GaWx

I've noticed that sometimes the EPS is too weak on the right half of the graph and that the higher amp of the GEFS is often closer in these cases. However, even the bc GEFS mean is only barely outside the circle and hardly moving in phase 5. So, I agree there's no model consensus indication of a strong MJO phase for at least two weeks. The only model with something more is the CFS (bc), with a pretty strong (amp >2) move to phases 5 and then 6 very late July into early August. But it's the inferior CFS and it's on its own.

Now it is up to 40% in the latest TWO. Per my recollection of recent years, either the NHC tends to underplay these subtropical lows regarding subtropical or tropical genesis in the TWO percent chances and/or they tend to "over-perform". Thus, considering this, being that about all models for several runs have had a pretty strong low forming within a few days, being that SSTs are near a warm enough 26C, and with pro-met "57" posting at another location going very bullish on ST or TCG, I'm going with a much higher chance than the NHC's 40% chance for a STD or TD to form from this. I think the NHC is playing catch-up as they had no chance within 7 days mentioned as recently as Saturday night.

Nino 3.4 rose 0.1 back to +1.0 as I had expected per OISST in today's weekly release, which is for the average of last week. But OISST has stalled again near +1.0 as of yesterday's daily. And keep in mind that ERSST, which ONI is based on, has recently been running 0.1+ cooler than OISST. Nino 3 and 4 also rose 0.1. But the most warming was in 1+2, which warmed 0.4 to +3.3, the warmest since 1998! The 100W-180W OHC actually fell a little vs the prior week. It had been near +1.35, but fell back to ~+1.20. That just about eliminates any chance for the overall July 3.4 to reach near the most recent BoM's +1.5.

Good luck to you! But even if he turns out to be "right", any one location can obviously still be hit very hard. For example, he didn't say that the one major hurricane that he's forecasting won't hit land as a hurricane, possibly even as a MH. Also, any of the other four other hurricanes he's forecasting could be quite rough somewhere if they make landfall. So, always being prepared for the worst case is wise.

7/9/23 updated tropical seasonal outlook from meteorologist Larry Cosgrove: "Despite what you may have heard, the potential for serious tropical cyclone development is decreasing. Low-latitude westerlies in the Atlantic Basin have still not lifted out, and with each passing day the chance for an extended "window" of favorable heat ridge positioning decreases. Another factor that is influencing the lack of convective production outside of Africa (despite an active ITCZ) is tremendous amounts of Saharan dust, concurrent with very low dewpoints and high temperatures. Warm waters in the Major Development Region do not alter or break the wind patterns associated with extreme warmth of the 1.2 ENSO sector. At some point the giant ridge complex (which will reach its apex in the last week of July), will weaken and some easterlies will set up from western Africa. But we are running out of time for that synoptic event to happen! Because at some point in late August the flow signatures will reset to west/southwest, shearing thunderstorm tops apart. For now I will keep my forecast total of 13 named storms, 5 hurricanes, and one major cyclone intact. But do not be surprised if a revision is announced."

We're 1/4 into July and yet OISST is still only at +1.0, which implies that ERSST (used to determine the ONI and how strong a Nino) based on recent differences is likely only ~+0.9. The latest BoM had reduced July from +1.8 to +1.5. I'm getting close to calling even the +1.5 a bust. It would take a massive warming of ERSST to +2+ the next 3 weeks for +1.5 July ERSST to occur. Looking at OISST 3.4 weekly anomalies for oncoming El Niño since 1982, there are only two 3 week periods that warmed that rapidly: -Sep 1982: warmed 1.1, but SOI was sub -20 Aug/Sep -Mar 2014: warmed 1.4 but SOI was -13 2/21/14-3/21/14 So, the SOI was strongly - in advance and during these two periods. The current 30 day is way up at +3. It does appear to be headed back to modest -SOI next weekend followed by a week+ of -SOI thanks to low Tahiti SLP. However, with Darwin SLP remaining kind of low much of that period, the oncoming -SOI doesn't look strong at this point until perhaps ~7/22. By then, it is probably too late to have much impact for July 3.4 SST anomalies. The OHC is quite warm at ~+1.4, but that's not warm enough to support a +2.0 in 3.4 within 3 weeks. In Sep of 1982, the OHC had warmed from +1.11 two months earlier to way up at +1.86. From 9/6/82 to 9/27/82, 3.4 SSTs warmed from +0.6 to +1.7. In March of 2014, the OHC was way up at +1.60 after a massive warming from only +0.39 the month before. Thus, I see only a very small chance for a rapid warming in 3.4 the rest of this month. So, it looks like another too warm bust for BoM in July.

The new NMME for JAS has decreased precip rather significantly vs the prior run from Cuba through the Bahamas and the SE US/E GOM: Prior run:

The last 7 days ending with July 6th have seen a drop in the Arctic ice area of 1.04 million sq km, which is a pretty hefty 149k/day averaged out. The July 6th level of 6.51 msk is only barely above the 2010s average for July 6th after having been 320k above that average on June 29th. In 2022, only 770k was lost from 6/29 to 7/10 or only 70k/day on average. In contrast, 2023 has already lost 1.04 million since 6/29 with still another four days to get to 7/10.

RONI (Relative ONI) takes into account how warm Nino 3.4 is in relation to the worldwide tropical waters, which are currently very warm. As a result, the RONI of AMJ of 2023 was 0.4 lower than ONI and it was ~0.3 lower in recent trimonths. Wx patterns supposedly correlate better to RONI than to ONI. So, folks maybe should consider subtracting ~0.3 to 0.4 off the expected ONI peak and compare to prior RONI peaks to get a better idea of how this winter may turn out. RONI: https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/data/indices/RONI.ascii.txt There have been two winters on record with ~2.0 RONI peak that were quite cold in the SE, 1957-8 and 1965-6. Also, 1972-3 and 1982-3 both had historic winter storms and they peaked way up at 2.2 to 2.5 per RONI. Right now, my thinking is that a strong ONI peak is most likely with high end moderate and low end super less likely. Subtract a few tenths from that to get the most likely RONI conversion although the ONI/RONI relationship is always changing.

The latest update of CFSR fwiw (for July 5th) shows no change since July 4th with it still at 17.18C. We'll see whether or not this dataset is topping. https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/t2_daily/

Thank you. Just comparing the CFSR and ERA5 curves shows the very strong correlation between the two. The main difference appears to be that ERA5 has often been ~0.1C cooler, including the last few days. So, CFSR may be warm biased though only slightly (0.1C) assuming ERA5 isn't cool biased. Otherwise, it appears that the daily change of CFSR for a particular date can probably be used as a pretty good proxy for the change that ERA5 later shows for the same date. Thus I agree with your feeling that the daily CFSR still has value since it comes out earlier and thus can be used to predict ERA5 daily moves.

Here's a pro met's Tweet addressing this source that I just was pointed to by an AmericanWx member met. posting at another board. He suggests caution in using it as an accurate source for climate analysis and instead using ERA5 from Copernicus ECMWF as the most trusted source. He says this is based on a 2009 version of the GFS: Any opinions about using ERA5 from Copernicus ECMWF instead of this University of Maine source? How is the global temperature looking on ERA5 compared to this?

And per this same source 7/4/23 just came in at an astounding +17.18C vs the previous record breaker of +17.01C on 7/3/23! The world temperature has risen a whopping 0.43C over just a three day period as it was +16.75C on 7/1/23! The world anomaly has risen 0.42C during the same period assuming this source is accurate: https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/t2_daily/ Does anyone know how accurate this source is and whether or not it has a known bias? "This page provides time series and map visualizations of daily mean 2-meter air temperature from the NCEP Climate Forecast System (CFS) version 2 (April 2011 – present) and CFS Reanalysis (January 1979 – March 2011). CFS/CFSR is a numerical climate/weather modeling framework that ingests surface, radiosonde, and satellite observations to estimate the state of the atmosphere at hourly time resolution onward from 1 January 1979. The horizontal gridcell resolution is 0.5°x0.5° (~ 55km at 45°N). Temperature anomalies are in reference to 1979–2000 climatology for each specific day of the year."

No, there's confirmation that he may be drunk. Nino 3 is nowhere near +1.95 (which is what he claimed in that tweet) per three datasets I follow each day. Even warm biased CRW is only at +1.652 as of today. OISST was only at +1.493 yesterday and at very most will be +1.6 when today's is released (comes out later in the day). (The cool biased CDAS is at a mere +1.338.) So, today's range for Nino 3 is +1.65 (and that's based on a dataset that tends to be warm biased) or lower with +1.60 being about the warmest it can realistically be. Thus, I can say for the 2nd time in 4 days that Mario Ramirez is clearly MUCH too warm in Nino 3. For those who didn't see it, Mario claimed Nino 3 was up to +1.75 on July 1st when the warm biased CRW was only +1.559 and OISST was a mere +1.416: So, my current correction factor for Mario Ramirez Nino 3 SSTa based on these two tweets is to subtract 0.3 C from what he claims to give me the high end of where Nino 3 realistically can be that day. *Edit: Today's Nino 3 OISST just came out: only +1.502. Aside: Nino 1+2 is today up to +3.4 on OISST but remains at +3.3 on CRW. Nino 3.4 is modestly warmer today (+0.02 per average) TAO is very slightly warmer today

The AMJ RONI came out to only +0.07 vs the ONI of +0.47.

The June ERSST for 3.4 came out at only 0.81. I say only 0.81 because that compares to the OISST for June calculating out to 0.93. For comparison, the June CDAS was near 0.78. So, ERSST was much closer to CDAS than OISST in June and is one reason I keep track of CDAS as kind of a lower boundary to where ERSST might be. By the way, the May ERSST (0.46) also was lower than the OISST (0.49). The May CDAS was ~0.39, meaning ERSST in this case was closer to OISST than CDAS in May. Monthly ERSST: https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/ensostuff/detrend.nino34.ascii.txt

Region 4 is actually in all 3 datasets in lower end weak El Niño territory, not neutral.

Nino 3.4 has warmed the last couple of days on all 3 datasets. However, Nino 3.4 is still not quite back to its early June highs on any of them. And Nino 4 is well below (0.2+) its late June highs. OTOH, Nino 1+2 and Nino 3 are today at new highs on all 3 datasets: Nino 1+2: OISST: +3.4 CRW: +3.3 CDAS: +2.9 Nino 3: OISST: +1.5 CRW: +1.6 CDAS: +1.3

I'm looking for more BoM 3.4 reductions in future runs based on how poorly it did in June in combination with the recent sluggishness of Nino 3.4 and overall neutral SOI the last 30 days. I'm still at a chance for a low end super peak, the highest chance being for a strong peak (supported by impressive June +1.45 OHC), and a small chance for +1.3 to +1.4.

Today's weekly update of SSTa for Nino regions: 1+2: stayed at +2.9 3: stayed at +1.4 3.4: dropped from +1.0 to +0.9 4: dropped from +0.7 to +0.6

At no surprise to me, the new BoM is significantly cooler in July and much cooler during Aug-Nov vs the prior run. July is now only at +1.5 vs +1.8 on the prior run. Aug/Sep/Oct are a whopping 0.6 cooler than the prior run while Nov is 0.7 cooler (+2.5 vs +3.2):

That's significantly warmer than even the warmest (warm biased most likely) dataset, CRW, which had only +1.559 in Nino 3 as of July 1st and much warmer than the +1.416 of OISST. Thus, I don't buy Mario Ramirez's assertion that Nino 3 was already at +1.75 as of July 1st. Mario is no Paul Roundy! Edit for update: CRW for Nino 3 on July 2nd is warmer but still only +1.596 plus that's a day later. And OISST warmed on July 2nd but only to +1.436. By the way, the last two days of TAO five day average updates in 3.4 have shown no change.

The last two days have seen a whopping total of a 410k drop, which is the largest two day drop since at least late May. This is similar to the steep two day drop that occurred on the same dates in 2020. The 7/1/2020 drop, alone, was 340k! Often after a steep two day drop though, the subsequent few days show a more modest drop. However, 2020 went on to have another three days of steep drops (600k for the total of those three days) for a grand total five day drop of 1.1 million before it abruptly steadied out during the subsequent four days.

@so_whats_happening June SOI ended up at -3 vs the late May-June 2nd average prediction for June from CFS of -9. Highest June SOI of the 7 that preceded a super peak (back to late 1800s) was -7 with a range of -7 to -24. So, this -3 appears underwhelming as far as what predictive powers that the June SOI might have for a super-Nino's chances. Looking ahead, these seven super Nino years had a July SOI range of -9 to -21. I don't yet see any strong indication on the models that July will be that low although it is still very early. The average of the last 12 days of CFS runs implies a July SOI near -3 fwiw.

Ooops. I just looked at the 2m for 12/23-2/24 for the new run and it does have near normal in the E US at 2m, which is consistent with H5. This run is warmer than the prior run, which had BN centered in the SE. The prior run in the SE had -2 F for DJF vs 0 F on the new run.