2026-2027 Record-breaking El Nino

[40/70 Benchmark]

49 minutes ago, ensonerd1233e343 said:

link to site?

https://www.data.jma.go.jp/tcc/tcc/products/clisys/figures/db_hist_3mon_tcc.html

[ensonerd1233e343]

Just now, 40/70 Benchmark said:

https://www.data.jma.go.jp/tcc/tcc/products/clisys/figures/db_hist_3mon_tcc.html

thanks

[40/70 Benchmark]

3 hours ago, Stormchaserchuck1 said:

@40/70 Benchmark 23-24 maxed at -30dm in N. Pacific off the coast of CA (WPO area doesn't count) and the bigger story was probably +45dm south of the Aleutian islands

See Larry's post

 

This will couple more than 2024 at the height of the cold phase.

[Stormchaserchuck1]

2 minutes ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

This will couple more than 2024 at the height of the cold phase.

October 2024 PDO hit a 150-year low. Then in July 2025 it beat that, going lower. Now relative to ENSO it's probably just as impressive as Oct 2024 and July 2025. Don't think you can call a peak in the cold phase yet. 

[EasternLI]

55 minutes ago, ensonerd1233e343 said:

I dont think it really is and either way the odds of el nino not coupling to the n pac during northen winter are near zero so imo the point is moot 

Disagree that the odds are nearly zero. I do agree that the sheer magnitude of this el nino prevails. And I believe this autumn will do major work on that. However I also believe it is a true battle between the two. As the upper air pattern driving said PDO are fighting against it. PDO after all is a reflection of a predominant 500mb pattern. It takes effort to transform that as research shows. A major driver of this is known to be aleutian low variability. So it will be fascinating how that shakes out. The runaway strengthening on pause currently could be a little clue towards that. Or maybe not, but I would not be overly confident in either, and I am not. 

[jaxjagman]

21 minutes ago, Stormchaserchuck1 said:

October 2024 PDO hit a 150-year low. Then in July 2025 it beat that, going lower. Now relative to ENSO it's probably just as impressive as Oct 2024 and July 2025. Don't think you can call a peak in the cold phase yet. 

I agree with you,it dont seem like when the monthly updates you should see much change with a typhoon going into East China the next couple days.Look at how warm those SST's are east Japan into the Pac.Its rare in a strong NINO to even witness this

[LakePaste25]

If this event doesn’t strongly couple then we need to start making PDO threads rather than ENSO threads. 

[Stormchaserchuck1]

1 minute ago, LakePaste25 said:

If this event doesn’t strongly couple then we need to start making PDO threads rather than ENSO threads. 

In some months the PDO correlates higher with US Temperature than ENSO. In a few months it actually scores higher than the PNA! 

[LakePaste25]

7 minutes ago, Stormchaserchuck1 said:

In some months the PDO correlates higher with US Temperature than ENSO. In a few months it actually scores higher than the PNA! 

+PDO tends to be more indicative that the Pacific was in more of a nino state during the past 5-10 years and vice versa so that makes sense. Weak ENSO is going to have high variability. 

[EasternLI]

8 minutes ago, jaxjagman said:

I agree with you,it dont seem like when the monthly updates you should see much change with a typhoon going into East China the next couple days.Look at how warm those SST's are east Japan into the Pac.Its rare in a strong NINO to even witness this

Yeah. You would expect to see some recurving typhoons instead of that. Key part of the puzzle IMO. Which we are still waiting for... 

[Jebman]

I wonder how often the PDO state keeps ninos from affecting the N HEM 500 pressure surface? Or gets close?

[40/70 Benchmark]

8 hours ago, Stormchaserchuck1 said:

October 2024 PDO hit a 150-year low. Then in July 2025 it beat that, going lower. Now relative to ENSO it's probably just as impressive as Oct 2024 and July 2025. Don't think you can call a peak in the cold phase yet. 

I don't agree...see where we're at in a few months. If we're still deeply negative, then I'll acquiesce, but I anticipate getting to around neutral.

[40/70 Benchmark]

8 hours ago, EasternLI said:

Disagree that the odds are nearly zero. I do agree that the sheer magnitude of this el nino prevails. And I believe this autumn will do major work on that. However I also believe it is a true battle between the two. As the upper air pattern driving said PDO are fighting against it. PDO after all is a reflection of a predominant 500mb pattern. It takes effort to transform that as research shows. A major driver of this is known to be aleutian low variability. So it will be fascinating how that shakes out. The runaway strengthening on pause currently could be a little clue towards that. Or maybe not, but I would not be overly confident in either, and I am not. 

Good assessment....that's where I'm at.

[40/70 Benchmark]

Excerpt from my latest Pacific work...shoutout to @bluewavefor some of the graphics:

Summer 2026 Ground Truth Still Somewhat Redolent of Cool ENSO

  Although it is true that forcing and gradients are comparatively weak in the summer relative to the cold season, there is no disputing that summer 2026 has diverged from the intense El Niño composite, which validates the disconnect between the tropical and mid latitude AAM data. The theme of this summer has been ridging and much above normal temperatures throughout much of the CONUS.

 

This is in stark contrast to the summer pattern preceding other intense El Niño events, which featured a prevailing trough and much cooler temps across much of the CONUS.

 

Here is the 2026 individual summer season compared to those preceding the past four strong El Nino events, which have gotten progressively warmer :

 

 

 

 

 

Some of this difference is likely attributable to the general pattern of expanding ridges and shrinking troughs that is a byproduct of climate change.

 

However, since the pattern this summer is essentially the diametric opposite of the one in the summer composite preceding intense El Niño, it is fair to wonder if the developing intense El Niño is continuing to face more MC competition than is readily apparent. Note the similarity to summer 2026 with the summer composite preceding strong La Niña events.

 

 

Obviously it isn't a perfect match, as there are higher heights over the northeastern CONUS in the La Niña composite (left), but the argument could be made that it is a stronger match to 2026 than the intense El Niño summer composite.

[Typhoon Tip]

I'm not sure I see/agree there's much evidence that this ENSO isn't going to heat up more.  

[LakePaste25]

 

[Typhoon Tip]

1 hour ago, LakePaste25 said:

 

I've noted/hypothesized an aspect that's similar to that...

Heat in the summers appears to be inducing a resonance feedback that is favoring ridging around the windward sides of continents.

Some ridging is favored in these regions at all times, due to basal westerlies encountering boundary layer resistance as the flow encroaches land.  It "piles" backward against ... en masse the flow rises over, then deflects N over time, due to upward motion then being worked over by Coriolis.  This base tendency is the Perennial North American Pattern, which features a modest ridge over the west that settles out to a quasi trough/nadir as the westerlies are leaving the eastern continent.  But the heat expands heights; then superimposed that over the PNAP, the two are in resonance (constructive) feedback). Similarly this is found around Europe to the Urals. 

The intense/intensifying seasonal heat flux due to CC is then adding to this synergistic resonance. 

It's quite intuitive and convincingly related to why heat/ridging retrogrades so rapidly whenever we see it episodically blossom over N/A ... Why also western and mid Europe are cooking with increasing frequency during warm seasons...

This idea appears to be a deeper dive where the aggregation from these quadratures becomes the CGT bias field.   Higher heat enhances drying, again ... more constructive feedback.  So the CGT is created to atone for the observable biases. 

 

[Eskimo Joe]

1 hour ago, Typhoon Tip said:

I'm not sure I see/agree there's much evidence that this ENSO isn't going to heat up more.  

Didn't the CFS forecast the El Nino to collapse as we enter winter?