2026-2027 Super El Nino

[bluewave]

3 hours ago, PhiEaglesfan712 said:

I guess for those who want a cooler and snowy winter, root on for a -NAO to be the fly in the ointment for the robust el nino.

Even a -NAO -AO during a super El Niño can be warm with very little snow like we saw in January 1998. The issue was how strong the El Niño ridge was in the Great Lakes into the Northeast to the south of the block over Greenland. Also note that the forcing to the east of the Dateline didn’t help since it was so strong. 

 

[40/70 Benchmark]

1 minute ago, bluewave said:

Even a -NAO -AO during a super El Niño can be warm with very little snow like we saw in January 1998. The issue is how strong the El Niño ridge was in the Great Lakes into the Northeast to the south of the main block over Greenland. Also note that the forcing moving to the east of the Dateline didn’t help since it was so strong. 

 

Never any guarantees with an El Niño that powerful, but we can all agree that we'll need some negative NAO to have an appreciable shot.

[40/70 Benchmark]

1957-1958 also had quite a bit of -NAO.....but Chris is correct to question how effective it would be today because even if the west warm pool relents, we still need to account for the exaggerated ridge and attenuated trough responses in our modern climate.

[snowman19]

9 minutes ago, bluewave said:

Even a -NAO -AO during a super El Niño can be warm with very little snow like we saw in January 1998. The issue was how strong the El Niño ridge was in the Great Lakes into the Northeast to the south of the block over Greenland. Also note that the forcing to the east of the Dateline didn’t help since it was so strong. 

 

All the January, 1998 -NAO/-AO did was trap Pacific air underneath the blocks

[bluewave]

34 minutes ago, BlizzardWx said:

And it's worth noting it's not just really warm vs less warm. ECMWF seasonal shows genuine cool anomalies near the MC as part of that +IOD  along with the eastward leaning nino. I think if this roughly happens it really would kill the split forcing Bluewave is always talking about. Even further north the ECMWF seasonal is mostly breaking down the warm water in the west Pacific with what is a neutral to maybe slight +PDO look. This would be a genuine change from the last decade. And that's to say nothing of what still looks to be a marginally negative AMO. 

The December forecast map shows the +IOD becoming more neutral following the fall peak with the SSTs rebounding a bit near the Maritime Continent

So we’ll have to see how things verify once we get that far out in time. 

Also note the December forecast chart has warmer SSTs east of Japan and over the Atlantic. 

 

[40/70 Benchmark]

7 minutes ago, snowman19 said:

All the January, 1998 -NAO/-AO did was trap Pacific air underneath the blocks

WPO....it's usually + in these uber warm ENSO events, but 1982-1983 was negative....I could see us pulling that off again given the recent changes on the North Pacific. May be another notable difference between this year and 2023-2024.

[40/70 Benchmark]

They still haven't calculated the QBO since February. What an absolute nightmare this administration is.

[Stormchaserchuck1]

Here's an interesting stat: 13 straight February's with +NAO (CPC). 10/13 have been >+1.00. For comparison, our last Winter month (DJFM) with any monthly NAO <-1.11 was Dec 2010. 

[Stormchaserchuck1]

48 minutes ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

WPO....it's usually + in these uber warm ENSO events, but 1982-1983 was negative....I could see us pulling that off again given the recent changes on the North Pacific. May be another notable difference between this year and 2023-2024.

I'm really starting to miss the Daily Climate Composite maps, as current SSTA configurations could start giving us clues about the cold season NAO and WPO, and SLP maps over the Arctic, an indicator of cold season AO. 

[40/70 Benchmark]

8 minutes ago, Stormchaserchuck1 said:

I'm really starting to miss the Daily Climate Composite maps, as current SSTA configurations could start giving us clues about the cold season NAO and WPO, and SLP maps over the Arctic, an indicator of cold season AO. 

Tough for me to tell without monthly calculations, but it looks like 1957, 1982 and 2015 are good polar analogs.