El Nino 2023-2024

[bluewave]

Just now, mitchnick said:

For June and July forecasts for September, even the CFS was around +1.8-1.9. Sorry Snowman . 

The atmosphere never got the memo that this is supposed to be an El Niño. The hurricane season in the Atlantic is in full La Niña mode.  We still have stronger trades  in the Pacific than we should for an El Niño. So I question how much more the ENSO SST regions can rise without a strong WWB pattern and a steep increase in OHC. It did look like we were trying to make some progress closer to an El Niño back in August. But the WWB pattern couldn’t sustain itself.

[snowman19]

For June and July forecasts for September, even the CFS was around +1.8-1.9. Sorry Snowman . 

While it’s obvious that the POAMA is overdone, there’s still going to be a super El Niño. Sorry mitch lol

[snowman19]

The atmosphere never got the memo that this is supposed to be an El Niño. The hurricane season in the Atlantic is in full La Niña mode.  We still have stronger trades  in the Pacific than we should for an El Niño. So I question how much more the ENSO SST regions can rise without a strong WWB pattern and a steep increase in OHC. It did look like we were trying to make some progress closer to an El Niño back in August. But the WWB pattern couldn’t sustain itself.

The whole west PAC warm pool is stopping the El Niño argument is pretty much over now. As was shown earlier in this thread, the west PAC has cooled notably and is continuing to cool for at least the last month and a half

[mitchnick]

2 minutes ago, snowman19 said:

While it’s obvious that the POAMA is overdone, there’s still going to be a super El Niño. Sorry mitch lol

It's ok. I'll get over it. 

[mitchnick]

9 minutes ago, bluewave said:

The atmosphere never got the memo that this is supposed to be an El Niño. The hurricane season in the Atlantic is in full La Niña mode.  We still have stronger trades  in the Pacific than we should for an El Niño. So I question how much more the ENSO SST regions can rise without a strong WWB pattern and a steep increase in OHC. It did look like we were trying to make some progress closer to an El Niño back in August. But the WWB pattern couldn’t sustain itself.

That's the GFS. CFS says it's still coming fwiw.

 

[Terpeast]

8 hours ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

I'm not sure how -PDO correlates to more snowfall in the mid Atlantic. Doesn't make sense to me.

It doesn’t. +pdo more snowfall, -pdo less. 

I misspoke, it’s not anticorrelated. It’s correlated.

Rookie mistake on my part. 

[bluewave]

49 minutes ago, snowman19 said:

The whole west PAC warm pool is stopping the El Niño argument is pretty much over now. As was shown earlier in this thread, the west PAC has cooled notably and is continuing to cool for at least the last month and a half

The actual data disagrees with you on the WPAC warm pool. This is currently the largest reservoir of +30 C WPAC SST warmth that we have seen outside a weak uncoupled El Niño or La Niña. It’s the reason that the -SOI can’t couple with the Pacific trade wind pattern. Forget what x or y model is showing beyond 10 days. The stronger WWBs keep getting pushed back and the forcing remains west based. This is the actual verification so far below which bears little resemblance to an El Niño pattern. These ENSO models have been like a perpetual GFS 384 snowstorm forecast that keeps getting pushed further out the closer in we get.

 

[ORH_wxman]

12 hours ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

Seems like a sample size fluke to me. I have a hard time envisioning a physical reason why Philly would be better of in a -PDO than Boston. But I'm all ears....maybe -PNA not allowing s stream to amplify enough??

It's a pretty weak R squared value at 0.12....probably falls below 0.1 if you remove the crazy 2014-15 outlier.

[bluewave]

8 hours ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

Yea, that is counterintuitive that -PDO is more detrimental to NE snowfall then mid Atlantic snowfall...I'll bet it has to do with the greater variance up here.

The PDO is a bit like a chicken or egg situation. When the -PDO is coupled with with the 500mb pattern we get the Western Trough/SE Ridge pattern associated with a -PNA like last winter. But in 20-21 and to some extent 21-22 ,the -PDO was uncoupled with the pattern with the strong +PNA at times and forcing closer to MJO 7 west of the Dateline. So it’s clearly a remote teleconnection pattern from the WPAC running the show. Last winter we got stuck in the MJO 4-6 forcing pattern which drove the -PDO and created a very strong La Niña type of pattern. Trying to decipher the exact location of the forcing in the WPAC can be challenging ahead of time. Unfortunately, we seem on balance to get longer duration and more 4-5 than 6-7-8 forcing since 15-16. Funny how fleeting the 13-14 and 14-15 more favorable WPAC forcing turned out to be. 

[so_whats_happening]

What i find rather crazy still is the lack of an EPAC season. Had a similar occurrence to last year where it started decent then just stopped. Typically in el nino EPAC is firing on all cylinders right now. Should be getting to R or S storms by mid to late september. Atlantic should be barely crossing the I storm maybe at most to the L storm in an el nino. The storms should be recurving out to sea like margot yet we have had several sneak through and cause issues close to home. We had two storms form in the north Caribbean which is very unusual in an el nino. 

Again all this is just a sign that something is not coupling right with the el nino. We have the warm waters just not everything aligning right. If we legit end the EPAC with Jova i would be very surprised but nothing in the pipeline for the next two weeks atleast showing up.

I mean even the SOI may make a run at positive levels with the amount of high pressure showing up in the south pacific. In a few days we will have hit mid september leaving us 1.5 months away at most from typical peak time for OHC and Nino peak (which tends to happen just a little earlier). If we are lucky we see one more KW come through but that keeps getting pushed back in time and the effects would be in October at this point if one occurs, meaningfully.

This is looking more and more like the june into early july level off/cool down period. Maybe we see a stark change come October but time is definitely running out.

[Yanksfan]

For arguments sake let’s say we peak at a strong ElNino that ends up being decoupled. What effects good or bad would influence the upcoming winter?

[Eskimo Joe]

 

 

[Terpeast]

1 hour ago, so_whats_happening said:

What i find rather crazy still is the lack of an EPAC season. Had a similar occurrence to last year where it started decent then just stopped. Typically in el nino EPAC is firing on all cylinders right now. Should be getting to R or S storms by mid to late september. Atlantic should be barely crossing the I storm maybe at most to the L storm in an el nino. The storms should be recurving out to sea like margot yet we have had several sneak through and cause issues close to home. We had two storms form in the north Caribbean which is very unusual in an el nino. 

Again all this is just a sign that something is not coupling right with the el nino. We have the warm waters just not everything aligning right. If we legit end the EPAC with Jova i would be very surprised but nothing in the pipeline for the next two weeks atleast showing up.

I mean even the SOI may make a run at positive levels with the amount of high pressure showing up in the south pacific. In a few days we will have hit mid september leaving us 1.5 months away at most from typical peak time for OHC and Nino peak (which tends to happen just a little earlier). If we are lucky we see one more KW come through but that keeps getting pushed back in time and the effects would be in October at this point if one occurs, meaningfully.

This is looking more and more like the june into early july level off/cool down period. Maybe we see a stark change come October but time is definitely running out.

I think that can be partly explained by very cold ssts SW of CA/Baja from the record -pdo of last winter, and on the Atlantic side record sst warmth in the gulf and carribean. 

[griteater]

Maybe for once this kind of model heat bias will carry over into winter

[Terpeast]

6 minutes ago, griteater said:

Maybe for once this kind of model heat bias will carry over into winter

Did they adjust the models to bias warmer because of CC?

[Terpeast]

10 minutes ago, Terpeast said:

I think that can be partly explained by very cold ssts SW of CA/Baja from the record -pdo of last winter, and on the Atlantic side record sst warmth in the gulf and carribean. 

I kinda walk that comment back though, looking at quiet it is in the gulf and carribean. Activity further east and north into the Atlantic is… odd. 
 

(source: CWG)

And for all the talk of the EQ WPAC pool interfering with this el nino, ssts there are pretty close to normal…

[GaWx]

 The W Pacific/MC warm pool anomaly, which has been a major factor as regards a warming influence over the last five winters in the E US as exhibited by a frequent strong SE ridge as well as the MJO being on the warmer (right) side of the diagram more often than on the colder (left) side, has cooled significantly vs 12 months ago. I may post more details on this later.
 
 What are the implications for the upcoming E US winter? Does this mean a good chance at a colder one to at least close to normal? Of course, we still have the very warm Atlantic (+AMO) though increased tropical activity has helped cool it some.

[bluewave]

29 minutes ago, Terpeast said:

I kinda walk that comment back though, looking at quiet it is in the gulf and carribean. Activity further east and north into the Atlantic is… odd. 
 

(source: CWG)

And for all the talk of the EQ WPAC pool interfering with this el nino, ssts there are pretty close to normal…

Those stormvista SST charts are a little too low of a resolution to be of much help. Check out the August actual rankings for the entire Pacific Basin. Top 5 warmest SSTs at +30C west of the Dateline. So that’s where the forcing keeps getting stuck. We are seeing a temporary slight cooling relative to recent times near Indonesia. But as we have seen in recent years, a steady rebound has occurred as soon as the +IOD peaked in the fall. I can remember how surprised everyone was when the IOD rapidly faded in the late fall of 2019 and the SSTs rebounded to all time levels north of Australia. 
 

[snowman19]

Here’s the new JMA, still showing a super trimonthly (NDJ) peak: https://x.com/mario___ramirez/status/1701283581107089723?s=46&t=NChJQK9_PUjA1K7D2SMojw

[snowman19]

 The W Pacific/MC warm pool anomaly, which has been a major factor as regards a warming influence over the last five winters in the E US as exhibited by a frequent strong SE ridge as well as the MJO being on the warmer (right) side of the diagram more often than on the colder (left) side, has cooled significantly vs 12 months ago. I may post more details on this later.
 
 What are the implications for the upcoming winter? Does this mean a good chance at a colder one to at least close to normal? Of course, we still have the very warm Atlantic (+AMO) though increased tropical activity has helped cool it some.

The WPAC has very clearly been cooling notably and is still cooling. It’s undeniable. We have also gone into a significant +IOD and the models are getting stronger with it on each new run. The argument that we are still in a La Niña state and it’s killing the Nino and that all these new model runs are dead wrong about this Nino going super this close to game time is mind boggling to me

[GaWx]

13 minutes ago, snowman19 said:

Here’s the new JMA, still showing a super trimonthly (NDJ) peak: https://x.com/mario___ramirez/status/1701283581107089723?s=46&t=NChJQK9_PUjA1K7D2SMojw

 This new JMA ONI peak is ~+2.05 (for NDJ). That is cooler than the +2.22 NDJ from the August run. That means that the JMA (~0.17), Euro (~0.15), and the (inferior) CFS (~0.35) have all cooled since a month ago. OTOH, the BoM remained the same.

[Terpeast]

1 hour ago, bluewave said:

Those stormvista SST charts are a little too low of a resolution to be of much help. Check out the August actual rankings for the entire Pacific Basin. Top 5 warmest SSTs at +30C west of the Dateline. So that’s where the forcing keeps getting stuck. We are seeing a temporary slight cooling relative to recent times near Indonesia. But as we have seen in recent years, a steady rebound has occurred as soon as the +IOD peaked in the fall. I can remember how surprised everyone was when the IOD rapidly faded in the late fall of 2019 and the SSTs rebounded to all time levels north of Australia. 
 

Apparently it can flip on a dime as it did in 2019-20. I guess it’s just a waiting game now at this point.

CPC maps based on the cfs v2 does have the WPAC warming up into winter, maybe by a half degree or so. 

It’s highly unlikely that we can completely shut down the warm mjo phases, but those 30c ssts around the dateline will make 7-8-1 open for business and that’s what we want. A super nino would place forcing too far east, and that scenario is looking increasingly unlikely. 

Doesn’t mean that a repeat flip in the WPAC is more likely either. 

[ORH_wxman]

2 hours ago, Terpeast said:

Did they adjust the models to bias warmer because of CC?

CC should be a non-factor on an 11-15 day forecast for typical NWP guidance.

[GaWx]

2 hours ago, snowman19 said:

The WPAC has very clearly been cooling notably and is still cooling. It’s undeniable.

 This is very good news from the standpoint of the prospects of reducing the dominance of the SE ridge as well as reducing the frequency and amplitude of the MC MJO phases. Hopefully it lasts! 
 Then again, we have the -PDO and +AMO that aren't usually on the side of those who favor colder winters, especially down here in the SE.

[so_whats_happening]

2 hours ago, Terpeast said:

I think that can be partly explained by very cold ssts SW of CA/Baja from the record -pdo of last winter, and on the Atlantic side record sst warmth in the gulf and carribean. 

 

2 hours ago, Terpeast said:

I kinda walk that comment back though, looking at quiet it is in the gulf and carribean. Activity further east and north into the Atlantic is… odd. 
 

(source: CWG)

And for all the talk of the EQ WPAC pool interfering with this el nino, ssts there are pretty close to normal…

Maybe for the PDO comment but Hilary still made a decent run and Jova as well, of course they didn't last too long after hitting the cooler than normal region but that is about as typical as it gets. If we look at just the top Nino years 2015 and 1997 saw a large amount of activity. This was due to the atmospheric state allowing tropical activity to go nuts, 2009 and 1972 two years with neutral to -PDO state still managed decent activity 20/ 14 storms respectively. The atmospheric state (-VP) was a little less conducive in 1972 than the other 3 years mentioned hence the lower tropical storm count the -VP anomaly was around 150W averaged over June through Sept and shut off rather abruptly along Central American pacific coastal waters. The other years had -VP over much of the central and eastern PAC with 2009 having a much stronger west lean out of all the years. 

The anomaly maps are all over the place honestly, it really depends on which one you use. CRW is probably the warmest overall while CDAS tends to be the coolest overall. I have not checked to see what OISST and this UKMO one are like and what baselines they use (it usually falls to what baseline they use that causes the sometimes large changes in anomaly placement) so I guess in that sense use which one you want? Preferably just like we do with most other things is to average things out which probably gets us much closer to ERSST estimates.

As for the quietness in the GOM and Caribbean that is expected in an El Nino not the two storms that formed last month in the northern Caribbean, that is quite unusual. In fact any tropical activity avoided the Caribbean in 1997 and 2015, not so much in 1972 and 2009 even 1982 had 0 activity in the Caribbean. I certainly hope we are done after the N storm forms but if models continue to show us looping back to 3 or through 2-3 before the end of the month expect another round of tropical activity to occur toward the end of the month early October.

[so_whats_happening]

I thought this was cool to see, since we don't have September yet did June through August. Here is 2021, 2022, and 2023. Notice the +VP anomaly in the EPAC. I went back to 2010 when we had similar in magnitude to current PDO state in summer to see if it was indeed a -PDO thing. Definitely is not a -PDO thing as the +VP were throughout the entire Central Pacific during that time. Surprisingly the years that had this were 1972, 1976,1977 (this one was odd to see as we had already had a warm ENSO event the year before)... years coming off a multi year La Nina into a warm ENSO state. Ill post them in another post with this quoted then.

 

[bluewave]

55 minutes ago, Terpeast said:

Apparently it can flip on a dime as it did in 2019-20. I guess it’s just a waiting game now at this point.

CPC maps based on the cfs v2 does have the WPAC warming up into winter, maybe by a half degree or so. 

It’s highly unlikely that we can completely shut down the warm mjo phases, but those 30c ssts around the dateline will make 7-8-1 open for business and that’s what we want. A super nino would place forcing too far east, and that scenario is looking increasingly unlikely. 

Doesn’t mean that a repeat flip in the WPAC is more likely either. 

The forcing pattern this month just west of the Dateline would be great to have during the winter. Hopefully, the amazing summer blocking pattern repeats to some extent with winter wavelengths. Would be nice to see the post +IOD winter pattern not experience an excessive rebound in SSTs near Indonesia. But that MJO 4-6 has had a habit of firing up at the most inopportune times during many winters back to 15-16. 
 

 

 

 

[so_whats_happening]

2 minutes ago, so_whats_happening said:

I thought this was cool to see, since we don't have September yet did June through August. Here is 2021, 2022, and 2023. Notice the +VP anomaly in the EPAC. I went back to 2010 when we had similar in magnitude to current PDO state in summer to see if it was indeed a -PDO thing. Definitely is not a -PDO thing as the +VP were throughout the entire Central Pacific during that time. Surprisingly the years that had this were 1972, 1976,1977 (this one was odd to see as we had already had a warm ENSO event the year before)... years coming off a multi year La Nina into a warm ENSO state. Ill post them in another post with this quoted then.

 

I tried other dates as well around multi year La Ninas expecting to go into Warm ENSO regardless of strength. Found 1951, 1957, and 1986 had a similar look. 2001 was similar as well but did not go into Warm ENSO until 2002 and 2009 did not have this look as well. So quite all over the board as far as what the Nino looked like.

[raindancewx]

This Summer in some ways reminds me of 2016. That was a winter that had Nino 1.2 warm relatively, with the western areas somewhat cool. So you had a strong subtropical jet / western storminess in winter, following a very hot Summer. The global upper level pattern was different in the Summer, especially on the Atlantic side, but you could do a lot worse for a 500 mb match than combing something like 1982, 2016, 2019 for a match to 2023.

I'm not a fan of the QBO as a relevant metric, but the -QBO years do seem to be better matches right now. 1951, 1972, 2009, 2019, and a few others. The bigger El Ninos have tended to be near average QBO readings - 1997, 1982. The 2015-16 El Nino got blamed for breaking the QBO from what I remember, in terms of the regularly scheduled timing.

The joke is the stuff that is determined by actual SSTs, like precipitation - looks very similar to the major El Ninos. It's just that the temp patterns are not great matches. The temps are more correlated to the PDO though in terms of spatial layout in the US. You can bitch and moan about the influence not behaving like you want - but this is pretty close. The upper high over TX was stronger than in the matching years, and CA had remnants from a hurricane...but its not like it's completely opposite the major El Ninos or something.

[40/70 Benchmark]

54 minutes ago, raindancewx said:

This Summer in some ways reminds me of 2016. That was a winter that had Nino 1.2 warm relatively, with the western areas somewhat cool. So you had a strong subtropical jet / western storminess in winter, following a very hot Summer. The global upper level pattern was different in the Summer, especially on the Atlantic side, but you could do a lot worse for a 500 mb match than combing something like 1982, 2016, 2019 for a match to 2023.

I'm not a fan of the QBO as a relevant metric, but the -QBO years do seem to be better matches right now. 1951, 1972, 2009, 2019, and a few others. The bigger El Ninos have tended to be near average QBO readings - 1997, 1982. The 2015-16 El Nino got blamed for breaking the QBO from what I remember, in terms of the regularly scheduled timing.

The joke is the stuff that is determined by actual SSTs, like precipitation - looks very similar to the major El Ninos. It's just that the temp patterns are not great matches. The temps are more correlated to the PDO though in terms of spatial layout in the US. You can bitch and moan about the influence not behaving like you want - but this is pretty close. The upper high over TX was stronger than in the matching years, and CA had remnants from a hurricane...but its not like it's completely opposite the major El Ninos or something.

I don't think anyone was bitching or moaning...I was merely trying to understand what drove the correlation.