so_whats_happening

It is trying latest 100-180 subsurface reading shows we are closing in on levels we saw back in April.

Just a quick update June and July TAO data and Hovmollers. You can see that the Easterlies did try to have an impact on the pattern but have since been replaced with weaker trades. Maybe we are shifting the forcing like Bluewave had mentioned in earlier posts as possibility going forward.

I dont remember stating 22-23, I did post about 2020 (since this was a first year Nina situation) though maybe that is why you keep mentioning 22-23 year? To use 2020 as an example this was the pattern that looked almost identical to placement for your July picture. By the looks of it forcing should have been much further east due to those rather anomalous waters around New Guinea, but that wasn't the case. Was 2020 just an anomaly to the situation? 1998 (since this was also a first year La Nina) seemed like reasonable placement due to the waters around Sumatra actually showing a more positive value than most in the pacific, besides the lasting affects of the super Nino into almost mid summer across 1+2 region. 2005 had a funky look as well a westward displaced forcing compared to where greatest warm values were. Honestly this year should look fairly similar to 1998 VP with the warmest warmest waters overall near Sumatra or a less intense version of 1998 and broader -VP but as shown that is not the case. Is the atmosphere essentially trying to split the difference because both areas are almost equally warm? I do have to go though so ill try to get a response in tomorrow when Im at work all day.

My point was not about the hurricane season it was more along the lines that we have seen this type of VP pattern before without necessarily having an over abundance of equatorial warmth near the Maritime Continent and the blazing warmth around Japan. So there must be something else to it than just those two features. Maybe it is possible those two features help to amplify the pattern a bit more over the recent years but 1999 just did not have the Maritime warmth we are currently seeing yet had a very similar setup, 1998 was fairly similar but more toward Sumatra region than New Guinea. I do get your point though on the hurricane season and this for sure interrupts that process even with indicators through the roof.

So we saw a very similar VP map to this year back in 1999, 2017, and 2018. Im sure if I ran through the years we could probably find fairly similar looks. 1999 in a second year Nina we didn't have the equatorial warm pool but we did see the warmth SE of Japan giving the PDO -2.34 in July. 2017 had a developing Nina but was rather weak overall PDO was actually positive neutral during this time and didnt have the huge Japan warmth (was more displaced to Korea and mainland China. We did have the equatorial warm pool east of New Guinea. 2018 was actually a weak Nino but managed to have a fairly similar VP response had the warmth SE of Japan in a fairly similar spot to 1999. Also having the warm pool east of New Guinea. However during the developing 2020 Nina event we managed to have a more typical response in July as shown by your maps above. PDO state was negative but weakening and the waters around Japan were not quite as warm. The waters in the IO near Africa were more anomalously warm then near New Guinea maybe that helped in shifting the VP state for 2020? Ill make another post what I have SSTA wise for the beginning of July for these years, except 2020 which I only have until end of May. If you happen to have a better SSTA reanalysis I would love a link.

The last typhoon in the WPAC actually had a pretty significant cooling of waters around the Philippines and Taiwan.

Yea not some typical Nina like response. Has happened off an on over the past couple months with minor WWB events and models seemed to have forecasted the Easterlies a bit to strong at times.

Nah they seem to not have an alternative for the OLR data they used for MEI. NOAA has been having some pretty bad outages over the past couple of weeks so this is probably not on the top of their list, unfortunately. RONI may be reasonable thing to use for Fall and Winter at this point.

Im cautious with the GFS it has in fact pushed a more Euro like scenario as we move through time, so caution to the wind. It is a pretty potent wave coming off Africa right now and will be tough to see if it can develop for several days but the better environment is creeping slowly into the Atlantic as we move into August. I do expect at least one EPAC system to form though (potentially rather weak?) before we get things going into the Atlantic. I believe after the first weekend of August we should get the ball rolling a bit but that is almost 2 weeks out.

I believe reconstructed but never really dove into it too much as they are fairly accurate for many of the years in the satellite era. Here is the site if you wanna dive more into it. https://ds.data.jma.go.jp/gmd/tcc/tcc/products/elnino/ocean/t-eq_tcc.html https://ds.data.jma.go.jp/gmd/tcc/tcc/products/elnino/ocean/t-eq_tcc.html This goes to ~1947

Latest extent map but man sea ice thickness has seemingly taken a hit this year. I couldnt get a date to match as there were many many gaps in last years data from the navy site.

I would be cautious in that thought for now. Let us see how we do between now and mid August before those call can be made. If forecasts for MJO come anywhere close to phase 1-3 the Atlantic could ventilate rather well, I don't expect much until about the end of the first week of August as we rotate through the EPAC should start to fire off a storm or two as we close out the month.

Little battle between the GFS and Euro/JMA as to the handling of the MJO progression coming up. GFS wants to swing this through 5-6-7 while Euro and JMA stop in 5 and move over toward null and eventually 8-1 (weak through 6-7) by the end of the month. This will be pretty important for potential Tropical activity going forward. They seem to be hitting the idea of a 5 pattern pretty well going into the last week or so of July with maybe a touch of 6 briefly. I used La Nada because we are largely still at this even with a decent subsurface look. This should help us a bit with a more stormy pattern into the ohio valley mid atlantic regions coming up. Of course depending on the upcoming weeks form will determine what happens as we go into August but would suspect if the Euro was right we see very little 7 influence and some 8-1 into August with probably still largely La Nada conditions. There doesn't seem to be a whole lot of data for an 8 passage in Nada conditions but if a phase 1 is any indication we see a weakness in the East and high latitude blocking occur.

Yea a 5N-5S approach shows we are still relatively weak even with the easterlies a blowin' right now. Should see some results before the end of the month, at least expansion westward of the cold neutral anomalies.

Here is 2007 and 2017 in comparison.

Here is the latest subsurface from beginning of June to the current date. Also added Hovmoller forecasts for the next 2 weeks.

Yea the biggest change by far has been overnight temps in all seasons. The biggest changes of course have been in winter but in summer we are feeling it a bit over this way. Average night temp is around 68 here at BWI we have steadily been around 72-75 with spikes of around 76-80 with this heat of recent. In the last month alone we have gone below 67-68 area about 4 times all the while being in a D1 drought. Hopefully it breaks for a bit coming up here the house is way too hot with no central air.

You should check out the Sea Ice thread good read in there, although it doesn't get much activity. We have surprisingly not set a record since 2012 we came rather close in 2020 though. Mush ice may create a different state and act differently on the surrounding environment than many had envisioned playing out. Certainly will keep watching as we go through the rest of this decade we maybe in that flatline area before the next step down. Coming up we may actually have a profound period of lower melt although having SLP around 980-985mb doesn't really help all too much.

It is well known that hurricanes affect only the upper maybe 20m of oceanic temp but repeated action over a particular area will actually cause changes in the thermocline over time. Speed and strength as well as overall size play into these factors. I do not believe it is enough to cause massive changes but a change in the pattern is a change in the pattern to which longwave can start to take over. Look at what happened west of Bermuda this past year one solid system in September (Franklin) started a rather decent chain reaction to a more consistent troughing pattern as we went into fall and winter over the region. So it is not out of the realm of possibilities to note that this is an important factor. It is not perfect as we know many things in weather tend not to be so it doesn't always portend to a situation but it makes me think there is actually something to it.

I had brought it up a while back, but the guy I work with and I were discussing the lack of typhoons and hurricanes over the last couple years. So there still has to be energy transfer that occurs but this seems to be occurring in ways with less overall activity and stronger storms. With overall activity down there seems to be a situation of how does the energy become used in the more northern latitudes and one way that seems to be popping up is more prolific rainfall events. I believe you have posted the increase in anomalous rainfall events over the past decade or so. Definitely something to continue to watch if these SST profiles continue on their path. That temp gradient is just not there right now as much as it use to but we can still spin off storms occasionally. I know many are going for a hyper active season but ACE wise this could get there without needing 30 storms in a season. I thought I saw some funkiness when looking at the 500mb world map view last night. Good to see it being confirmed

It is possible that is the case it seems as though when these waters have cooled in the NW PAC and NW Atlantic the surface has been the only thing affected basically the first ~15-25m (I feel this is even being generous). It seems to have not had a dent into the thermocline which when the pattern bounces back it is able to quickly allow the warmth to rebuild. So that does make sense to me, I do not believe ocean heat depth is measured outside the tropics? Please correct me if I am wrong on that. Here is a great example where last spring into summer along the east coast to NFL region actually was rather cool in surface based anomalies we rapidly changed that as we went into June and July fairly similar to this year. The feedback when the pattern came back roasting the oceans just kept building on itself into the NW Atlantic and NW Pacific in August and September. Even when we got Franklin last year it managed to make a solid below average stripe off the east coast but failed to actively stay strong into the NFL region to make a solid dent in the SST, though the 500mb did change up shortly after that occurred. So whether it was the hurricane or seasonality is always up for discussion. I feel if we consistently are able to get strong storms in the area between Bermuda and east coast and have several large hurricanes recurve we could start to make dents but that has yet to be seen. One storm ain't gonna do it. Especially if we get landfalling hurricanes that may only fuel the ridge pattern over the Atlantic like Beryl seemingly is doing in the Atlantic right now. I feel Beryl was moving just way too fast to cause a large wake and actually was a rather tiny storm overall even though the impacts it had were intense to land. You will have to let me know which year you are referencing for the WPAC. Would love to check out the tracks that year in comparison to where the SST distribution set up.

I would imagine if we even start to see a semblance of an average typhoon season we could start to show a nice cool tongue across the pacific as we get toward fall but there is a lot of work to be done. I do still find it weird we have this dual basin cold equator look that is not typical in El Nino or La Nina years (last year we also had a warm tongue through the Atlantic with a strong/super Nino). I would be curious if there is an ongoing study about this phenomena.

That formed on June 27th