El Nino 2023-2024

[LibertyBell]

4 minutes ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

Hope not.

I dont see the connection between above normal precip and heat, usually it's the opposite.

[raindancewx]

Not planning to do a Summer outlook this year. There are certain general patterns already fairly evident. The snow pack in the West will delay the advancement of the monsoon from old Mexico into the US. I look at precipitation/temperatures in old Mexico a lot in Spring. It's been pretty hot and rainy in the central plateau from the eastern Pacific warming up and drawing the subtropical/east Asian jet out of its usual spot. That's not really typical though.

It's not the usual monsoon process where it is cool/dry winter (~55F), warm-hot dry spring (~65F), and then a rainy summer/fall for the Mexican plateau. There are towns in the highlands of central Mexico where lows are very rarely above 50-55F due to elevation, that are much more humid than normal for Spring, and so they're seeing highs 80-90 even at elevations of 6,500-8,000 feet up. Typically they'd be in the 70s, with their lows still in the 40s. Fairly common when you get the big warm ups in Nino 1.2. Opposite holds too by the way, there is a town I look at that had 70 lows in the 20s/30s in Central Mexico in the 2017-18 winter, which hadn't happened in like 50 years...but Nino 1.2 was near record cold for a while.

In order to fully melt off the Western snow pack, it should get very hot late Spring/early Summer. But it will be brief, and then the rest of the Summer shouldn't be too bad. Could actually see a pretty nice Summer in the SE US this year - not super hot, not real wet. The Plains had a very wet / fairly snowy winter too, it's going to take a lot of heat to thin out that water content. On balance I think the Tonga eruption enhances weather pattern craziness near the equinoxes and dulls it near the solstices.

You can see what I mean about the enhanced humidity in Central Mexico - it's very telling. Still very much in La Nina mode for precipitation enhancement in the tropical spots of Mexico.

[raindancewx]

Should be dry in Central Mexico with the Nino 1.2 warmth / building El Nino...and yet:

[Terpeast]

16 minutes ago, raindancewx said:

Should be dry in Central Mexico with the Nino 1.2 warmth / building El Nino...and yet:

Good analysis but I don’t think the atmosphere is going to switch modes that quickly. It’s been a nina for 3 years, and it’s not gonna flip on a dime. Let’s see late summer/early fall whether we see a reset of the entire NH pattern. 

[roardog]

I feel like some of the models overreact to the sub surface temps. I feel like that’s what happened in 2012. It also happened with the Nina in 2016. I remember how many of the models in the spring were showing a strong Nina coming. In reality it remained very weak and the PDO remained positive that winter I believe. 

[George001]

2 hours ago, roardog said:

I feel like some of the models overreact to the sub surface temps. I feel like that’s what happened in 2012. It also happened with the Nina in 2016. I remember how many of the models in the spring were showing a strong Nina coming. In reality it remained very weak and the PDO remained positive that winter I believe. 

That’s possible, but a lot of that warmth is already starting to surface. It could be wrong yeah but you don’t often see the models projecting a near +3 super nino. It may not be THAT strong, but i do think this is different than the 2012 head fake. The combination of model projections, us coming off a 3 year Nina, the MJO wave earlier in March, and the amount of warmth building in the enso 1.2 and 3 regions makes me think this El Niño is for real.

[Terpeast]

12 minutes ago, George001 said:

That’s possible, but a lot of that warmth is already starting to surface. It could be wrong yeah but you don’t often see the models projecting a near +3 super nino. It may not be THAT strong, but i do think this is different than the 2012 head fake. The combination of model projections, us coming off a 3 year Nina, the MJO wave earlier in March, and the amount of warmth building in the enso 1.2 and 3 regions makes me think this El Niño is for real.

Agree this nino is for real, but I hope it doesn’t get too strong. It seems like we get 2-3 more nina years after every super nino. 

[Maestrobjwa]

3 hours ago, Terpeast said:

Agree this nino is for real, but I hope it doesn’t get too strong. It seems like we get 2-3 more nina years after every super nino. 

Yep--and that's exactly what happened in the 70s (the other least snowy decade for our subforum before this one, lol) Back-to-back ninas, the a super niño, followed by two back-to-back ninas...mercy. I mean that would royally suck after what we've been dealing with. Moderate niño please!

[GaWx]

 I'm currently favoring El Niño later this year though not yet betting the ranch. In addition to the strong model support of 14 out of 16 models, I see moderate support based on there not having been more than five years between any two of them since 1950 per this:

 https://origin.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/ensostuff/ONI_v5.php

 So with the last one being 2018-9, 2023-4 would be right at five years making El Niño kind of due this fall/winter.

 But I say moderate support rather than strong support because Eric Webb's ENSO tables, which go way back to 1850, show a good number of longer than five year intervals between El Niños, including five cases of 8-10 year intervals:

1941-2 to 1951-2: 10 years

1930-1 to 1939-40: 9 years

1905-6 to 1911-2: 6 years

1888-9 to 1896-7: 8 years

1868-9 to 1876-7: 8 years

1855-56 to 1864-5: 9 years

1848-9 or earlier to 1855-6: 7+ years

 So, after looking at this earlier period, one might think we're actually way overdue for the next 6+ year interval between El Niños. 

https://www.webberweather.com/ensemble-oceanic-nino-index.html

[thunderbolt]

9 hours ago, George001 said:

That’s possible, but a lot of that warmth is already starting to surface. It could be wrong yeah but you don’t often see the models projecting a near +3 super nino. It may not be THAT strong, but i do think this is different than the 2012 head fake. The combination of model projections, us coming off a 3 year Nina, the MJO wave earlier in March, and the amount of warmth building in the enso 1.2 and 3 regions makes me think this El Niño is for real.

The BOM Model is notorious for being too aggressive case and point last year at this time

[GaWx]

 Currently, 14 of 16 dynamic models (88%) are predicting an oncoming El Niño. How does this stack up to prior March predictions? I can see them going back to 2005 at the link below. That gives us a decent sample size of 19 years.

- This March's 88% is 3rd highest of all 19 and 2nd highest of the 14 not already El Niño. That's strong support for an upcoming El Niño.

- 2015 was at 94%, but that was already El Niño unlike now. Regardless, the models did very well in not only calling for El Niño to continue but for it to strengthen.

- The other one at 94% was the already noted 2017, which turned out to be by far the worst failure of the 19 being that it ended up La Niña.

- What % of models were predicting El Niño before other El Niños that materialized?

   - 2018: only 46% though it was still La Niña then making it challenging for the models.
   - 2014: 69%, a good job since ENSO was still cold neutral at the time 
   - 2009: 60%, a good job since ENSO was still La Niña at the time
   - 2006: 67%, a good job since ENSO was still La Niña at the time

 So, this also reiterates that 2023 being up at 88% is strong support for El Niño. The main inconsistency is 2017.

 -----------------

Monthly ENSO model predictions back to 2005:

https://iri.columbia.edu/our-expertise/climate/forecasts/enso/current/

[GaWx]

20 minutes ago, bluewave said:

This may be the longest gap between El Niño’s since 18-19 was never able to fully couple. So the last El Niño that coupled with the atmosphere was 15-16. Next winter will make 8 years with many models going for an El Nino of some type in 23-24.

https://www.climate.gov/news-features/blogs/enso/csi-enso-case-missing-central-pacific-rainfall

As you may recall from previous posts on this blog, by fall of 2018, the tropical eastern Pacific sea surface had warmed above the 0.5°C threshold necessary (but not sufficient!) for NOAA to declare El Niño conditions. However, the tropical atmosphere at that time was very un-El Niño-like. Typically, the Walker circulation—the atmospheric circulation over the Pacific Ocean—shifts during an El Niño so that we see unusually rainy conditions in the central tropical Pacific Ocean near the Date Line. In the fall of 2018, as seen below, those rainy conditions never materialized.

Places that were more (purple) or less (orange) cloudy than the 1981-2010 average during September – November 2018, based on satellite observations of OLR (outgoing longwave radiation, or heat). Thick clouds block heat from radiating out to space, so less radiation equals more clouds and rainfall, and more radiation equals clearer skies. The red box centered on the International Date Line (5ºS - 5ºN, 160ºE - 160ºW) is a region where El Niño usually results in above-average cloudiness and rainfall (purple), but instead cloudiness was near-normal in 2018. Climate.gov map from UMD OLR CDR data.

How unusual is it to experience warm conditions in the eastern tropical Pacific without rainy conditions in the central Pacific? The following plot shows the relationship between sea surface temperature deviations from average in the Niño 3.4 region and rainy conditions in the tropical Pacific near the Date Line, averaged from September through November. We see that a warmer-than-average Niño 3.4 region generally results in above-average central Pacific rainfall, and vice versa for cooler than average conditions.

18-19 Niña-like Aleutians Ridge…Western Trough… SE Ridge…

 

 

 Interesting stuff! Thanks for posting that.

- Regarding the Oct-Mar rainfall for 2018-9 at SF, it was at 23.33" vs the 18.96" longterm mean. So, not anywhere near top 10 wettest, but still pretty wet.

- Although 8 years makes it by far the record longest between El Niño years as you stated over the last 70 years vs current record of 5 years, the record longest going back to 1850 using Eric Webb's data is 10 years (1941-2 to 1951-2).

[GaWx]

 These El Niño winters that quickly followed La Nina were significantly colder in the SE US than the prior winter: 

1876-7 (cold), 1880-1 (cold), 1904-5 (very cold), 1911-2 (cold), 1925-6 (normal), 1939-40 (very cold), 1957-8 (cold), 1965-6 (cold), 1972-3 (normal), 1976-7 (very cold), 2009-10 (very cold)

These weren't:

 - 1887-8 was slightly warmer than 1886-7 and near normal

 - 1918-9 was much warmer than 1917-8 and was near normal. It followed the very cold 1917-8, which was one of the coldest La Niña winters on record

- 2006-7 was warmer than 2005-6 and warmer than normal

- 2018-9 was warmer than 2017-8 and warmer than normal

---------

Tally:

- 11 of 15 were significantly colder than the prior winter

- 9 of 15 were cold to very cold 

- 4 of 15 were near normal 

- 2 of 15 were warmer than normal, two of the three most recent cases

 

 Conclusion: As one living in the SE who prefers a cold winter, I'd take my chances with El Niño this winter on a normal or colder winter based on the above history despite two of the three most recent cases being warmer than normal, which would keep from betting heavily on it. I certainly would prefer it over other ENSO! Keep in mind that four of these 15 were historically cold.

 Although this analysis is centered on the SE US, much of this can be used for other areas as well. That includes seeing which were the 15 El Niño winters since the late 1800s that quickly followed La Niña and analyzing those 15 winters for one's own region.

 

[raindancewx]

Canadian has an east-central look for winter, with maybe ~28.0C in Nino 3.4. But that's a -PDO look still. No cold tongue east of Japan. No warm ring by NW North America. That's a very good winter for me for me verbatim. 

Honestly that's probably not an amazing winter in the Northeast US like so many of you want. It might be an incredible winter with some random blizzards in the South though in between tornado outbreaks. The big El Nino years for eastern snowfall have incredible +PDO setups. This is not that verbatim. It's nothing like the PDO look of 1977-78, 2002-03, 2014-15, 1957-58, 1968-69. 

Vaguely resembles a blend of 2018-19 (x2), 1990-91, 2015-16. But I don't think the Canadian has the placement of the Pacific / Atlantic features right yet.

[snowman19]

Canadian has an east-central look for winter, with maybe ~28.0C in Nino 3.4. But that's a -PDO look still. No cold tongue east of Japan. No warm ring by NW North America. That's a very good winter for me for me verbatim. 
Honestly that's probably not an amazing winter in the Northeast US like so many of you want. It might be an incredible winter with some random blizzards in the South though in between tornado outbreaks. The big El Nino years for eastern snowfall have incredible +PDO setups. This is not that verbatim. It's nothing like the PDO look of 1977-78, 2002-03, 2014-15, 1957-58, 1968-69. 

Vaguely resembles a blend of 2018-19 (x2), 1990-91, 2015-16. But I don't think the Canadian has the placement of the Pacific / Atlantic features right yet.

Obviously a lot can change between now and the fall, but so far, this developing El Niño looks absolutely nothing at all like a Modoki event

[Stormchaserchuck1]

Big time -AAM here 

https://ibb.co/DgfwdwX 

Maybe we'll be disconnected until November, then magically correlate to El Nino like last year. 

[Stormchaserchuck1]

This is AAM, which is an Earth-momentum index. It's strongly correlated with ENSO, and this below is -GLAAM, usually correlated to La Nina events. 

https://ibb.co/JdfyjXS

[thunderbolt]

[George001]

On 3/31/2023 at 8:58 PM, raindancewx said:

Canadian has an east-central look for winter, with maybe ~28.0C in Nino 3.4. But that's a -PDO look still. No cold tongue east of Japan. No warm ring by NW North America. That's a very good winter for me for me verbatim. 

Honestly that's probably not an amazing winter in the Northeast US like so many of you want. It might be an incredible winter with some random blizzards in the South though in between tornado outbreaks. The big El Nino years for eastern snowfall have incredible +PDO setups. This is not that verbatim. It's nothing like the PDO look of 1977-78, 2002-03, 2014-15, 1957-58, 1968-69. 

Vaguely resembles a blend of 2018-19 (x2), 1990-91, 2015-16. But I don't think the Canadian has the placement of the Pacific / Atlantic features right yet.

That makes sense, I remember in 2014-2015 the warm blob was pressed against the west coast, not way west like the Canadian has. As an New England snow weenie, Im not falling for the east coast big winter hype again until I see that western blob move east. It’s odd how quite a few New England based winter forecasters are allergic to forecasting warmth and rain in the east. Just telling snow lovers what we want to hear isn’t forecasting, it’s fantasy and that gets old after a while. 

[40/70 Benchmark]

14 hours ago, George001 said:

That makes sense, I remember in 2014-2015 the warm blob was pressed against the west coast, not way west like the Canadian has. As an New England snow weenie, Im not falling for the east coast big winter hype again until I see that western blob move east. It’s odd how quite a few New England based winter forecasters are allergic to forecasting warmth and rain in the east. Just telling snow lovers what we want to hear isn’t forecasting, it’s fantasy and that gets old after a while. 

I don't recall seeing any seasonal forecaster from the NE predicting well above normal snowfall or well below average temps there last year...can you name any?

[George001]

2 hours ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

I don't recall seeing any seasonal forecaster from the NE predicting well above normal snowfall or well below average temps there last year...can you name any?

The guys I was thinking of were Joe Bastardi, Judah Cohen, and DT. They aren’t all from NE but they do forecast for the entire east coast, so I counted all of them. DT in particular went big, there was all this hype about how the Nina would weaken and we would get buried during the second half of the winter. Cohen wasn’t as bad, but his bias is still very much obvious. The Nina did weaken like DT said, but that didn’t really help. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a warm forecast from any of the guys I mentioned (which is a problem). The hype was off the charts in December. Regardless, ultimately it’s on me for buying in. One thing that you do that I wish more seasonal forecasters would do is you post the snowfall departure bias with every winter, and have statistics for a bunch of different cities since you started. I’d bet DT and JB would have something like a 75-100% positive bias for snowfall and are something like 5-6 degrees too cold. It would be nice to know this so people who are looking for a realistic forecast rather than hype know to avoid them, but that’s exactly why they don’t do that. 

[40/70 Benchmark]

1 hour ago, George001 said:

The guys I was thinking of were Joe Bastardi, Judah Cohen, and DT. They aren’t all from NE but they do forecast for the entire east coast, so I counted all of them. DT in particular went big, there was all this hype about how the Nina would weaken and we would get buried during the second half of the winter. Cohen wasn’t as bad, but his bias is still very much obvious. The Nina did weaken like DT said, but that didn’t really help. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a warm forecast from any of the guys I mentioned (which is a problem). The hype was off the charts in December. Regardless, ultimately it’s on me for buying in. One thing that you do that I wish more seasonal forecasters would do is you post the snowfall departure bias with every winter, and have statistics for a bunch of different cities since you started. I’d bet DT and JB would have something like a 75-100% positive bias for snowfall and are something like 5-6 degrees too cold. It would be nice to know this so people who are looking for a realistic forecast rather than hype know to avoid them, but that’s exactly why they don’t do that. 

It was a tricky season...I can see why some other guys went big given factors that ultimately did lead to major NAO blocking, but I am glad I kept in my pants, so to speak. I remember fielding questions about why my seasonal snow totals weren't larger given the blocking implied. That said, still a lot to learn from others, like Raindance, who really did a good job with the sensible weather outcome. My work definitely left something to be desired...missing the modoki natutre or la nina was big for me....I am usually decent with that, but blew it this year.

[snowman19]

That makes sense, I remember in 2014-2015 the warm blob was pressed against the west coast, not way west like the Canadian has. As an New England snow weenie, Im not falling for the east coast big winter hype again until I see that western blob move east. It’s odd how quite a few New England based winter forecasters are allergic to forecasting warmth and rain in the east. Just telling snow lovers what we want to hear isn’t forecasting, it’s fantasy and that gets old after a while. 

Back in November, 2014 the PDO was record strong positive and getting even stronger. It helped force that insanely strong, relentless ++PNA/-EPO/-WPO, which was present for that entire winter. It was all PAC driven. The NAO and AO were both severely positive that winter and did us no good at all

[roardog]

7 hours ago, George001 said:

The guys I was thinking of were Joe Bastardi, Judah Cohen, and DT. They aren’t all from NE but they do forecast for the entire east coast, so I counted all of them. DT in particular went big, there was all this hype about how the Nina would weaken and we would get buried during the second half of the winter. Cohen wasn’t as bad, but his bias is still very much obvious. The Nina did weaken like DT said, but that didn’t really help. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a warm forecast from any of the guys I mentioned (which is a problem). The hype was off the charts in December. Regardless, ultimately it’s on me for buying in. One thing that you do that I wish more seasonal forecasters would do is you post the snowfall departure bias with every winter, and have statistics for a bunch of different cities since you started. I’d bet DT and JB would have something like a 75-100% positive bias for snowfall and are something like 5-6 degrees too cold. It would be nice to know this so people who are looking for a realistic forecast rather than hype know to avoid them, but that’s exactly why they don’t do that. 

Weatherbell had above normal temps forecasted for last winter for the entire east coast. Other than maybe DT, I don’t think there were many forecasts for below normal temperatures in the east. 

[raindancewx]

https://twitter.com/WorldClimateSvc/status/1642980751862902785/photo/2

Generally, the warming of waters in the MJO phase 4-5-6 area (by Perth to Indonesia), and the ongoing -PDO push have all been horrible for east coast snowiness in recent months. 

Forget what the models show for strength in winter btw. May is a very good indicator for Nino 3.4. Since 1950, no year has featured DJF more than 0.4C warmer than May. CPC has March overall at 27.14C, and normal warming March to May would be ~0.65C.

I think 27.8C - 28.2C in Nino 3.4 in May is a reasonable guess, and so an all time historical warming push would be 28.6C at most (+2.1C). But most winters actually finish below May's Nino 34 reading, even El Ninos. I don't think there is any real chance of a 28.5C Nino 3.4 for winter without at least 28.0C May, we're at ~27.5C now on the weeklies, with a month left to warm.

[GaWx]

3 hours ago, roardog said:

Weatherbell had above normal temps forecasted for last winter for the entire east coast. Other than maybe DT, I don’t think there were many forecasts for below normal temperatures in the east. 

 Maybe they had AN entire E coast in an earlier winter forecast. However, their latest one as per this link had AN only on the SE US coast with NN NE US:

https://www.weatherbell.com/final-winter-2022-23-forecast

[roardog]

8 hours ago, GaWx said:

 Maybe they had AN entire E coast in an earlier winter forecast. However, their latest one as per this link had AN only on the SE US coast with NN NE US:

https://www.weatherbell.com/final-winter-2022-23-forecast

Anywhere on the map between the normal line and the plus one line is above normal. So, the entire east coast is above normal on that map. Obviously, it was much warmer than that forecast but my point was that there wasn’t any big east coast cold and snow hype in Weatherbell’s forecast like George claimed.

[Ed, snow and hurricane fan]

Using Joe Bastardi and Tolleris as proof the weather community overhyped 2022-23 cold season is kind of weak.  It'd be like saying the autistic You Tube guy gives representative forecasts.

[LibertyBell]

On 4/3/2023 at 5:29 PM, snowman19 said:

Back in November, 2014 the PDO was record strong positive and getting even stronger. It helped force that insanely strong, relentless ++PNA/-EPO/-WPO, which was present for that entire winter. It was all PAC driven. The NAO and AO were both severely positive that winter and did us no good at all

Wasn't that similar to 1993-94 too?

 

[LibertyBell]

On 4/3/2023 at 9:26 PM, raindancewx said:

https://twitter.com/WorldClimateSvc/status/1642980751862902785/photo/2

Generally, the warming of waters in the MJO phase 4-5-6 area (by Perth to Indonesia), and the ongoing -PDO push have all been horrible for east coast snowiness in recent months. 

Forget what the models show for strength in winter btw. May is a very good indicator for Nino 3.4. Since 1950, no year has featured DJF more than 0.4C warmer than May. CPC has March overall at 27.14C, and normal warming March to May would be ~0.65C.

I think 27.8C - 28.2C in Nino 3.4 in May is a reasonable guess, and so an all time historical warming push would be 28.6C at most (+2.1C). But most winters actually finish below May's Nino 34 reading, even El Ninos. I don't think there is any real chance of a 28.5C Nino 3.4 for winter without at least 28.0C May, we're at ~27.5C now on the weeklies, with a month left to warm.

so we might be looking at around a +1.5C to perhaps +1.8C el nino on the high end?