2026-2027 Strong El Nino

[Stormchaserchuck1]

1 hour ago, TheClimateChanger said:

Lol, what's up with these June contract temperatures? 

It's probably an error. I haven't played around with it yet, but I will probably start keeping a record to see if there is an advantage vs the market. May is 62F - I'm going to say below. 

[michsnowfreak]

3 hours ago, MarcmmKU said:

What are your thoughts for north country? Obviously vermont always gets more than the cities but does next winter really have the potential to be as much of a stinker for the ski areas as 2015-2016? 

Id think its way too early to say anything. I mean "potential" is there for a lot of stuff. But with the ability to make snow im sure ski areas will be fine regardless. 

[Stormchaserchuck1]

What would you say is the chance of a continued El Nino in 27-28?  5%? 10%? I would say 5-10%

[MarcmmKU]

1 hour ago, michsnowfreak said:

Id think its way too early to say anything. I mean "potential" is there for a lot of stuff. But with the ability to make snow im sure ski areas will be fine regardless. 

Fair. I guess the concern is that there’s basically no floor with super strong el ninos. Can be a total shutout almost even for people at very high latitudes and elevations. 

[Stormchaserchuck1]

-NAO has been correlating with an East Coast trough more 23-24, 24-25, 25-26 vs 18-19 to 22-23. NAO is a little more important this coming Winter, I think. 

[Stormchaserchuck1]

As the Kelvin Wave has continued to progress east, TAO/Triton has +4-5c anomalies now under Nino 1+2. Should be interesting to see if it surfaces in the east, along the American coast in the next few weeks. Still to be determined whether it's an east-based, west-based, or basin-wide event- I'm going toward basin-wide. 

[michsnowfreak]

4 hours ago, MarcmmKU said:

Fair. I guess the concern is that there’s basically no floor with super strong el ninos. Can be a total shutout almost even for people at very high latitudes and elevations. 

Hmm while im not as familiar with east coast climate, that seems pretty much impossible to get a total shutout in new England. Shitty compard to climo, yes, but shutout or even close, never. Im in SE Michigan, i turn 43 next week and the least snowy winter Detroit has recorded during my lifetime was 23.4" in 1997-98. 2023-24 was right there at 23.5". Go north in Michigan and snow towns were calling 2023-24 with its 60, 80, 100" a "non-winter". So all of this worry about the worst case scenarios is STILL relative to one's climo. 

Even IF its a strong or super nino, many other factors come into play too. So I can say with 100% confidence that any area north of NYC will not be shutout.

[snowman19]

Here comes the EPAC TC season…..and another WWB….
 

[BlizzardWx]

If the west Pacific is able to have a sustained active season, particularly into the fall, frequent typhoon recurves may help to break up the warm water anomalies over there. Perhaps it would help in nudging us towards a +PDO. I guess we will see though. 

[roardog]

2 hours ago, BlizzardWx said:

If the west Pacific is able to have a sustained active season, particularly into the fall, frequent typhoon recurves may help to break up the warm water anomalies over there. Perhaps it would help in nudging us towards a +PDO. I guess we will see though. 

Just having a big typhoon season would be a big change compared to recent years. 

[snowman19]

[bluewave]

20 hours ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

I always joke about this, but that emboldened line is the kiss of death from you. I read that, and instantly knew that the next line would be something casting doubt on the notion of a +PDO accompanying the El Nino. Haha

I can't imagine this being another 2023 in terms of the PDO. I think if it remains negative, it will be marginal. Just talking about the actual DM mean index reading....not trying to imply that the winter can't still be awful for the east.

Yeah, I get the joking. It’s good to keep things light in here. We switched out of the traditional -PDO +PDO relationship following the big warming east of Japan after the 2015-2016 El Niño.This really increased following 2018-2019.

So the current models are forecasting more of basin-wide warming where we get a zone of warm SSTs from Japan to the Baja. We saw that this past winter going into the spring with the record +PMM and remaining warm pool east of Japan. 

We will probably have to revisit this paper again after this event and see where things stand.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-025-02482-z

Pan-basin warming now overshadows robust Pacific Decadal Oscillation

The Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) has served as a key index linking basin-scale climate variability to marine ecosystem changes in the North Pacific. However, recent apparent breakdowns of PDO–ecosystem correlations have raised concerns about the stability of the mode and its continued relevance in a warming climate. Here we show that basin-wide warming now overwhelms PDO-related sea surface temperature (SST) variability, although neither the PDO’s spatial pattern nor its strength have changed. We introduce the pan-basin pattern as a complementary index to describe the non-stationary SST baseline of the North Pacific. Regional SSTs increasingly reflect the superposition of these two signals, providing an explanation for weakened or inverted PDO–ecosystem correlations. Future use of the PDO index in management will require discerning the effects of internal dynamics from those of absolute changes in SST as extreme and no-analogue ocean conditions driven by interacting natural variability and anthropogenic warming become more common.

We demonstrate that the leading mode of interdecadal North Pacific SST changes recently transitioned from the PDO to a pattern of unidirectional change across the entire basin (that is, the PBP). For the first prolonged period of the recent observational record, a negative ‘cold’ PDO phase failed to coincide with cool SST anomalies in the eastern Pacific—a harbinger of the increasing non-stationarity in relationships between the PDO and regional SSTs (Fig. 3d,e). Despite explaining proportionally less variance, ongoing robust PDO variability indicates that drivers of the mode’s SST anomaly footprint have been resilient to warming through the early twenty-first century (Figs. 1 and 2). As the PDO is a statistically emergent pattern integrating several processes (for example, stochastic Aleutian Low forcing, teleconnections with the tropics, and ocean Rossby waves)^4,47, its future evolution will depend on how these contributing processes are cumulatively impacted by warming across timescales.

Although the historical physical drivers of North Pacific decadal variability are relatively well understood^4,48, the biophysical mechanisms through which ecosystems respond are less so. The PDO has historically served as a reliable proxy for SST in much of the North Pacific. However, as regional SST anomalies continue to diverge from those historically expected based on PDO signals (Fig. 3d–g), there will be a growing need to distinguish impacts associated solely with SST anomalies from those produced by the dynamics related to the PDO (for example, changes in upwelling, transport or source waters). For example, since the 2021 transition into the negative PDO phase (Figs. 3d,e and 4b,c), warming is superimposed on a cold PDO regime in the eastern North Pacific, leading to confusion in the community regarding the expected biological effects²⁶. Further investigation into the mechanisms behind PDO–ecosystem relationships should prioritize discernment of temperature-specific effects on biology from the effects of other physical or biogeochemical processes. Given the ongoing stability of the PDO pattern, the PDO index probably remains a useful indicator of North Pacific climate variability, but perhaps with its ecological relevance in how it reflects changing dynamical processes rather than regional SST anomalies.

As the PBP–temperature baseline climbs in concert with global ocean warming, local and regional SST anomalies that would historically have been associated with an exceptionally strong PDO and/or El Niño (for example, >2 standard deviations) will occur more frequently. For example, constructive signals between internal variability and secular warming from 2014–2020 contributed to warm temperature extremes during this period (for example, ref. ⁴⁹). Quantification of the range of internal variability related to the PDO and other modes will be needed to constrain the potential for climate extremes resulting from interaction of internal variability and anthropogenic warming, leveraging approaches such as palaeoclimate records, long model simulations or large model ensembles^50,51. Constraining internal variability and stability is also necessary for understanding the future of PDO impacts beyond the North Pacific (for example, theorized impacts on hydroclimate in western North America and northeastern Asia)^{52,53,54,55,56,57} and its role in modulating global climate.

Global-scale trends and internal variability are now both important determinants of North Pacific climate^48,58, with the influence of pan-basin warming surpassing that of the PDO within the past decade. The combination of long-term warming and natural variability has already begun to produce profound physical and ecological changes throughout the North Pacific, including severe marine heatwaves with ecosystem-wide impacts^59,60, rapid sea ice declines and novel weather patterns in the Alaskan Arctic⁶¹, and new human–wildlife conflicts⁶². Management decisions based on historical baselines will fail to capture increasingly important emergent interactions between anthropogenic warming and internal variability. This increased uncertainty in associations between basin-scale variability and regional responses underscores the need for management approaches to incorporate dynamical modelling and prediction of North Pacific climate (for example, ref. ⁶³), rather than relying on historical relationships with basin-scale indicators as predictors. Given that the internal variability of the North Pacific is especially strong, a similar emergence of pan-basin warming over internal variability is probably already occurring in other basins, suggesting that the recontextualization of indices of climate variability under warming is needed widely.

 

[GaWx]

 Snapshot current RONI equivalent appears to me to be fairly steady near +0.3C (temporary pause).