2026-2027 Super El Nino

[so_whats_happening]

I would be pissed if this dude kept tagging me in everything.

[ensonerd1233e343]

1 hour ago, so_whats_happening said:

Now I understand, we use MEI now that it has finally caught up but before it was discredited as a metric because it was not showing what people wanted. This thread gets more funny by the day. I feel I should just create a twitter account based off this.

tbf i have only been on here for a week but i will say the index has its flaws for starters theres only one eof so if an el nino has wwbs centered slightly east or west of typical or if the olr response is aytypical ( but still nino like) that can hurt the index i think adding a second mei w a second eof could be usueful but the third issue is the variables people act like its represntitve of the coupled system but the atmosphere counts for 4/5 of the index so its really an atmospheric index, secondly all indices counting the same is also a problem, im sorry "v wind" should not count the same as slp which has a very tight correlation to enso. Imo we shoud also add upper ocean heat conent and u componet of sfc current and remove v wind but i digress. Despite its flaws its still good at capturing the atmospheric response to enso it just needs to be looked at alongside the maps for slp winds olr vp to confirm super nino coupling. So when ppl discredit it there could be a reason im not saying they are correct tho.

 

[snowman19]

And the MEI cope has officially failed miserably, down in flames!! Womp, womp!! The last 5 months have been absolutely hilarious. Let’s see…First there was the RONI cope, FAIL, then there was the SOI cope, FAIL, then there was the trade winds are going to come back cope, FAIL, then there was the ridiculous Modoki cope, FAIL, then there MEI cope, FAIL, now we have the -PDO cope, also destined to miserably fail this fall. Can’t wait to see what the next copium will be to downplay the strongest east-based super El Niño in history….

Have to post this again….makes me smile

[snowman19]

tbf i have only been on here for a week but i will say the index has its flaws for starters theres only one eof so if an el nino has wwbs centered slightly east or west of typical or if the olr response is aytypical ( but still nino like) that can hurt the index i think adding a second mei w a second eof could be usueful but the third issue is the variables people act like its represntitve of the coupled system but the atmosphere counts for 4/5 of the index so its really an atmospheric index, secondly all indices counting the same is also a problem, im sorry "v wind" should not count the same as slp which has a very tight correlation to enso. Imo we shoud also add upper ocean heat conent and u componet of sfc current and remove v wind but i digress. Despite its flaws its still good at capturing the atmospheric response to enso it just needs to be looked at alongside the maps for slp winds olr vp to confirm super nino coupling. So when ppl discredit it there could be a reason im not saying they are correct tho.
 

I get what you’re saying with adding an OHC component to the formula, but I think looking at it separately is just as effective

[so_whats_happening]

2 hours ago, ensonerd1233e343 said:

tbf i have only been on here for a week but i will say the index has its flaws for starters theres only one eof so if an el nino has wwbs centered slightly east or west of typical or if the olr response is aytypical ( but still nino like) that can hurt the index i think adding a second mei w a second eof could be usueful but the third issue is the variables people act like its represntitve of the coupled system but the atmosphere counts for 4/5 of the index so its really an atmospheric index, secondly all indices counting the same is also a problem, im sorry "v wind" should not count the same as slp which has a very tight correlation to enso. Imo we shoud also add upper ocean heat conent and u componet of sfc current and remove v wind but i digress. Despite its flaws its still good at capturing the atmospheric response to enso it just needs to be looked at alongside the maps for slp winds olr vp to confirm super nino coupling. So when ppl discredit it there could be a reason im not saying they are correct tho.

 

"The bi-monthly Multivariate El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) index (MEI.v2) is the time series of the leading combined Empirical Orthogonal Function (EOF) of five different variables (sea level pressure (SLP), sea surface temperature (SST), zonal and meridional components of the surface wind, and outgoing longwave radiation (OLR)) over the tropical Pacific basin (30°S-30°N and 100°E-70°W). The EOFs are calculated for 12 overlapping bi-monthly "seasons" (Dec-Jan, Jan-Feb, Feb-Mar,..., Nov-Dec) in order to take into account ENSO's seasonality, and reduce effects of higher frequency intraseasonal variability. During the typical height of ENSO during late Fall/early Winter, the canonical features of atmosphere and ocean anomalies are shown schematically below based on a composite of 11 historical El Niño and La Niña events. Key features of composite positive MEI events (warm, El Niño) include (1) anomalously warm SSTs across the east-central equatorial Pacific, (2) anomalously high SLP over Indonesia and the western tropical Pacific and low SLP over the eastern tropical Pacific, (3) reduction or reversal of tropical Pacific easterly winds (trade winds), (4) suppressed tropical convection (positive OLR) over Indonesia and Western Pacific and enhanced convection (negative OLR) over the central Pacific (Fig. 1a). Key features of composite negative MEI events (cold, La Niña, Fig. 1b) are of mostly opposite phase. For any single El Niño or La Niña situation, the atmospheric articulations may depart from this canonical view."

https://psl.noaa.gov/enso/mei/

What would this second combined EOF do exactly to help with this metric?

A 'V' component to wind is important just not as functional in the sloshing of waters as the 'U' wind tends to be. Wind and SLP go hand in hand so they should carry the same weight. OLR is covered over a very large area of the equatorial Pacific it literally is measuring the intensity/location of forcing within the atmosphere. WWBs being further east and west is also important into the evolution of an ENSO (El Nino) event.

I completely disagree that OHC should be added, SSTs do just fine. We already have RONI which is just stating the obvious of what is happening in a warming world with warming oceans. The only criticism I would have of MEI is it plays catch up in all events but it often signals when the state has changed properly.

We have been also noticing more lately that each block tropics/subtropics, mid latitudes, and polar regions have not been cohesive with each other. So while the tropics may be humming along in an El Nino the mid latitudes can react very differently and can be destructive to the evolution of ENSO in either state. Just as much as the northern hemisphere and southern hemisphere will experience ENSO events differently. This El Nino has been awfully more impactful within the southern hemisphere than so far in the northern hemisphere. This could change but have yet to see those signs show up in the 500mb pattern.

Unfortunately this has not updated for July so I can't do a longer comparison but over the time period of greatest warming and exertion of a changing ENSO state these are the 500mb maps and wind anomalies we have seen between these two events. We seem to be running out of resources for plotting data so we are left with what we can find.

Just because we are having something producing similar numbers in SST anomalies does not mean things will follow the exact same way as a previous event did. Overall this just tells me in the near 30 years that ocean temps have become dramatically warmer globally, to a rather drastic extent. The implications of such we do not fully understand yet or how it will affect these events as we go through time.

[so_whats_happening]

1 hour ago, snowman19 said:

And the MEI cope has officially failed miserably, down in flames!! Womp, womp!! The last 5 months have been absolutely hilarious. Let’s see…First there was the RONI cope, FAIL, then there was the SOI cope, FAIL, then there was the trade winds are going to come back cope, FAIL, then there was the ridiculous Modoki cope, FAIL, then there MEI cope, FAIL, now we have the -PDO cope, also destined to miserably fail this fall. Can’t wait to see what the next copium will be to downplay the strongest east-based super El Niño in history….

Have to post this again….makes me smile

You really need to start tagging other peoples work and not trying to show it off as your own even if it is from twitter.

[snowman19]

3 hours ago, so_whats_happening said:

You really need to start tagging other peoples work and not trying to show it off as your own even if it is from twitter.

What the fuck are you talking about? I don’t give a shit if you’re a red rag or not don’t you dare accuse me plagiarism. Show me what I plagiarized, let’s see it

[so_whats_happening]

6 minutes ago, snowman19 said:

What the fuck are you talking about? I don’t give a shit if you’re a red rag or not don’t you dare accuse me plagiarism

You need to relax man twitter has you all up in a bind over nothing. You rage out on every poster who questions you. Fix those issues man.

[TriPol]

1 minute ago, so_whats_happening said:

You need to relax man twitter has you all up in a bind over nothing. You rage out on every poster who questions you. Fix those issues man.

Can we get back to El Nino and not call people out online? 

[so_whats_happening]

1 minute ago, TriPol said:

Can we get back to El Nino and not call people out online? 

We are on page 127 of this thread and it is August nearly 50% of these pages are filled with crap. 

[TriPol]

Just now, so_whats_happening said:

We are on page 127 of this thread and it is August nearly 50% of these pages are filled with crap. 

There are other weather forums. No one is forcing you to be here.

[so_whats_happening]

Just now, TriPol said:

There are other weather forums. No one is forcing you to be here.

No one forced you to respond either yet somehow you felt it was important.

[TriPol]

Just now, so_whats_happening said:

No one forced you to respond either yet somehow you felt it was important.

I'm trying to read about a historic El Nino. That's all I care about. I just want to read it in peace and not read posts about a meteorologist calling out other people who are not meteorologists because of something they did. I think that's what we all want, yes? So you delete your post attacking snowman19 and I'll delete my posts as well and we can all go back to tracking a once in a lifetime weather event. 

[so_whats_happening]

4 minutes ago, TriPol said:

I'm trying to read about a historic El Nino. That's all I care about. I just want to read it in peace and not read posts about a meteorologist calling out other people who are not meteorologists because of something they did. I think that's what we all want, yes? So you delete your post attacking snowman19 and I'll delete my posts as well and we can all go back to tracking a once in a lifetime weather event. 

Im good thanks though. Carry on with your reading.

[snowman19]

1 hour ago, so_whats_happening said:

You need to relax man twitter has you all up in a bind over nothing. You rage out on every poster who questions you. Fix those issues man.

You didn’t question me, you flat out accused me of plagiarism then produced zero evidence. I ask you again, what the fuck did I plagiarize? If you can’t back up your asshole accusations then don’t make them in the first place

Edit: This will be the last thing I ever say on this board, I’m deleting my account after this. Go fuck yourself @so_whats_happening and I say that in the nicest way possible. BTW, you are the worst met who posts on here since we are giving honest opinions. You are a cold/snow weenie and your thoughts and forecasts are never correct. You did a shit job predicting this event and downplayed it every step of the way. You suck. But other than that, you’re a great guy :-)

[so_whats_happening]

2 minutes ago, snowman19 said:

You didn’t question me, you flat out accused me of plagiarism then produced zero evidence. I ask you again, what the fuck did I plagiarize? If you can’t back up your accusations then don’t make them in the first place

You have never produced a single thing by yourself. You consistently post others thoughts from twitter and say yep this is what I think will happen as if what they are saying is exactly as you would say and will happen. I question it because it literally looks like someone else took the time to actually make this and you just copied it, then you also simultaneously demean so many others around you who have differing opinions and actually put in the effort to create their own thoughts (whether right or wrong) and images to show an idea.

Then you go on a tantrum because someone doesn't believe you cursing and acting like a kid. You simply could have just said nope sorry I created this but thanks anyway. You really have a lot of growing up to do. Best of luck with that hope you find peace. Still don't believe you made it and simply do not care.

[A-L-E-K]

the lack of snow already getting to folks

[so_whats_happening]

57 minutes ago, snowman19 said:

You didn’t question me, you flat out accused me of plagiarism then produced zero evidence. I ask you again, what the fuck did I plagiarize? If you can’t back up your asshole accusations then don’t make them in the first place

Edit: This will be the last thing I ever say on this board, I’m deleting my account after this. Go fuck yourself @so_whats_happening and I say that in the nicest way possible. BTW, you are the worst met who posts on here since we are giving honest opinions. You are a cold/snow weenie and your thoughts and forecasts are never correct. You did a shit job predicting this event and downplayed it every step of the way. You suck. But other than that, you’re a great guy :-)

Never claimed to be the best met or honestly that good of a forecaster at all. Of course I like snow, not so much cold though hence why I don't live in Canada or Alaska or hell even New England or the upper Midwest. I love that I have been able to experience a near snowless winter and the most snow this area has ever seen in a matter of 12 years, I find it simply fascinating. A +10 December and a -10 February as well. Yep definitely had many reservations about this event.

Stay or leave up to you. Make sure to put that little poop emoji to let me know you care!

[LakePaste25]

8 hours ago, so_whats_happening said:

Now I understand, we use MEI now that it has finally caught up but before it was discredited as a metric because it was not showing what people wanted. This thread gets more funny by the day. I feel I should just create a twitter account based off this.

That was me who was dismissing the MEI awhile ago and you still don’t see me posting about it. Just not a fan of it. It’s equally weighting all variables, only uses one dataset (JRA-55), and like ensonerd mentioned it’s limited to the first EOF. I felt like it made the 2023-24 event weaker than it was even compared to the RONI, thanks to the rare -PMM that went with it. 

[40/70 Benchmark]

9 hours ago, so_whats_happening said:

The one you seem to be discrediting has actually been more negative than the one you posted.

2020 -1.41 -1.48 -1.75 -1.32 -0.52 -0.75 -0.92 -1.33 -1.04 -0.62 -1.58 -0.98
2021 -0.61 -1.09 -1.67 -1.84 -2.04 -1.82 -2.00 -0.95 -1.96 -3.14 -2.75 -2.71
2022 -2.40 -1.91 -1.67 -2.09 -2.23 -1.31 -2.63 -2.38 -2.28 -1.81 -2.40 -2.21
2023 -1.24 -1.65 -2.45 -3.08 -2.41 -2.55 -2.54 -2.48 -2.99 -2.23 -1.79 -1.66
2024 -1.57 -1.34 -1.54 -2.11 -2.98 -3.15 -3.01 -2.91 -3.56 -3.80 -3.13 -2.03
2025 -1.29 -1.40 -1.12 -1.15 -1.66 -2.64 -4.21 -3.23 -2.31 -2.37 -1.51 -0.96
2026 -1.24 -1.00 -1.42 -1.62 -1.67 -1.71 -2.03 99.99 99.99 99.99 99.99 99.99

https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/pub/data/cmb/ersst/v5/index/ersst.v5.pdo.dat

Versus

2020 -0.79 -1.12 -1.68 -1.32 -0.68 -0.86 -0.77 -0.85 -0.75 -0.29 -1.23 -0.92
2021 -0.73 -1.29 -1.70 -1.77 -2.33 -1.89 -1.93 -0.84 -1.70 -2.69 -2.37 -2.47
2022 -2.22 -1.72 -1.63 -2.19 -2.44 -1.42 -2.44 -1.78 -1.78 -1.48 -1.83 -1.85
2023 -1.24 -1.79 -2.50 -3.13 -2.46 -2.67 -2.44 -2.02 -2.52 -1.88 -1.16 -1.20
2024 -1.48 -1.33 -1.27 -1.99 -3.01 -2.93 -2.62 -2.37 -3.10 -3.24 -2.58 -1.57
2025 -0.97 -1.20 -0.81 -1.07 -1.84 -2.62 -3.83 -2.54 -1.71 -1.82 -1.02 -0.39
2026 -0.87 -0.79 -1.18 -1.28 -1.64 -1.32 -1.29 99.99 99.99 99.99 99.99 99.99

https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/pub/data/cmb/ersst/v5/v6/index/ersst.v6.pdo.dat

This one is the one that site uses.

My mistake...I guess I spoke out of turn and should have double-checked.

Thanks.

I'm going to stick with that source, though in an effort to be homogeneous. 

[40/70 Benchmark]

1 hour ago, so_whats_happening said:

Never claimed to be the best met or honestly that good of a forecaster at all. Of course I like snow, not so much cold though hence why I don't live in Canada or Alaska or hell even New England or the upper Midwest. I love that I have been able to experience a near snowless winter and the most snow this area has ever seen in a matter of 12 years, I find it simply fascinating. A +10 December and a -10 February as well. Yep definitely had many reservations about this event.

Stay or leave up to you. Make sure to put that little poop emoji to let me know you care!

None of us are perfect...best any forecaster can do is try to keep an open mind, be willing to admit error and look to improve. My outlooks got a lot better the moment I stopped perceiving alternative view points as a threat and tried incorporating them....truth is that every individual has something to offer.

[40/70 Benchmark]

42 minutes ago, LakePaste25 said:

That was me who was dismissing the MEI awhile ago and you still don’t see me posting about it. Just not a fan of it. It’s equally weighting all variables, only uses one dataset (JRA-55), and like ensonerd mentioned it’s limited to the first EOF. I felt like it made the 2023-24 event weaker than it was even compared to the RONI, thanks to the rare -PMM that went with it. 

MEI is great for what it's designed to do...assess how well coupled ENSO is with the tropical atmosphere:

The bi-monthly Multivariate El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) index (MEI.v2) is the time series of the leading combined Empirical Orthogonal Function (EOF) of five different variables (sea level pressure (SLP), sea surface temperature (SST), zonal and meridional components of the surface wind, and outgoing longwave radiation (OLR)) over the tropical Pacific basin (30°S-30°N and 100°E-70°W).

I'm not sure why it should be viewed as a quality assessment outside of that bounded area of the tropical Pacific....it's not going to be able to detect how well the tropics are in sync with the mid latitudes, rather it is designed to measure the quality of the coupling between the ocean and atmosphere in the tropical Pacific. The RONI is probably better equipped to gage the link between the tropics and mid latitudes, but ultimately I think we just need to dig in an assess for ourselves like Chris has been doing. I don't care is the MEI is 5.3, there is still obviously a prism between the tropics and mid latitudes and no, that isn't necessarily a "good" thing for winter.

[40/70 Benchmark]

There is definitely a correlation....obviously the mid latitudes stand a better chance of being in sync with the tropics of the MEI is higher, but it's not absolute. Kind of akin to how the AO is correlated to colder mid latitude winters, but there are always exceptions when areas outside of it's domain are pervasive drivers.

[LakePaste25]

3 minutes ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

MEI is great for what it's designed to do...assess how well coupled ENSO is with the tropical atmosphere:

The bi-monthly Multivariate El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) index (MEI.v2) is the time series of the leading combined Empirical Orthogonal Function (EOF) of five different variables (sea level pressure (SLP), sea surface temperature (SST), zonal and meridional components of the surface wind, and outgoing longwave radiation (OLR)) over the tropical Pacific basin (30°S-30°N and 100°E-70°W).

I'm not sure why it should be viewed as a quality assessment outside of that bounded area of the tropical Pacific....it's not going to be able to detect how well the tropics are in sync with the mid latitudes. The RONI is probably better equipped for that, but ultimately I think we just need to dig in an assess for ourselves like Chris has been doing. I don't care is the MEI is 5.3, there is still obviously a prism between the tropics and mid latitudes and no, that isn't necessarily a "good" thing for winter.

We can agree to disagree. SOI, VP anomalies, and OLR anomalies will also tell me if it’s coupled and I much prefer using those. I’m just not a fan of using it. 

[40/70 Benchmark]

2 minutes ago, LakePaste25 said:

We can agree to disagree. SOI, VP anomalies, and OLR anomalies will also tell me if it’s coupled and I much prefer using those. I’m just not a fan of using it. 

You don't feel that ENSO is coupled with the tropics right now?

I guess we can agree to disagree, then.

I prefer a to use all of them TBH, and they all imply the same thing...ENSO is driving the tropics attm.

[LakePaste25]

2 minutes ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

You don't feel that ENSO is coupled with the tropics right now?

I guess we can agree to disagree, then.

This is like me saying you don’t agree it’s east based because you don’t like using the ELI. I simply didn’t like how the MEI was a limited dataset nor did I need to wait for this monthly updated to figure out it was coupled. 

[GaWx]

 Yesterday’s 12Z CFSv2 run has the AAM at 4+ for all 4 members simultaneously for only the 2nd run I’ve ever seen! This has that on day 15 (Aug 18th) although it is just for that one day. The only other run that I’ve seen with all 4 members at 4+ at the same time on any day is the 8/1/26 12Z run and it didn’t have that til way out only 3 days from the end of the run (day 32 or 9/1/26)! @snowman19

12Z 8/4/26 CFSv2 AAM: all >4 on 8/18/26

[bluewave]

Latest Euro update has the Nino 3.4 ONI values peaking around +4. The Nino 1.2 ONI SSTs are now approaching +5. The longer range plumes have Nino 1+2 SSTs remaining elevated into next spring and summer. 
 

 

[40/70 Benchmark]

11 minutes ago, LakePaste25 said:

This is like me saying you don’t agree it’s east based because you don’t like using the ELI. I simply didn’t like how the MEI was a limited dataset nor did I need to wait for this monthly updated to figure out it was coupled. 

Oh, I misunderstood....right. I agree with that. It was obvious.

As far as the ELI goes.....it's really not even worth arguing bc it's a moot point this season, anyway given the degree of warmth in the basin. That being said, if anyone uses that index exclusively to assess ENSO orientation moving forward, there will undoubtedly be issues....although that can probably be said about any particular metric.

[michsnowfreak]

54 minutes ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

None of us are perfect...best any forecaster can do is try to keep an open mind, be willing to admit error and look to improve. My outlooks got a lot better the moment I stopped perceiving alternative view points as a threat and tried incorporating them....truth is that every individual has something to offer.

Agree, but sadly some will never keep an open mind, admit error, and stop attacking those with alternate viewpoints.