2026-2027 Super El Nino

[snowman19]

Textbook El Niño “Gill response” pattern with the STJ showing up on the models come the end of this month going into June….
 

[mitchnick]

1 hour ago, Typhoon Tip said:

Poaching this off Spaceweather.com but I thought you ENSO geese might find this interesting...

SUPER EL NIÑO, IS THE TERMINATOR TO BLAME? Headlines are buzzing with news that a super El Niño is forming in the Pacific Ocean. A solar physicist saw it coming 3 years ago.

A super El Niño like this one in 1997 is now forming in the Pacific Ocean.

In a 2023 paper, Robert Leamon of NASA and the University of Maryland (Baltimore County) made a striking prediction: The next El Niño would arrive in 2026. He based it on the Terminator, a magnetic event on the sun that ends one solar cycle and ignites the next.

Averaging the past five solar cycles into a "standard cycle" and projecting it forward, Leamon found that El Niños follow about five years after a Terminator. The most recent termination event happened in December 2021, putting the next El Niño squarely in 2026. His model says nothing about the strength of this El Niño, but the timing is spot-on.

Leamon and his colleague Scott McIntosh had previously shown that every Terminator since the 1960s coincided with a flip from El Niño to La Niña.  Their work correctly predicted the onset of a triple-dip La Niña in 2020 and revealed an unexpected connection between the sun and the ENSO (El Niño-Southern Oscillation).

Adapted from Fig. 5 of Leamon (2023), this chart highlights two apparently successful predictions based on the Terminator

No one knows how the sun exerts control over the ENSO. Most researchers favor "top-down" models: Solar activity alters the top of Earth's atmosphere, making changes that percolate down to affect the weather we experience near Earth's surface. But the actual mechanism is unknown.

At first (2021), Leamon and McIntosh thought cosmic rays were responsible. Galactic cosmic rays vary with the solar cycle, and they influence the ionization of Earth's atmosphere. But later (2023) Leamon himself weighed in against cosmic rays, noting that the timing didn't work. He currently favors a correlation with geomagnetic activity.

The search for a sun-El Niño connection is as old as El Niño itself. Sir Gilbert Walker, who discovered the "Southern Oscillation" (the SO in ENSO) in the early 1900s, tried and failed to find a link to sunspots.  Throughout the 20th century, other researchers likewise struggled to make the connection.  The Terminator, however, is a new concept articulated by McIntosh and Leamon in a series of papers starting 10 years ago. It seems to do a good job of predicting solar cycles and may be successful with ENSO as well.

It will take more than 1 or 2 successful predictions to build confidence in this model, but it's a good start. Let the El Niño begin.

Hey, my alma mater! 

"In a 2023 paper, Robert Leamon of NASA and the University of Maryland (Baltimore County) made a striking prediction: The next El Niño would arrive in 2026."

I was a Political Science major. They didn't have a met department, but I took every weather related Geography course they offered. 

[roardog]

11 minutes ago, snowman19 said:

Textbook El Niño “Gill response” pattern with the STJ showing up on the models come the end of this month going into June….
 

Like Bluewave was saying, some aspects of the coming pattern are Nino like but not all. The SE ridge and coming heat over the eastern US is not. The warmth in Nino 4 is a problem and I’m guessing will cause non Nino forcing at times and MJO rotations at times in Non Nino phases. I said a couple of months ago that if we see a cool and wet summer and fall in the Great Lakes and eastern US then I’ll feel more confident of a typical strong/super Nino response come winter. Otherwise I’d be concerned about another “La Nino” which is probably actually worse for eastern winter lovers.

[snowman19]

5 hours ago, roardog said:

Like Bluewave was saying, some aspects of the coming pattern are Nino like but not all. The SE ridge and coming heat over the eastern US is not. The warmth in Nino 4 is a problem and I’m guessing will cause non Nino forcing at times and MJO rotations at times in Non Nino phases. I said a couple of months ago that if we see a cool and wet summer and fall in the Great Lakes and eastern US then I’ll feel more confident of a typical strong/super Nino response come winter. Otherwise I’d be concerned about another “La Nino” which is probably actually worse for eastern winter lovers.

That Webb post deals the end of this month into June not this coming week’s heat. The models are projecting a classic El Niño pattern going into June

 

[Stormchaserchuck1]

The US pattern "pre-El Nino" has hit every single month since November. CPC 3-4 week forecasts are showing that hitting again. It doesn't mean there has been a N. pacific low though, which is usually the main staple mark of el nino. 

[roardog]

11 minutes ago, Stormchaserchuck1 said:

The US pattern "pre-El Nino" has hit every single month since November. CPC 3-4 week forecasts are showing that hitting again. It doesn't mean there has been a N. pacific low though, which is usually the main staple mark of el nino. 

What does the month of June look like in those years?

[roardog]

15 minutes ago, Stormchaserchuck1 said:

The US pattern "pre-El Nino" has hit every single month since November. CPC 3-4 week forecasts are showing that hitting again. It doesn't mean there has been a N. pacific low though, which is usually the main staple mark of el nino. 

Are you talking about just strong Nino? 01-02 winter was pre Nino that wasn’t anything like this past winter. Neither was 96-97 and that obviously preceded a super Nino. 

[Stormchaserchuck1]

4 minutes ago, roardog said:

What does the month of June look like in those years?

June is pretty neutral just Nino 3.4

ENSO events that peak more later in the year have more of a pattern

-NPH

[Stormchaserchuck1]

3 minutes ago, roardog said:

Are you talking about just strong Nino? 01-02 winter was pre Nino that wasn’t anything like this past winter. Neither was 96-97 and that obviously preceded a super Nino. 

75 analogs weighted, +2.0 next year El Nino is 2.0x, -0.5 next year ENSO is -0.5x, etc. 01-02 is probably about 2% of the composite. 96-97 is about 3% of the composite

[Stormchaserchuck1]

This is the start of a very warm pattern for CONUS, to finish out May. I wonder if we're going to start doing what we were doing a few years ago where when the actual day is mild or ridgy, the long range models adjust for the same pattern in the extended.  80F here at 10am

[snowman19]

[40/70 Benchmark]

15 hours ago, roardog said:

Like Bluewave was saying, some aspects of the coming pattern are Nino like but not all. The SE ridge and coming heat over the eastern US is not. The warmth in Nino 4 is a problem and I’m guessing will cause non Nino forcing at times and MJO rotations at times in Non Nino phases. I said a couple of months ago that if we see a cool and wet summer and fall in the Great Lakes and eastern US then I’ll feel more confident of a typical strong/super Nino response come winter. Otherwise I’d be concerned about another “La Nino” which is probably actually worse for eastern winter lovers.

Absolutely. This is what I have been getting at with the RONI focus.

[Stormchaserchuck1]

Yeah, a pure 82-83 or 97-98 type Nino wouldn't be bad if it happened like 6 times out of 10. you might still get above average temps, but line up a -NAO with the STJ... I contend that +NAO isn't a constant with east-based Nino's like history suggests, It's more random than it appears in limited analogs. 

[snowman19]

4 minutes ago, Stormchaserchuck1 said:

Yeah, a pure 82-83 or 97-98 type Nino wouldn't be bad if it happened like 6 times out of 10. you might still get above average temps, but line up a -NAO with the STJ... I contend that +NAO isn't a constant with east-based Nino's like history suggests, It's more random than it appears in limited analogs. 

The 97-98 winter actually had -NAO/-AO blocking

[Stormchaserchuck1]

3 minutes ago, snowman19 said:

The 97-98 winter actually had -NAO/-AO blocking

DJFM averaged out positive, +0.05/month. December had -0.97 but +EPO overwhelmed it. the negative H5 in the pacific extended north to +EPO that Winter, which dominated. It had short periods of blocking. 

[Stormchaserchuck1]

23-24 was "la nino" which I'm afraid we are on pace to repeat. Dec-Mar was very wet though, so line up a -NAO and it could be good just like other Strong Nino's. DJF NAO 23-24 was +1.08/month that Winter.. since March is not recently much of a Winter month

[Stormchaserchuck1]

Eastern subsurface is roasting.. these are the highest daily anomalies on TAO/Triton of the event so far.. +6.5c

[LakePaste25]

1 hour ago, Stormchaserchuck1 said:

23-24 was "la nino" which I'm afraid we are on pace to repeat. Dec-Mar was very wet though, so line up a -NAO and it could be good just like other Strong Nino's. DJF NAO 23-24 was +1.08/month that Winter.. since March is not recently much of a Winter month

Pretty much my preliminary thoughts until we see cool anomalies replace the west pac warm pool like during the past super nino events. 

[40/70 Benchmark]

6 hours ago, Stormchaserchuck1 said:

23-24 was "la nino" which I'm afraid we are on pace to repeat. Dec-Mar was very wet though, so line up a -NAO and it could be good just like other Strong Nino's. DJF NAO 23-24 was +1.08/month that Winter.. since March is not recently much of a Winter month

Yes, that is my fear. I managed an awesome event on January 7th, though....was pretty localized, though.

[40/70 Benchmark]

7 hours ago, Stormchaserchuck1 said:

23-24 was "la nino" which I'm afraid we are on pace to repeat. Dec-Mar was very wet though, so line up a -NAO and it could be good just like other Strong Nino's. DJF NAO 23-24 was +1.08/month that Winter.. since March is not recently much of a Winter month

Cyclical.

[Stormchaserchuck1]

1 hour ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

Cyclical.

Yeah, this last March was 2nd most positive NAO in all of records. We know that decadal phase is peaking around now as the last Winter month (DJFM) under -1.11 NAO was Dec 2010. 22 winter months >+1.11 during that time. 

[Stormchaserchuck1]

March-Apr 2026 had a combined NAO of +4.08

[MarcmmKU]

2 hours ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

Cyclical.

Too much niña. We haven’t had a traditional classic niño since 2018-2019.

[Stormchaserchuck1]

20 minutes ago, MarcmmKU said:

Too much niña. We haven’t had a traditional classic niño since 2018-2019.

Even that was a -PNA Winter

We haven't had classic Strong Nino since 2016

[michsnowfreak]

10 hours ago, Stormchaserchuck1 said:

23-24 was "la nino" which I'm afraid we are on pace to repeat. Dec-Mar was very wet though, so line up a -NAO and it could be good just like other Strong Nino's. DJF NAO 23-24 was +1.08/month that Winter.. since March is not recently much of a Winter month

As terrible as '23-24 was, January was a good month here. Just the rest of that winter absolutely sucked. And the March thing is wild lately....November has been more wintry than March of late.

[Stormchaserchuck1]

1 minute ago, michsnowfreak said:

As terrible as '23-24 was, January was a good month here. Just the rest of that winter absolutely sucked. And the March thing is wild lately....November has been more wintry than March of late.

Jan 2024 had a pretty good -NAO with some cold coming underneath of northern latitude ridging. It was a pattern break from the -NAO bouts always hooking up with SE ridge 2018-2023. 

[michsnowfreak]

5 minutes ago, Stormchaserchuck1 said:

Jan 2024 had a pretty good -NAO with some cold coming underneath of northern latitude ridging. It was a pattern break from the -NAO bouts always hooking up with SE ridge 2018-2023. 

2015-16 had multiple wintry bouts outside the torch December. I feel like for here, a strong (or super) nino is going to have 1 horrendous month and the rest of the time will have multiple chances that make or break how bad (or good) the winter is. Its different in the east coast where it seems going on getting (or not getting) one massive storm will be the story of a strong nino winter. 

[snowman19]

@40/70 Benchmark

Gaining more confidence this El Niño breaks the 1982-83 RONI record (+2.5C). Also think the ONI peaks solidly over +3.0C
 

[40/70 Benchmark]

1 hour ago, snowman19 said:

@40/70 Benchmark

Gaining more confidence this El Niño breaks the 1982-83 RONI record (+2.5C). Also think the ONI peaks solidly over +3.0C
 

Yea, unfortunately, I feel like the remaining delta between the two is more important than the absolute RONI reading.  Looks like a subpar season with an elevated risk for a big-dog.

 

[40/70 Benchmark]

9 hours ago, Stormchaserchuck1 said:

Even that was a -PNA Winter

We haven't had classic Strong Nino since 2016

Right....2018-2019 was la Nino, as well. It's honestly been over a decade since we've had a true El Nino, and the RONI even lagged in that one.