’m trying to figure out why you said this (is there a typo?): “the entire planetary system, all metrics, air to sea and back, UNpredictably rose a whole degree C in the spring of 2023” From what I saw, 2023 was a shocking 0.29C warmer than 2022 as per what’s below. But where are you getting that spring rose 1C? 1.54 °C / 2.77 °F ± 0.04 °C ± 0.06 °C 2022 6 1.25 °C / 2.25 °F Do you mean that all metrics first hit +1C above 1850-1900?

Charlie, I assume you realize that Roy’s been dismissive of alarmism related to AGW rather than the science of AGW, itself. He agrees that the globe has warmed due to AGW but doesn’t accept anything close to the worst case scenarios as being realistic because he feels that the warming from it is/will be less than the amount needed to result in the worst case due partially to negative rather than positive feedback. He feels that the alarmism is being largely fueled for political reasons. Due to extreme difficulty in predicting how much more the globe will warm, his being on the lower side is imho not contradicting science. We’re dealing with variables rather than exact answers. I personally feel that politics has a nontrivial affect on both sides of this issue as it affects so many things unfortunately. However, I do realize that outright AGW deniers do mainly reside on the conservative side of the aisle. These two statements aren’t conflicting.

“It is human nature to think the weather we experience has some sort of global significance. But look at NOAA’s best estimate of March 2026 temperature departures from “normal” (1991-2020 average) over North America (below). Yeah, the U.S. was unusually warm. But what about all the unusual chill over the northern parts of North America? Alaska and most of Canada were below normal. As part of our monthly global temperature updates (posted separately) here are the March temperature departures from normal for the lower troposphere, 1979 through 2026 in the Lower 48 (top panel of Fig. 2). Last month was clearly the warmest in the 48-year satellite temperature record. But when we examine the bottom panel in Fig. 2 we see that, averaged over all land areas of the Northern Hemisphere (including Canada and Alaska), March 2026 was uneventful, and was even cooler than 2024 and 2025. In fact, 2026 was right on the long-term trend line. The message here is that the unusual (and likely record) warmth of March 2026 in the U.S. was largely due to normal month-to-month weather variations, while the large-scale climate signal shows March was a continuation of the slow (and largely benign, and possibly even beneficial) warming trend we have been experiencing in recent decades.” https://www.drroyspencer.com/2026/04/march-2026-satellite-temperatures-record-warmth-in-u-s-but-uneventful-for-the-northern-hemisphere/

This, which doesn’t go back to the warmth of the 1950s/30s, was due to a combo of the extremeness of the pattern and GW with the extreme pattern superimposed on a warmer globe. In other words, had there been no GW the US still could have had their warmest month since the late 1970s but with not as warm temps. The extremeness of the pattern is seen well by considering how cold much of Canada and Alaska was with some of those areas having their coldest March on record (they would have been even colder with no GW):

My point is that the correlation of strength of left side MJO in spring and later El Nino peak is low. It doesn’t tell us much. I’m thinking low end strong RONI best chance as of now.

Many strong left side MJO in April/May didn’t go superstrong:

On the way to perhaps a healthy ~+1.7c RONI Modoki similar to 1957-8. Nice!

Cansips SON fwiw Modoki ~+2 in 3.4 (ONI), implying RONI ~~+1.5, with a peak ~+1.7 RONI in winter:

Upon further review, Cansips is progging a W to C based ~+2 to +2.2 ONI from SON through JFM. I’d assume that would mean ~+1.5 to +1.7 W to C based RONI. Nothing bad about that if it were to verify. But I’m taking it w/grain due to La Niña temp pattern, which doesn’t make sense per history.

What Chuck said. It has a healthy strength Nino, probably nearing or exceeding +1.5 ONI. That doesn’t as you know at all jibe with the La Ninaish temperature anomaly pattern it has for the US and Canada. Like I said, I’ve found no +1.0+ Nino winter anything close to the Ninalike configuration Cansips has out of 32 of them! Really weird and why I expect its overall Ninaish US temp. configuration to badly bust if a decent El Niño were to verify.

I’m looking for it to bust badly assuming El Niño verifies.

The new Cansips has winter anomalies significantly colder in the NE than the SE: For all of the Ninos peaking at +1.5+, not a single one going back at least to 1895-6 had a colder NE than SE anomaly wise! Not even one! These are the winters: 2023-4, 2015-6, 2009-10, 2002-3, 1997-8, 1991-2, 1987-8, 1986-7, 1982-3, 1972-3, 1965-6, 1957-8, 1940-1, 1930-1, 1925-6, 1918-9, 1902-3, 1899-00, and 1896-7. That’s 19 winters, a nice sample size suggesting the CANSIPS E US winter temp. anomalies and a strong El Niño prog aren’t at all jibing with history. Here is the aggregate of those 19 winters: Edit: Even going all of the way down to peaks of +1.0 yields the same result, no winter colder in NE than SE. That adds 13 more for a total sample size of 32! Here’s the average of the 13 moderates:

Followup: -Fairbanks ended up with its coldest DJFM on record with it at -13.4, colder than the previous coldest of -13.0, set in 1965-6. This is ~11F BN! -Fairbanks had its coldest March on record by a large margin, -9.0F. The prior coldest was -6.6F, set in 1959! -Anchorage had its coldest March on record with +13.4F. The prior coldest was +14.0, set in 1959. Fairbanks and Barrow data: https://www.weather.gov/wrh/Climate?wfo=afg Anchorage data: https://www.weather.gov/wrh/Climate?wfo=afc Despite most of Alaska being quite cold relative to normal, the Arctic (80+N) had one of its warmest Marches on record: It turns out that Barrow, whose normals are ~11F colder than Fairbanks in DJFM, was warmer than Fairbanks for DJFM by ~4F averaged out as they averaged ~4F warmer than their normal! Barrow was warmer than Fairbanks in Dec, Jan, and March this winter.

1. The Euro did well with ONI in 2023, one of their best performances. But they also really did have a notable warm bias as was repeatedly shown with actual verifications vs progs over a near 20 year period, a large sample size. I spent lots of time researching and then showing this. A bias of any kind doesn’t at all mean that in a minority of cases verifications can’t be good. You know that. Keep in mind the very big too warm misses of 2012, 2014, and 2017 busts, for example. In all 3 cases a moderate El Niño was predicted repeatedly as I just posted. And the Euro has never been too cold by a significant degree. The one or two too cold misses were tiny in size. 2. The Euro when averaged out in only actual El Niño seasons had a smaller warm bias than for other seasons, which I’ve also pointed out. However, it still had a small warm bias even for those with some big too warm misses even during Nino seasons. 3. Furthermore, RONI of that season peaked at only high end moderate/low end strong as the Euro doesn’t predict RONI. Currently, RONI is ~0.5C cooler than ONI. 4. Let’s see what actually happens. It could of course end up very strong/super even for RONI as I’m open too all possibilities. It’s way too early for high confidence in any strength. That’s my main point. But remember to subtract ~0.5C for the best RONI prog.

Thanks, Don. He also said “I may look at March days with maximum temperatures at or above the 90th percentile for better measure.” If he actually does this and posts it, would that be a better approach?

Exciting day for space enthusiasts tomorrow!Live updates: Will Artemis II launch tomorrow? Florida's weather outlook and mission status updatesLIVE UPDATES Last Update May 1, 2026 at 10:44 PM EDT NASA is targeting an April 1 launch for the historic Artemis II mission, with meteorologists currently tracking a favorable 80% "Go" weather forecast at Florida's Kennedy Space Center. Follow our live coverage for real-time radar analysis, countdown milestones, and the latest mission status as four astronauts prepare for humanity's first crewed journey to the Moon in over 50 years. https://www.foxweather.com/live-news/live-updates-will-artemis-ii-launch-tomorrow-florida-s-weather-outlook-and-mission-status-updates#google_vignette

From outspoken pro met. Chris Martz fwiw: Any comments?

This is my first time doing this: DCA: +3.3 NYC: +2.6 BOS: +2.2 ORD: +2.9 ATL: +3.3 IAH: +1.6 DEN: +5.0 PHX: +4.2 SEA: +1.1