2026-2027 Super El Nino

[bluewave]

22 hours ago, LakePaste25 said:

I mean aren’t mid latitude ridges expanding due to global warming regardless? The SE ridge is also getting stronger and more expansive despite La Nina’s being weaker on the absolute ONI scale…so I do not know if this is exclusive to RONI vs ONI. 

Yeah, there is an overlap going on so the line where one starts and the other ends may not be that clear.

All the mid-latitude ridges between 30N and 60N have been getting stronger regardless of El Niño or La Niña.

So perhaps that’s why the Aleutian low and mid-Atlantic and Southeast lows during recent super El Niño events have been getting weaker than in the past.

Plus the weekly to seasonal guidance has been missing this ridge expansion in their long range forecasts. So we keep getting all these near to 10°+departure warm months close to the core of the ridges that aren’t being forecast beyond 15 days. 

[40/70 Benchmark]

22 hours ago, bluewave said:

I agree with most of what you just said. But I have a partial disagreement with you on what constitutes a sensible mid latitude response. The response has two components.

The first is the strength of the 500mb ridge across Canada and the Northern Tier of the CONUS. During the 2023-2024 super El Niño this ridge was more expansive than the 1997-1998 super El Niño pressing further south toward the mid-Atlantic and enhancing the warmth.

So this wasn’t reflected in the RONI only peaking at 1.5. But the RONI was more representative of the weaker Aleutian low and Mid-Atlantic to Southeast low.

We can also see the RONI inconsistency with the 2015-2016 super El Niño in another way. While it was better matched with the ONI than 2023-2024, the Aleutian low was still much weaker than 1997-1998. Plus the rainfall response was much less in places like CA along with more of a ridge in the Eastern CONUS than past super El Niños.

Yea, RONI measures the associated mid latitude response relative to what is expected per ENSO climo....ie while one aspect of el Nino (Canadian ridge) may be well expressed, another be less so (Aleutian low), thus the RONI will still lag the ONI. Again, not to be redundant, but it is our innate proclivity as humans to be too binary with these concepts in our thought process.

[40/70 Benchmark]

21 hours ago, PhiEaglesfan712 said:

We're definitely overdue a strong la nina. The last time we had 2 robust el ninos back-to-back was the series that began with the 82-83 super el nino (when we had 3 in a decade). After the 2nd el nino (86-88) followed a strong la nina (88-89). I have a feeling that we're going to have a strong la nina after this strong/super el nino event. 

82-83: super el nino => 23-24: strong el nino

83-86: -ENSO event => 24-26: -ENSO event

86-88: strong el nino => 26-27 (or 26-28): robust el nino

88-89: strong la nina => 27-28 (or 28-29): strong la nina???

In the traditional sense per ONI, but we have had some pretty robust cool ENSO seasonal signatures.......these RONI lags are a signature of the warming west Pacific, which constructively interferes with cool ENSO and negatively interferes with warm ENSO expression around the hemisphere...more specifically, while the ridge over North America is accentuated, the GOA low is blunted. It's this inconsistency that tends to mask the warm ENSO expression, while the traditional ONI fails to adequately capture the magnitude of the cool ENSO expression via the enhanced Aleutian ridge.

[40/70 Benchmark]

19 hours ago, Yanksfan said:

If we end up going super so be it. More important is when does it peak and start to fall off as far as winter is concerned.

Largely a weenie fallacy that the collapse of ENSO will "save us"...DT likes to clinging to that crap and always ends up backtracking at the last moment.

[40/70 Benchmark]

19 hours ago, GaWx said:

 I obviously agree with your last sentence as that’s essentially what my quoted 2026 sources said and it’s logical to me, regardless.

 Regarding the first part, I don’t see why RONI shouldn’t be the preferred way for historical rankings.
 As far as heat being released into the atmosphere: we know that heat released into atmosphere increases as SSTs rise from El Niño. But we know that the atmosphere also directly warms up from AGW, which adds to SST warming by what essentially is the equivalent of ONI less RONI more or less. In the upcoming case, a huge amount will be imparted by what has a good chance to be a record breaking RONI or at least close to a record. All ENSO regions are looking to be quite warm and thus will contribute a large amount of heat. That’s different from a severely E based that may not contribute as much heat because of the other ENSO regions not being as warm.

*Edited to improve my wording about portion of SST increases due to AGW.

It's too reductive and narrow in scope...it's fine to use it for historical ranking as long you understand exactly what it is conveying and why...otherwise, this is akin to ranking each winter by NAO or PNA....sometimes it works, but often times it doesn't.

[bluewave]

49 minutes ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

Yea, RONI measures the associated mid latitude response relative to what is expected per ENSO climo....ie while one aspect of el Nino (Canadian ridge) may be well expressed, another be less so (Aleutian low), thus the RONI will still lag the ONI. Again, not to be redundant, but it is our innate proclivity as humans to be too binary with these concepts in our thought process.

Yeah, the big story is that these extreme ridges are making seasonal forecasting very challenging. There have been at least 16 instances of +10 or greater temperature months from December to March since December 2015. This is against the warmest 1991-2020 means which is even more impressive.

In the old days these would happen much less frequently like in March 2012 and January 2006.

When viewing the seasonal guidance in the fall there wasn’t any indication that these extreme months were in the forecast. I can remember looking at the EPS weeklies mid to late November 2015 and just seeing the stock El Niño forecasts of warm along the Northern Tier and cooler to the south.

No indication at all of the historic +13.3 was incoming for places like NYC. A big part of that was the MJO 5 interacting with the super El Niño to produce the extreme December ridge in the East which wasn’t forecast.

The other examples below really weren’t forecast well too far in advance. Some had extreme MJO event and others just stuck weather patterns like this past winter into spring.

 

Dec…2015….NYC….+13.3

JAN…2017….BTV…..+11.0

FEB….2017….ORD….+10.3

FEB…..2018…ATL….+10.6

FEB….2019…MGM….+10.5

JAN….2020…YAM….+9.8

DEC….2021….DFW….+13.2

JAN….2023….DXR….+12.3

FEB….2023…..SSI…..+9.8

DEC….2023….INL…..+15.8

FEB…..2024….FAR…..+17.5

DEC….2024…..LND…..+11.3

DEC….2025….CPR…..+12.1

JAN….2026….RIW……+10.2

FEB…..2026….LND…..+11.3

MAR….2026….PHX…..+12.5

[LakePaste25]

28 minutes ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

It's too reductive and narrow in scope...it's fine to use it for historical ranking as long you understand exactly what it is conveying and why...otherwise, this is akin to ranking each winter by NAO or PNA....sometimes it works, but often times it doesn't.

Yeah, same reason we differentiate between 1991-2020 normals vs absolute records. When we want to know a thermal pattern it’s helpful to use the 30 yr normals, but it doesn’t make sense to say “this heatwave is the biggest temperature departure on record” because it’s pretty arbitrary. We use absolute values for that. 

[GaWx]

1 hour ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

It's too reductive and narrow in scope...it's fine to use it for historical ranking as long you understand exactly what it is conveying and why...otherwise, this is akin to ranking each winter by NAO or PNA....sometimes it works, but often times it doesn't.

 I’ll use simple hypothetical examples to illustrate why I think RONI is a better way to measure ENSO for both historical classification purposes and relevant effects:

 -assume worldwide ocean anomalies are in 2026 all +1C vs 1996-2025 climo due to GW and assume it’s uniform across all of the oceans

-thus ONI would also be +1C/El Nino since it doesn’t separate out the 1C warming from GW

-but there’s no El Nino signature as it’s +1C everywhere in the oceans

-per RONI it’s perfectly neutral (0C) ENSO

-classifying it as neutral makes more sense to me

-now change it to +3C in 3.4 but keep a uniform +1C in all other oceans

-now there’s a clear El Niño signature, but how strong is it?

-ONI would classify it as +3C Nino

-RONI would classify it as close to +2C Nino, which makes more sense to me

@LakePaste25@bluewave

 

[40/70 Benchmark]

27 minutes ago, GaWx said:

 I’ll use simple hypothetical examples to illustrate why I think RONI is a better way to measure ENSO for both historical classification purposes and relevant effects:

 -assume worldwide ocean anomalies are in 2026 all +1C vs 1996-2025 climo due to GW and assume it’s uniform across all of the oceans

-thus ONI would also be +1C/El Nino since it doesn’t separate out the 1C warming from GW

-but there’s no El Nino signature as it’s +1C everywhere in the oceans

-per RONI it’s perfectly neutral (0C) ENSO

-classifying it as neutral makes more sense to me

-now change it to +3C in 3.4 but keep a uniform +1C in all other oceans

-now there’s a clear El Niño signature, but how strong is it?

-ONI would classify it as +3C Nino

-RONI would classify it as close to +2C Nino, which makes more sense to me

@LakePaste25@bluewave

 

See, I would term that "what other hemispheric influences are competing to alter it and how".....ie,  while some are accentuated, other features are blunted. That is the essence of a lagging RONI value...whereas MEI/ONI are more likely to just be universally weaker and thus more prone to polar influences.

[snowman19]

3 hours ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

Largely a weenie fallacy that the collapse of ENSO will "save us"...DT likes to clinging to that crap and always ends up backtracking at the last moment.

100%. 1997-98 peaked the final week of November then steadily weakened right through the end of March. 2015 also peaked the last week of November then steadily weakened throughout the entire winter. Twitter kept wishcasting that the weakening was going to somehow “save” that winter and it was going to turn into an arctic cold tundra with mountains of snow the rest of the way. It also didn’t help that JB was hyping nonstop that it was a super “migrating Modoki” El Niño and said the analogs were 1957-58, 1965-66, 1976-77, 1977-78, 2002-03, 2009-10 and 2014-15 for months on end in the fall and beginning of winter. The weenies bought right into that and the DT “it’s weakening!” argument hook, line and sinker 

[40/70 Benchmark]

4 hours ago, snowman19 said:

100%. 1997-98 peaked the final week of November then steadily weakened right through the end of March. 2015 also peaked the last week of November then steadily weakened throughout the entire winter. Twitter kept wishcasting that the weakening was going to somehow “save” that winter and it was going to turn into an arctic cold tundra with mountains of snow the rest of the way. It also didn’t help that JB was hyping nonstop that it was a super “migrating Modoki” El Niño and said the analogs were 1957-58, 1965-66, 1976-77, 1977-78, 2002-03, 2009-10 and 2014-15 for months on end in the fall and beginning of winter. The weenies bought right into that and the DT “it’s weakening!” argument hook, line and sinker 

Well, there was a modicum of truth to it in that we had a historic blizzard, and then a few weeks later a record cold snap...issue is he sensationalized the shift and implied that it would be sustained. There was definitely a shift, though. The problem was the first half of the season we had the marine forcing competing with the +ENSO regime, so the result was a horrid pattern with ridging displaced eastward into the NE, which was different from December 1982 and 1997. December 2006 was kind of like December 2015 and I fear the coming December may be similar.

I think it was Chuck that said it fits the billing for +QBO, but getting ahead of myself there...I'm won't touch the polar domain until like August.

[snowman19]

15 minutes ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

Well, there was a modicum of truth to it in that we had a historic blizzard, and then a few weeks later a record cold snap...issue is he sensationalized the shift and implied that it would be sustained. There was definitely a shift, though. The problem was the first half of the season we had the marine forcing competing with the +ENSO regime, so the result was a horrid pattern with ridging displaced eastward into the NE, which was different from December 1982 and 1997. December 2006 was kind of like December 2015 and I fear the coming December may be similar.

I think it was Chuck that said it fits the billing for +QBO, but getting ahead of myself there...I'm won't touch the polar domain until like August.

I mentioned it a week or so ago, but +QBO/El Nino (regardless of strength) Decembers are an extremely strong signal for warmth. Since 1980, there have been 6 +QBO/Nino Decembers and they were all warm, some were all out blowtorches

[Stormchaserchuck1]

17 minutes ago, snowman19 said:

I mentioned it a week or so ago, but +QBO/El Nino (regardless of strength) Decembers are an extremely strong signal for warmth. Since 1980, there have been 6 +QBO/Nino Decembers and they were all warm, some were all out blowtorches

I first noticed it in 2005 when -ENSO/-QBO December's were cold. Even cold-neutral ENSO fit it, as 1989 was an analog used for 2005. It seems to work in the reverse too, which is what you like to see for a solid correlation. 

Early season Stratosphere was of importance in 25-26, so maybe there is something to Dec.