40/70 Benchmark

I saw that...I don't read too much into that, but it may cause me to cut back a hair on the peak in the final product.

Dude, night and day between your post quality from now to like 3 years ago...I remember when everything was a blizzard with you..like literally. Lol

Should be a really strong push towards -1.0C in 3.4 over the next week or so before that happens.

La Niña should be peaking pretty quickly...

And even if you get the DM seasonal concept generally correct in terms of the mean index calculation, good luck with the timing of the seasonal progression.

You must be going by some other metric because we haven't had a negative NAO winter since 2009-2010 going by CPC.

You can....feel free. But given how difficult the polar domain is to forecast on a seasonal level, I consider every tool that I can.

Its just another piece of guidance, all of which have their stengths and limitations. It makes sense to me that it would fall flat during a super el Nino...for instance, the polar domain was actually pretty decent in 1997-1998, but due to the situation at hand it didn't matter. I think its fine to use the SAI to either increase or decrease confidence in a forecast and/or in the absence of no other prevalent indicators.

Yea.

I'm not debating your point, but I will say that I do think it offers some utility. I certainly wouldn't base an entire outlook off of it....I use it to either bolster confidence or to introduce an alternate perspective.

Well, you made sure to post his tweet when he said it didn't look good.

He just posted last week that it looked like crap after a promising start.

@bluewaveDo you have those graphics that you used to show how last season's extreme warmth was a blend of unfavorable cool ENSO and warm ENSO elements?

This is why some weaker El Nino events such as 2006 and some of the ones from the 50s were still warm....the extra tropical Pacific. Toned down versions of last year.

Its running comfortably behind 2022....but I'm not sure that matters all that much because the implication of this is that the hemisphere will be more prone to extratropical drivers vs ENSO, the most prominent of which continues to be the W PAC Warm pool. Remember...weaker doesn't mean "cold".....it just works out that way because the extra tropical drivers usually involve more cold than an ENSO predominate forcing regime would. However, in this case that isn't true. This is probably why @bluewavehas found that weaker La Nina hasn't bee helpful like it has in the past.

My guess is that correlation is greater now than it was 60 years ago. The polar domain seems to have had a greater capacity to counter a hostile Pacific back then.

29.7

Most of the periods of disconnect from the west Pac warm pool driven MC forcing has actually been in January into early February.

I agree it will probably take 2-3 years to transition out of this when in fact we do...but we don't necessarily need a big +PDO to get a Modoki El Nino.

Yes. This concept is continuously lost on people, so I have began to covey the progeression of the season using "sensible weather" analogs for each month, which is different from the DM seasonal composite....the latter is what compiles that list of years that I believe has utilty for the season in one way or another. I think this helps to distinguish which elements of each analog season are most relevent to this year.

Well, the counter point of view is that we should be skeptical of large scale continuity shifts in the way that we devise these seasonal formulations and couple this with the inate resistance to change that most humans possess...and yea, some busted seasonals over the course of the past few years.

Yep.

Thankfully its over in Methuen.

This is why the PDO is near record negative territory despite the warmth off of the California coast, which is traditonally indicative of a +PDO. Its becoming increasingly important for forecasters to assume a wholistic approach in global analysis because the unprecedented degree of warmth around the planet is limiting how much can be gleaned from focusing on any single node or geographical area. Whereas in the past we focused on areas of warmth in our assessment of the anticipated pattern it has now becoming apparent that relativity is of the utmost importance since the planet is a sea of warmth. This is the flawed lens through which I viewed ENSO last season. I focused on the orientation of SSTs within the ENSO region when there was larger pool of greater warmth to the west. The warmth off of the CA coast this year represents a similar trap with respect to the PDO.

Was there any resistance to the notion of a -PDO this winter? I'm not trying to be an ass....I'm honestly am not sure what can be gleaned from this because everyone was already resigned to it.