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2014 ENSO Mega Thread


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Are some people here living in another world? I assume you think this temporary. What will happen when a stronger westerly burst arrives?

That jump looks suspicious to me. There was no significant change in the equatorial current system over the timeframe of interest. If anything, we had a greater unity within the westerly currents present throughout April/May, with a reduced upwelling component to the ocean circulation, relative to what we have now.

I guess we'll see.

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Folks,
 This sudden warming showing up on the Levi Cowan/satellite based maps and not on the TAO buoys is reminding me of the false warming that was on OISST based maps (or as wxmx pointed out these are technically AVHRR satellite measurements) back in Nov. of 2012 and not on TAO! Stormvista/satellite data fooled me as well as others like Harry (he was providing Stormvista dailies). Based on it, I had guessed that 3.4 would warm from +0.4 to the +0.8 to +1.0 range in that NOAA weekly update as per this 11/17/12 post:
 
 
 However, it turned out that NOAA warmed it only to +0.5:
 
 
A person at NOAA told me this on the phone per this post:

http://www.americanwx.com/bb/index.php/topic/32854-2012-enso-thread/?p=1871518

"She said that there was "a bug in the data". The data has been rerun."

In other words, NOAA considered the satellite based warming to be false and, instead, went with the cooler buoys.
 Subsequent to this, the satellite based maps cooled all the way back down as fast as they had warmed and suggested that they were tainted with false data somehow. As we know, no Nino ever materialized that fall/winter and in contrast, it continued cooling all the way to neutral negative by December.

 The point of this post is to suggest the supposed intense warming based on satellites be taken with a grain at least until NOAA releases its next couple of weeklies. I'm not going to get fooled a second time. I'm not saying it isn't possible that there has been substantial warming. For one thing, many of the TAO buoys are out. OTOH, if one looks at the Levi Cowan graph, it suggests that the early April weeklies were in the +0.4 to +0.5 range. However, per the NOAA weeklies, they were only in the +0.2 to +0.3 range:
 
 
 My guess is that much of the warming showing on the Levi Cowan will reverse itself fairly quickly similar to what happened in Nov. 2012 due to the steepness of the rise.
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Since the ATL hurricane season looks deadly dull whether or not the ENSO is moderate, strong, or the Mother of 1997, the real question is which type favors cool season rains in California, which really needs it, and Texas, which has gotten bette but still could use a wet cool season.

 

 

And why wouldn't this be an Easterly based Nino?

 

sstaanim.gif

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We might finally get some help from the atmosphere. Trades have weakened significantly in the WPAC in the past few days and the EC has been consistently signaling the arrival of some westerlies over the WPAC (west of the dateline), which, if they have some longevity, should get that WPAC warm pool moving in the right direction again.

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We might finally get some help from the atmosphere. Trades have weakened significantly in the WPAC in the past few days and the EC has been consistently signaling the arrival of some westerlies over the WPAC (west of the dateline), which, if they have some longevity, should get that WPAC warm pool moving in the right direction again.

 

 

 

 

Enhancing on that would be petty huge.  It is blowing up fast. 

navy-anom-bb.gif

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 Wow, OHC has dropped from +1.95 to +0.6 in less than 3 months!

 

 

According to the link below, the current calendar week's averaged 3.4 SST anom., which will be released Monday by NOAA, is +0.6:

http://www.tropicaltidbits.com/analysis/nino34.png

Let's see if NOAA raises it from last week's +0.4 to +0.6. That wouldn't be surprising as that isn't that much of a rise. More importantly, let's see what happens in the subsequent week and how this graph evolves over the next week or so. After such a steep rise, I wouldn't be surprised if there is some drop back pretty quickly. Regardless, I'd take this graph with a grain, partially because dailies are volatile/what happened in 2012 suggested a false warming, and put more emphasis on what NOAA does. The number to be released a week from Monday will be more interesting.

 

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The reason why we have seen significant surface warming in the last several weeks is primarily due to warming SSTAs due to the original oceanic kelvin wave now reaching the surface.

 

wkxzteq_anm.gif

 

As people have already pointed out though, the subsurface is now cooling as there hasn't been another strong oceanic kelvin wave to push more warm water from the Pacific warm pool further east. The last oceanic kelvin wave in itself has helped push the ocean into El Nino conditions, but it would have taken another oceanic kelvin wave to get us to a 1997 like state. As is, we are in more a moderate/strong ENSO state currently that will probably need additional OKW support to maintain the current warming into the fall/winter. 

 

wkxzteq_all.gif

 

You can get a sense of how the Pacific ocean has "sloshed" back toward a more climatological base state after attempting to move the warm pool eastward towards the EPAC in May. We are much closer to a 2009/2010 ENSO state than 1997/1998 at this point in time now. 

 

This is primarily due to surface ocean currents undergoing a complete reversal from May, where we now see enhanced trade wind flow (easterlies) rather than strong westerly flow as we saw in April/May. This current configuration DOES NOT promote warming of the base state over the CPAC or EPAC.

 

post-1749-0-48589600-1403366661_thumb.gi

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The reason why we have seen significant surface warming in the last several weeks is primarily due to warming SSTAs due to the original oceanic kelvin wave now reaching the surface.

 

wkxzteq_anm.gif

 

As people have already pointed out though, the subsurface is now cooling as there hasn't been another strong oceanic kelvin wave to push more warm water from the Pacific warm pool further east. The last oceanic kelvin wave in itself has helped push the ocean into El Nino conditions, but it would have taken another oceanic kelvin wave to get us to a 1997 like state. As is, we are in more a moderate/strong ENSO state currently that will probably need additional OKW support to maintain the current warming into the fall/winter. 

 

wkxzteq_all.gif

 

You can get a sense of how the Pacific ocean has "sloshed" back toward a more climatological base state after attempting to move the warm pool eastward towards the EPAC in May. We are much closer to a 2009/2010 ENSO state than 1997/1998 at this point in time now. 

 

This is primarily due to surface ocean currents undergoing a complete reversal from May, where we now see enhanced trade wind flow (easterlies) rather than strong westerly flow as we saw in April/May. This current configuration DOES NOT promote warming of the base state over the CPAC or EPAC.

 

attachicon.gifoscar1.gif

 

If we are closer to a 2009/2010 ENSO state, does that imply more warming in the WPAC, or are we only talking about the strength of ENSO conditions?

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Maps / charts showing recent sharp SST rises in Nino 3.4 are highly suspect given the notable easterly wind anomalies we've seen in the past 2 weeks.  In addition, here's the latest SST TAO/Triton image for the June 16-20 period.  Eyeballing the SST anomalies on the bottom chart, it looks like Nino 3.4 is somewhere around +0.25 

 

FzlTB7E.gif

 

 

The central and eastern Pacific are conditioned for El Nino, and there's plenty of warm water in the near surface warm pool from the dateline west...but the obvious question is what lies ahead with respect to the equatorial Pacific wind anomalies as we continue through summer and fall.  I don't know that anyone or any model has a definitive handle on that at this time...just the nature of the beast with ENSO forecasting.

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 Wow, OHC has dropped from +1.95 to +0.6 in less than 3 months!

 

 

According to the link below, the current calendar week's averaged 3.4 SST anom., which will be released Monday by NOAA, is +0.6:

http://www.tropicaltidbits.com/analysis/nino34.png

Let's see if NOAA raises it from last week's +0.4 to +0.6. That wouldn't be surprising as that isn't that much of a rise. More importantly, let's see what happens in the subsequent week and how this graph evolves over the next week or so. After such a steep rise, I wouldn't be surprised if there is some drop back pretty quickly. Regardless, I'd take this graph with a grain, partially because dailies are volatile/what happened in 2012 suggested a false warming, and put more emphasis on what NOAA does. The number to be released a week from Monday will be more interesting.

 

 

It looks like the greatest drop since the 09-10 El Nino ending in Spring 2010.

 

http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/ocean/index/heat_content_index.txt

 

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If we are closer to a 2009/2010 ENSO state, does that imply more warming in the WPAC, or are we only talking about the strength of ENSO conditions?

 

I am just talking about ENSO overall strength. I'm not ready to get into how the SSTA is distributed, since a lot of things can change in other 3-4 months. RIGHT NOW we have an east based El Nino if nothing were to change between now and winter. That much is clear.

 

Lets just ignore the current SST distribution and just look at the current ENSO using surface ocean currents. Data goes all the way back to 1992 so we can compare the last few El Nino events to each other:

 

June 1997 Historic East Based El Nino

 

1997.gif

 

June 2002 Moderate to Strong West Based El Nino

 

2002.gif

 

June 2009 Moderate to Strong West Based El Nino:

 

2009.gif

 

June 2014 To Be Determined

 

2014.gif

 

This year by far has the worst current surface oceanic current state of all El Nino events (a HUGE reversal from just a month ago). Its quite clear the ship has sailed in terms of a super El Nino similar to 1982-1983 or 1997-1998 unless we have another near historic Kelvin Wave.

 

Interestingly, this is similar to what happened in 2009-2010 where we saw decent OKW progression resulting westerly oceanic current in the spring (although not to nearly the magnitude that this year's event was) and then trades actually picked back up from June - September only to see another OKW induce more westerly oceanic currents leading into the 2009-2010 winter.

 

 

The bottom line... This ENSO event is acting a lot more like 2002-2003 and 2009-2010 rather than 1997-1998. I said last month that we would soon know if this year could keep pace with the super El Nino and its quite clear now that it has not and the atmospheric state is acting more like a moderate ENSO event where oceanic currents can revert back to strong trades in between OKWs. 

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Is it normal to have a temporary overlap of West and East Pac ssts so warm?

 

Weeklies jumped to .33C+ last week.  This week they may Jump close to .40C+.  Every analog I have seen about ENSO doesn't show the West and East Pac very warm at the same time like this.

 

I presume this is a transition towards the central pac nino if we only see moderate reversal of winds?

 

What does this do to the global weather scheme?

 

 

navy-anom-bb.gif

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Any ideas intelligent people?

The OHC drop is fake.

wkteq_xz.gif

Friv,

The "OHC drop is fake" based on what? The graph shows below normal OHC now dominating from 100 to 300 meters depth. Are you saying that's fake? If so, why?

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Friv,

The "OHC drop is fake" based on what? The graph shows below normal OHC now dominating from 100 to 300 meters depth. Are you saying that's fake? If so, why?

 

 

The OHC has definitely dropped based on those maps. The subsurface cooled when the easterly wind anomalies were dominating the last month or so.

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The OHC has definitely dropped based on those maps. The subsurface cooled when the easterly wind anomalies were dominating the last month or so.

The vast majority of OHC does not simply disappear, it is returned to the deep ocean through up-welling. This implies that we will need to deal with it again down the road.

 

Granted, oceanic mixing does enhance the recovery period between el ninos. The ocean is already overloaded with heat.

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The vast majority of OHC does not simply disappear, it is returned to the deep ocean through up-welling. This implies that we will need to deal with it again down the road.

 

Granted, oceanic mixing does enhance the recovery period between el ninos. The ocean is already overloaded with heat.

Weatherguy,

Looking at the movie, it looks like to me that the OHC may have cooled due to the warmth being released upward and into the atmosphere rather than downward to deeper in the ocean. When looking at the animation, how can you say it returned to the deep ocean? Regardless, the graph shows no evidence of any of that very warm OHC anywhere within the 100-450 meters depths

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NOAA has updated their ENSO discussion.  The warm up in the eastern portion of the basin appears to be real.  

 

The latest weekly SST 
departures are: 
Niño 4    0.5ºC 
Niño 3.4 0.5ºC 
Niño 3    1.0ºC 
Niño1+2  2.1ºC
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Weatherguy,

Looking at the movie, it looks like to me that the OHC may have cooled due to the warmth being released upward and into the atmosphere rather than downward to deeper in the ocean. When looking at the animation, how can you say it returned to the deep ocean? Regardless, the graph shows no evidence of any of that very warm OHC anywhere within the 100-450 meters depths

 

 

Yes, most of the heat is surfacing in the eastern Pacific...but lack of westerly wind bursts though have eroded most of the warm anomalies at the subsurface outside of extreme eastern regions.

 

 

It looks like we may see some weak WWBs finally restarting over the next week. We'll have to see if we can get a more significant event to kick-start it up again.

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