Jump to content

ENSO Discussion


snow_wizard

Recommended Posts

Lag

I'd argue the atmosphere generally leads the oceans when looking on a sub-yearly resolution, at least in regards to the more significant low frequency regime transitions. Complicated, though.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Did Bastardi say that there wouldn't be a Nina this winter? That was pretty reckless of him if he said that.

No, he didn't say that, but he's arguing that the SSTAs will warm after November with mostly a "neutral" atmospheric state. Not sure I'd go that far myself, but we'll see.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The 30 day SOI has tanked down to -4.50, after today's -20.21.

 

This pressure/circulation regimen is the sort of thing that could induce a downwelling oceanic KW and start warming the ENSO SSTAs.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The 30 day SOI has tanked down to -4.50, after today's -20.21.

 

This pressure/circulation regimen is the sort of thing that could induce a downwelling oceanic KW and start warming the ENSO SSTAs.

 

Amazingly there has been no WWB though other than a little blip west of 150E which is probably too far west.  I'm not even sure how that's possible, but seeing in believing...assuming this graphic is correct that is.  Nice looking trades upcoming also.

post-222-0-49174100-1477844498_thumb.gif

Death To Warm Anomalies!

 

Winter 2023-24 stats

 

Total Snowfall = 1.0"

Day with 1" or more snow depth = 1

Total Hail = 0.0

Total Ice = 0.2

Coldest Low = 13

Lows 32 or below = 45

Highs 32 or below = 3

Lows 20 or below = 3

Highs 40 or below = 9

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Amazingly there has been no WWB though. I'm not even sure how that's possible, but seeing in believing...assuming this graphic is correct that is. Nice looking trades upcoming also.

But look how far west those trades are/have been. There doesn't have to be a WWB necessarily, just a differential in the pressure gradient and/or a longitudinal relocation of the strongest trades (usually go hand in hand).

 

There's just so much off-equator warmth in the Pacific. Not exactly something that'll promote a healthy Niña background, and either will the Atlantic HC state).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think we can all agree Mother Nature is really messed up this year.  So many things happening that just don't seem to fit together.

  • Like 1

Death To Warm Anomalies!

 

Winter 2023-24 stats

 

Total Snowfall = 1.0"

Day with 1" or more snow depth = 1

Total Hail = 0.0

Total Ice = 0.2

Coldest Low = 13

Lows 32 or below = 45

Highs 32 or below = 3

Lows 20 or below = 3

Highs 40 or below = 9

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think we can all agree Mother Nature is really messed up this year. So many things happening that just don't seem to fit together.

There's definitely a La Niña cell there, but it's just so longitudinally compact. Not just "west based", rather it's actually "tiny" from a spatial standpoint.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

But look how far west those trades are/have been. There doesn't have to be a WWB necessarily, just a differential in the pressure gradient and/or a longitudinal relocation of the strongest trades (usually go hand in hand).

 

There's just so much off-equator warmth in the Pacific. Not exactly something that'll promote a healthy Niña background, and either will the Atlantic HC state).

 

I dunno the trades look to extend east of 180.  Not too bad of location.  In the past it seems WWB's in the 180 to 150E region are the ones that really cause down welling Kelvin waves that are a big deal.  I suppose we have to expect some warming in Nino 3.4 upcoming, but it could still easily remain below zero until the atmosphere becomes Ninaish again.

Death To Warm Anomalies!

 

Winter 2023-24 stats

 

Total Snowfall = 1.0"

Day with 1" or more snow depth = 1

Total Hail = 0.0

Total Ice = 0.2

Coldest Low = 13

Lows 32 or below = 45

Highs 32 or below = 3

Lows 20 or below = 3

Highs 40 or below = 9

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I dunno the trades look to extend east of 180. Not too bad of location. In the past it seems WWB's in the 180 to 150E region are the ones that really cause down welling Kelvin waves that are a big deal. I suppose we have to expect some warming in Nino 3.4 upcoming, but it could still easily remain below zero until the atmosphere becomes Ninaish again.

I guess if you look at that tiny zone of the Pacific, there are still coherent Niña aspects, but again, that Niña cell is very compact/small from a spatial standpoint, both longitudinally and latitudinally, and I'm not sure it'll grow much (if at all). There's almost a 4-cell setup now over the tropics, anomalously speaking, which isn't exactly what you want for clear poleward transference of Niña esque wave, mass and momentum fluxes.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Normally the kind of SOI we just saw would have created a huge WWB.  The pressure gradient anomaly must be more gradual than it would normally be in a very low SOI situation.  Many times very low SOI is caused by a major storm that is more capable of creating WWB.

Death To Warm Anomalies!

 

Winter 2023-24 stats

 

Total Snowfall = 1.0"

Day with 1" or more snow depth = 1

Total Hail = 0.0

Total Ice = 0.2

Coldest Low = 13

Lows 32 or below = 45

Highs 32 or below = 3

Lows 20 or below = 3

Highs 40 or below = 9

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Normally the kind of SOI we just saw would have created a huge WWB. The pressure gradient anomaly must be more gradual than it would normally be in a very low SOI situation. Many times very low SOI is caused by a major storm that is more capable of creating WWB.

I think it's just a difference in longitude. The Walker Cell/tropical forcings are being perturbed from thermo mechanical extratropical forcing out of the northern higher latitudes/Eurasian domain. Believe it or not, the Walker Cell (and Hadley Cells) are highly unstable features in constant flux, and their behaviors are a product of the equator/pole - pole/equator exchange. It's not merely a one way conduit from the tropics to the poles.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

As Bryant wisely pointed out yesterday, shifts in the equatorial upper troposphere/tropopause and lower stratosphere can have huge effects on the tropical convective state. These changes at usually forced via shifts in wave/mass/momentum/eddy fluxes relative to the antecedent/low frequency state arising there. Especially in +QBO years which tend to run a warm/low equatorial tropopause, the same factors that perturb the polar vortex/polar strat both directly and indirectly perturb the tropical state, and sometimes even arise through the tropical domain via constructive positive feedback following an initial extratropical "bump" that sets the meraphorical dominoes in motion.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

We saw this back in 2012/13, starting around New Years.

 

Extratropical/thermo-mechanical forcing out of polar Eurasia perturbed the antecedent tropical circulatory state sufficiently to force a backresonant ARW that induced a major SSW (which would have occurred eventually as the PV was in route to self destruction regardless). This SSW/PV breakdown and associated streamflow/flux reversal forced/coincided with a dramatic cooling of the equatorial upper troposphere/lower stratosphere, which in tandem with th aforementioned factors, induced a monstrous MJO wave. This MJO battled with, and eventually obliterated the Walker Cell regimen that'd been ongoing there for years.

 

This was such a prolific event, it literally triggered the great NPAC circulation/PDO shift, via a shift in the Walker/Hadley ratios and antecedent equatorial wavenumber. The effects of this major climate shift are still being felt today, obviously, as we're still in a decadal/subdecadal +PDO/+PNA background, and have been ever since January of 2013. That single event marked the biggest climate shift since the post 1997/1998 Hadley Cell jump.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

We saw this back in 2012/13, starting around New Years.

 

Extratropical/thermo-mechanical forcing out of polar Eurasia perturbed the antecedent tropical circulatory state sufficiently to force a backresonant ARW that induced a major SSW (which would have occurred eventually as the PV was in route to self destruction regardless). This SSW/PV breakdown and associated streamflow/flux reversal forced/coincided with a dramatic cooling of the equatorial upper troposphere/lower stratosphere, which in tandem with th aforementioned factors, induced a monstrous MJO wave. This MJO battled with, and eventually obliterated the Walker Cell regimen that's been ongoing there for years.

 

This was such a prolific event, it literally triggered the great NPAC circulation/PDO shift, via a shift in the Walker/Hadley ratios and antecedent equatorial wavenumber. The effects of this major climate shift are still being felt today, obviously, as we're still in a decadal/subdecadal +PDO/+PNA background, and have been ever since January of 2013. That single event marked the biggest climate shift since the post 1997/1998 Hadley Cell jump.

So are you seeing this as a switch back to an eventually more -PDO/-PNA friendly regime, or another "step up", so to speak?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

We saw this back in 2012/13, starting around New Years.

 

Extratropical/thermo-mechanical forcing out of polar Eurasia perturbed the antecedent tropical circulatory state sufficiently to force a backresonant ARW that induced a major SSW (which would have occurred eventually as the PV was in route to self destruction regardless). This SSW/PV breakdown and associated streamflow/flux reversal forced/coincided with a dramatic cooling of the equatorial upper troposphere/lower stratosphere, which in tandem with th aforementioned factors, induced a monstrous MJO wave. This MJO battled with, and eventually obliterated the Walker Cell regimen that's been ongoing there for years.

 

This was such a prolific event, it literally triggered the great NPAC circulation/PDO shift, via a shift in the Walker/Hadley ratios and antecedent equatorial wavenumber. The effects of this major climate shift are still being felt today, obviously, as we're still in a decadal/subdecadal +PDO/+PNA background, and have been ever since January of 2013. That single event marked the biggest climate shift since the post 1997/1998 Hadley Cell jump.

That's a pretty fantastic post. I have been wanting someone to break down what exactly happened there for a long time but didn't know the correct way to ask the question I guess. That helped me understand a great deal better.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

So are you seeing this as a switch back to an eventually more -PDO/-PNA friendly regime, or another "step up", so to speak?

Depends on the timescale. I've been obsessively researching this lately, and I've found some very interesting behaviors, most with obvious relation to external (solar) forcing(s), however this "communication", so to speak, appears to occur within a predictable harmonic resonance that varies with time but is internally consistent with an inverse rate-of-change function representing the ratio between said forcing(s) and the systematic inertial mean.

 

Based on this, and the fact these behaviors are highly predictable and concise during the descent into solar minimum, I'd argue that we've entered a modest +PDO regimen, which has already peaked (back in 2015/16) and will slowly decline but remain positive until at least the 2020s, possibly well beyond. That being said, I don't believe this will necessarily be a stable cycle, and again, assuming past is prologue, I'm confident there'll be another multiyear period of heavy La Niña/-PDO following the Niño of 2019/20 (typical solar minimum ENSO response).

 

Regarding ENSO behavior over the next several years, I'm more confident overall. While the exact nature of the solar/QBO progressions are key, I'd argue for weak/neutral ENSO both next winter and in 2018/19, with a coherent El Niño in 2019/20 followed by a strong, multiyear La Niña during the early 2020s. The Niño response during solar minimum has been a cornerstone of the system state at least back to the WWII years, probably well beforehand. I think that one is a given.

 

Before you ask, since I know it's coming, my climate change predictions are unchanged. :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

That's a pretty fantastic post. I have been wanting someone to break down what exactly happened there for a long time but didn't know the correct way to ask the question I guess. That helped me understand a great deal better.

Thanks. I don't understand it fully, obviously. Nobody does.

 

Still mysteries everywhere here. Why 2012/13? Aside from occurring during solar maximum (usually either an initiative or concluding conduit for regime change), it doesn't explain why it occurred during the year it did, why it occurred in the manner it did, or why we entered a deep -PDO/-ENSO regime during the 2007-2012 period.

 

There's new research coming out now, correlating subdecadal variations in solar wind/geomagnetic forcing with the PDO/NPAC behaviors, on a modest lag, through at least two conduits of transference. These correlations are very strong after tuning for QBO/ENSO. Note that the solar wind/AP index plunged in October of 2005, and remained very low until 2011/12, which is precisely when the PDO tanked. This probably gave the impression that we'd entered a longer term negative regime, which in reality probably will not occur until at least the 2030s, perhaps longer. The AP index crash during the late 1990s also preceded the PNA/PDO drop from 1998-2001, with a similar dynamic occurring after the solar wind minimum in the mid 1980s (late 1980s Niñas/-PNA/-PDO).

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Depends on the timescale. I've been obsessively researching this lately, and I've found some very interesting behaviors, most with obvious relation to external (solar) forcing(s), however this "communication", so to speak, appears to occur within a predictable harmonic resonance that varies with time but is internally consistent with an inverse rate-of-change function representing the ratio between said forcing(s) and the systematic inertial mean.

 

Based on this, and the fact these behaviors are highly predictable and concise during the descent into solar minimum, I'd argue that we've entered a modest +PDO regimen, which has already peaked (back in 2015/16) and will slowly decline but remain positive until at least the 2020s, possibly well beyond. That being said, I don't believe this will necessarily be a stable cycle, and again, assuming past is prologue, I'm confident there'll be another multiyear period of heavy La Niña/-PDO following the Niño of 2019/20 (typical solar minimum ENSO response).

 

Regarding ENSO behavior over the next several years, I'm more confident overall. While the exact nature of the solar/QBO progressions are key, I'd argue for weak/neutral ENSO both next winter and in 2018/19, with a coherent El Niño in 2019/20 followed by a strong, multiyear La Niña during the early 2020s. The Niño response during solar minimum has been a cornerstone of the system state at least back to the WWII years, probably well beforehand. I think that one is a given.

 

Before you ask, since I know it's coming, my climate change predictions are unchanged. :)

 

Yikes, I don't like the sound of a +PDO regime continuing for another decade plus.

 

Weren't you predicting a multi-year -ENSO regime for us from 2016-19 in the very recent past?

 

Sometimes it seems like your predictions are just as touch and go as everyone else's. ;)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yikes, I don't like the sound of a +PDO regime continuing for another decade plus.

 

Weren't you predicting a multi-year -ENSO regime for us from 2016-19 in the very recent past?

 

Sometimes it seems like your predictions are just as touch and go as everyone else's. ;)

That's definitely not what I was thinking (at least since the regime shift in 2013), though my predictions were still flawed.

 

I predicted a prolonged weak/neutral ENSO from 2012-2015 (including the failed niño attempt in 2012/13), followed by a weak/moderate Niño in 2016, multiyear Niña from 2016/17 to 2018/19, followed by another Niño in 2019/20, then a stretch of very strong La Niñas in the early 2020s.

 

Obviously, the Niño in 2015/16 was much stronger than I'd been thinking, and the ongoing Niña isn't as impressive as I'd been forecasting either (which will probably be the case in 2017/18 and 2018/19 as well, with 2018/19 holding especially high bust potential). From there, I believe higher certainty resumes with the Niño in 2019/20 and the multiyear Niña afterward.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

That's definitely not what I was thinking (at least since the regime shift in 2013), though my predictions were still flawed.

 

I predicted a prolonged weak/neutral ENSO from 2012-2015 (including the failed niño attempt in 2012/13), followed by a weak/moderate Niño in 2016, multiyear Niña from 2016/17 to 2018/19, followed by another Niño in 2019/20, then a stretch of very strong La Niñas in the early 2020s.

 

Obviously, the Niño in 2015/16 was much stronger than I'd been thinking, and the ongoing Niña isn't as impressive as I'd been forecasting either (which will probably be the case in 2017/18 and 2018/19 as well, with 2018/19 holding especially high bust potential). From there, I believe higher certainty resumes with the Niño in 2019/20 and the multiyear Niña afterward.

 

Higher certainty 4+ years away? :)

 

Not so sure about that when now is even behaving in a way that seems to be surprising people based on what they were predicting less than six months ago.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Higher certainly 4+ years away? :)

Yeah, sounds counterintuitive I know. The physical, theoretical, and statistical coherence w/ the system progression during solar minimum leads me to believe there's a higher level of predictability during that timeframe.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yeah, sounds counterintuitive I know. The physical, theoretical, and statistical coherence w/ the system progression during solar minimum leads me to believe there's a higher level of predictability during that timeframe.

 

So I take it that the next few years look to be especially chaotic, since we are in some sort of regime shift, in your view?

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

So I take it that the next few years look to be especially chaotic, since we are in some sort of regime shift, in your view?

Yes, precisely. I don't see any coherent, lower frequency signals or biases that'll offer much seasonal-scale help from now until sometime in 2019. We're on the cusp of several multidecadal flips, which we have been building towards at an accelerated pace since 2006, and these periods are notoriously chaotic with a dominant tendency towards destructive interference.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yes, precisely. I don't see any coherent, lower frequency signals or biases that'll offer much seasonal-scale help from now until sometime in 2019. We're on the cusp of several multidecadal flips, which we have been building towards at an accelerated pace since 2006, and these periods are notoriously chaotic with loads of destructive interference.

 

I'm going to go ahead and take the liberty to assume this means we are going to have some awesome winters here. :P

 

Chaos never doesn't work out in our favor, right? :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It's not hard for me to fathom that all this chaos and atmospheric "weirdness" isn't simply due to AGW gradually taking hold of global weather patterns. That seems like the obvious explanation.

 

 

Feels like this to me as well.  

**REPORTED CONDITIONS AND ANOMALIES ARE NOT MEANT TO IMPLY ANYTHING ON A REGIONAL LEVEL UNLESS SPECIFICALLY STATED**

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It's not hard for me to fathom that all this chaos and atmospheric "weirdness" isn't simply due to AGW gradually taking hold of global weather patterns. That seems like the obvious explanation.

The problem with this idea is, even if the atmosphere were still warming at a rapid pace, the potential mechanisms and/or alterations to the primary conduits allowing said "weirdness" show essentially zero responsive relation to the observed climate change. If anything, these behaviors appear to drive climate changes when analyzed through a rate-of-change function, and their response functions (both perturbed and unperturbed) solely align with external forcing(s), on a frequency governed by internally-rooted resonance(s).

 

This isn't just my opinion. There are numerous peer reviewed studies highlight this phenomenon,

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Feels like this to me as well.

If this wasn't my primary area of research and study, I'd probably believe this as well. I think when you look at this in a deep, detailed oriented manner, the inconsistencies become blatantly obvious. I'm definitely not alone with this viewpoint.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yikes, I don't like the sound of a +PDO regime continuing for another decade plus.

 

Weren't you predicting a multi-year -ENSO regime for us from 2016-19 in the very recent past?

 

Sometimes it seems like your predictions are just as touch and go as everyone else's. ;)

 

+PDO doesn't necessarily mean doom for us.  A lot of the good winters in the 1980 to mid 1990s were technically in a +PDO regime as were the 1920s and 30s.

 

the deep solar min we are entering will help us I'm sure.

Death To Warm Anomalies!

 

Winter 2023-24 stats

 

Total Snowfall = 1.0"

Day with 1" or more snow depth = 1

Total Hail = 0.0

Total Ice = 0.2

Coldest Low = 13

Lows 32 or below = 45

Highs 32 or below = 3

Lows 20 or below = 3

Highs 40 or below = 9

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The problem with this idea is, even if the atmosphere were still warming at a rapid pace, the potential mechanisms and/or alterations to the primary conduits allowing said "weirdness" show essentially zero responsive relation to the observed climate change. If anything, these behaviors appear to drive climate changes when analyzed through a rate-of-change function, and their response functions (both perturbed and unperturbed) solely align with external forcing(s), on a frequency governed by internally-rooted resonance(s).

 

This isn't just my opinion. There are numerous peer reviewed studies highlight this phenomenon,

 

Time will tell, as they say. I am not married to either idea really, but AGW seems like the obvious culprit to me. Who knows, maybe it is one of those things that is so obvious that it's wrong.

 

We certainly haven't seen any cooling in recent years. Warmer and warmer, in fact. And based on your revised forecast I wouldn't expect to see any in the coming years, either.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm going to go ahead and take the liberty to assume this means we are going to have some awesome winters here. :P

 

Chaos never doesn't work out in our favor, right? :)

Haha, I don't see anything arguing against it. Heck, this winter has a chance to be fantastic, if we can "thread the needle", so to speak w/ regards to the fragile background state. That's a big "if", however.

 

Also, if you're interested in looking back, similar periods featuring lower frequency "chaos" occurred during the late 1970s, much of the 1960s, and mid 1940s. Each case is unique here but some similar progressive themes emerge.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yeah, I agree! That's a bit far. But why would Nina conditions in late October be bad news for Bastardi? Am I missing something?

 

I'm just being an a$$ regarding Bastardi right now.

  • Like 1

Death To Warm Anomalies!

 

Winter 2023-24 stats

 

Total Snowfall = 1.0"

Day with 1" or more snow depth = 1

Total Hail = 0.0

Total Ice = 0.2

Coldest Low = 13

Lows 32 or below = 45

Highs 32 or below = 3

Lows 20 or below = 3

Highs 40 or below = 9

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Time will tell, as they say. I am not married to either idea really, but AGW seems like the obvious culprit to me. Who knows, maybe it is one of those things that is so obvious that it's wrong.

 

We certainly haven't seen any cooling in recent years. Warmer and warmer, in fact. And based on your revised forecast I wouldn't expect to see any in the coming years, either.

Actually, we haven't observed any warming in the troposphere since the early 2000s, which is key because the radiative forcing associated w/ CO^2 is thermalized in the troposphere. That's where the process must originate given absorption freqs are kinetically available w/ altitude/increased DOFs, while the opposite is true downward in the column (low level radiative opacity/molecular line broadening w/ reduced DOFs).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I totally agree AGW isn't the culprit behind the weirdness going on right now.  Proabably the dramatic shift to lower solar activity.  I think the solar piece of the puzzle has been grossly underestimated by many.

Death To Warm Anomalies!

 

Winter 2023-24 stats

 

Total Snowfall = 1.0"

Day with 1" or more snow depth = 1

Total Hail = 0.0

Total Ice = 0.2

Coldest Low = 13

Lows 32 or below = 45

Highs 32 or below = 3

Lows 20 or below = 3

Highs 40 or below = 9

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Obviously we have the Niño spike, but overall there's been no underlying tropospheric warming since the early 2000's. As for the aforementioned "weirdness", the processes that conspired to take down the QBO were in motion well before the global temperature spike. In fact the extreme nature of this Niño spike appears to have partially been a response to these variables.

 

http://i724.photobucket.com/albums/ww243/phillywillie/Mobile%20Uploads/9A7401D6-AC3F-4B63-BB2E-18AD491C8EAD_zpsrbd9vs7f.gif

 

http://i724.photobucket.com/albums/ww243/phillywillie/Mobile%20Uploads/052B08D5-8138-42E5-AF8B-682F67B4136F_zpser92miye.gif

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Unfortunately, your content contains terms that we do not allow. Please edit your content to remove the highlighted words below.
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...

×
×
  • Create New...