Following on my Are readers checking how the much prophesized El Nino is travelling ? – I hope readers are checking that the 30 day SOI is now neutral and the 90 day SOI is -6.12 – and equatorial winds are still mainly easterly.
Following on my Are readers checking how the much prophesized El Nino is travelling ? – I hope readers are checking that the 30 day SOI is now neutral and the 90 day SOI is -6.12 – and equatorial winds are still mainly easterly.
According to BoM SOI data, the index is now into the La Nina neutral area at +0.6 as of 16th June.
However, they quote –
‘The SOI is likely to ease towards more neutral values over the next week or two due to local weather factors rather than the broadscale climate signal.’
NOAA’s NWS centre doesn’t show any El Nino values to date although they do say that recent values are only estimates and will be reviewed at a later date.
www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/ensostuff/ensoyears.shtml
A useful table that Ian – thanks.
It’s quite ridiculous, really. From the BOM media centre:
12 May 2015 Bureau confirms tropical Pacific now at El Niño levels
26 May 2015 El Niño in the tropical Pacific continues to strengthen
9 June 2015 El Niño is steadily strengthening
And, yet, ever since that first pronouncement, 30 day SOI averages have been steadily making their way back towards neutral:
www.longpaddock.qld.gov.au/seasonalclimateoutlook/southernoscillationindex/30daysoivalues/
Egg, meet face.
I also note that, while they managed 3 El Nino media releases within a month, they have been strangely slient recently. When you read the below, bear in mind that current 30 day SOI value is +1.53 and 90 day is -6.12:
www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/#tabs=SOI
Hi Warwick
I see you chose to ignore my post on SOI and El Nino. Remember El Nino’s and La Nina’s are defined on SSTs, not the atmospheric pressures. The Nino 3.4 region is at +1.3c – well above El Nino thresholds.
As I indicated in my previous post – the MJO is transiting out of the Indian Ocean at high amplitude and is expected to move into the Pacific basin (albeit at much lower amplitudes) over the coming 10 days). This historically leads to a substantial fall in SOI.
Notably, deterministic guidance suggests that the daily SOI will plummet during the middle of next week (say the 23rd or 24th onward)
Again Warwick, my apologies for inserting some science into the discussion – but I’m sure it will be beneficial to you in the long run.
Kind regards
George
George,
With respect, that’s not correct. Nino/Nina is defined as a combination of ocean temps and air pressure conditions.
Of course, the two are correlated, but if you want to pontificate and find fault in others’ comments, then you should, at least, get basic definitions correct.
[Oh, and I believe that Leo is transiting out of Cancer next week, which means it is an auspicious time to put dragon eggs under a bed sheet, to ensure that your youngest daughter finds a husband. Just a suggestion.]
George,
Now, to more serious matters. You profess to have a crystal ball which tells us what will happen in the time to come, namely:
What’s to say that, should your prediction fail, you won’t put it down to random variations?
However, should it succeed, you will undoubtedly add it to your undying faith in your belief that we are all doomed.
[BTW, George. Have you, personally, been feeling uncomfortably warm recently? According to the models, you should have been getting quite hot under the collar since about 2005.]
You may well be right, George, as the SOI has a habit of violent swings (SOI now +1.5 from -18.8 only 3 weeks ago).
However, there would be many farmers thankful for the rain this week in what is an El Nino event – probably helped by a neutral IOD and a change to on shore winds on the east coast.
www.bom.gov.au/jsp/awap/rain/index.jsp?colour=colour&time=latest&step=0&map=totals&period=week&area=nat
“This year the consensus of all the models the Bureau looks at is absolutely unequivocal; they indicate we will be in a sustained El Niño event over the next five to six months.”
www.abc.net.au/news/2015-06-01/bearers-of-bad-tidings-to-farmers/6510730
Heavy rain cuts off far north SA towns; stranded musicians liven up Marree
www.abc.net.au/news/2015-06-01/stranded-musicians-liven-up-sa-town-cut-off-heavy-rain/6510822
Canberra receives half average June rainfall in 24 hours
www.smh.com.au/environment/weather/canberra-receives-half-average-june-rainfall-in-24-hours-20150616-ghpe9m.html
Rain a welcome relief to parched western Queensland, but graziers warn drought is not over
www.abc.net.au/news/2015-06-17/welcome-rain-falls-on-parched-western-queensland/6551986
Record breaking May rain delays mustering on Pilbara cattle stations
www.abc.net.au/news/2015-05-29/pilbara-rains-delay-muster/6507206
And handjive an article in the Courier Mail –
Widespread rain brings relief to drought-hit regions in western Queensland
www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/widespread-rain-brings-relief-to-drought-hit-regions-in-western-queensland/story-fnn8dlfs-1227402931827
I am waiting for the headlines that speak the truth along lines – “Widespread rain worth hundreds of millions of dollars to drought-hit regions” – a collectors item that one.
Fascinating to to read some of the quotes from landholders – rain was “unexpected” – In the name of the prophet it was forecast for nearly a week!!!
And the grudging admission that a few weeds will grow.
Warwick, a couple of my comments on the previous post about SOI/El Nino disappeared.
Never mind, it now appears the the SOI for the month of June will average +ve and so ending the weak El Nino starting in mid-2014.
I predict that the next El Nino will not occur for 10 years based on the record of SOI since 1900. There have been 11 such events. The longest and strongest was in 1939-1941
Bit worried that my comments do not get up because I take too long.
The El Nino events are 1905-906, 1918-1919, 1925-1926, 1939-1941, 1951-1952, 1965-1966, 1977-1978, 1987-1988, 1997-1998, 2006-2007, 2014-2015
The average period between El Nino events is close to 11 years which is a cyclical period many farmers know abouT. It is also a rough indicate of major bushfires in the Sydney area.
If one wants to talk about planet influence, the orbit of Jupiter (the largest planet and the highest weight) is 11.8 years. variation to this period may occur due to algnment of interference with other planets that may affect the sun(or through that the earth) eg Saturn, Uranus, and Venus.
Hi Anto
With respect – you are not correct. The use of the terms el nino (la nina) predate any pressure indices – they were names given to warming (cooling) of the sea surface (as you are no doubt aware) back in the 1890s (if not earlier).
To quote NOAA: “El Niño (La Niña) is a phenomenon in the equatorial Pacific Ocean characterized by a five consecutive 3-month running mean of sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies in the Niño 3.4 region that is above (below) the threshold of +0.5°C (-0.5°C). This standard of measure is known as the Oceanic Niño Index (ONI).” This is the de facto standard measure.
SOI is the normalised pressure difference between Tahiti and Darwin. Pressures are influenced not only by the surrounding SSTs, but also by tropical and mid latitude synoptic scale influences. This makes SOI a noisy (and far less useful) measure (as wisely noted by Ian above) that needs to be smoothed over an extended period.
The MJO influences pressure patterns, as do mid latitude high and low pressure systems. There has been a split flow blocking pattern in the Australian region over the past few weeks, leading to lower pressures in northern climes.
Darwin pressures have been down in the 1012 to 1014 hPa region, but are expected to increase into the 1016 to 1017 hPa region next week as the pattern becomes more zonal and the sub tropical ridge moves northwards (see your favoured deterministic weather forecast for more detail). At the same time a cutoff feature is expected to develop to the south of Tahiti during next week, with pressures in the 1008 to 1012 hPa region.
This will lead to a significant fall in SOI over the coming week.
This is pretty basic first year university atmospheric science.
Regards George.
(ps – whilst 2015 is very likely going to be the hottest year on record – and the last 10 years the hottest of any decade on record – the relative increase in temprature will be far below any daily or seasonal variation so I’m not likely to notice)
“I predict that the next El Nino will not occur for 10 years ” If true (which it probably is), this could be a problem for the CSIRO considering the paper they published last year that forecast more frequent and more intense ElNinos over the next 20 years. Much vaunted paper on the ABC.
Out of interest….anyone have a link to that paper, guess I could make the effort to check out the Csiro site. Link here Ted
blogs.csiro.au/ecos/severe-la-nina-events-predicted-double/
paywalled – they want $’s
Ted, your link goes to an ECOS article on La Nina which is different to an El Nino. Likely flooding events are a combination of +ve SOI (indicating to an extent La Nina conditions) and PDO ( I think -ve but have to check -memory sometimes not good) Prof Stewart Franks- Newcastle Uni has an article about flood events. Anyway in that article is a link to the paper which opened for me. I then used a sniping tool to copy the pages on the screen.
The paper seems useless as it is based on a model using reanalysis (ie modeled ) data? of SST. (Garbage in Garbage out)
Ted comment did not post must have taken too long. paper based on model -garbage another author is mathew England that says it all
“another author is mathew England ” understood, ship of fools etc ad nauseum.
With regard to the link I think Warwick must have added that.
Other research suggests that going into negative PDO ,a two to one LaNina to ElNino ratio, Hence my comment. I’ll be watching with interest. Hope George B is keeping an eye on that too.
Hi George,
With respect, your are wrong on this. It might be true to say that, historically, El Nino and La Nina were the “names given to warming (cooling) of the sea surface (as you are no doubt aware) back in the 1890s (if not earlier).”
However, times and techniques have progresses since then. These days, the correlation between air pressure and SST’s is recognised and accepted. These days, it is thought that the first signs of an El Nino are changes in the Walker and Hadley Circulations. These are, self-evidently, changes in wind and air pressure patterns, which in turn lead to changes in average SST’s in particular regions. So, changes in these cycles drive changes in SST’s.
Given this interpretation, it’s hardly surprising that they have redefined (or reconsidered) the causation.
Adopting an early 20th Century definition of a phenomenon, rather than a current understanding of how the process works does not assist you in making out your argument.
You also say: “Darwin pressures have been down in the 1012 to 1014 hPa region, but are expected to increase into the 1016 to 1017 hPa region next week ”
Well, a large part of this site is devoted to showing how absolutely, appalling poor the BOM and other “predictors of the future” are at predicting the future. They are, almost without exception, much worse than a fair throw of a dice would predict.
Anton
I’ll say “with respect” for the first part of your response, even though you attempted to shift the goal posts to causation. To be completely specific – advection by surface currents, overturning and in situ heating change the local sea surface temperatures.
However the formal definition (both historically, and at the present day) of El Nino / La Nina is though an ocean based metric, for reasons I have previously given. Trying to move the goal posts won’t change that demonstrable fact.
Your second statement doesn’t deserve respect. Very skilful forecasts of the future are made by weather forecasting agencies throughout the world. Skilful doesn’t mean with zero error of course, but certainly better than rolling a dice. Countless lives are saved every year because of the quality of weather forecasting services provided to the global community (and no – I don’t work for BoM).
To finish – I’m curious – what does your dice roll say for the next few weeks of SOI?
George
Here is a serious contestable El Nino prediction paper;
astroclimateconnection.blogspot.com.au/2015/01/the-el-ninos-during-new-moon-epoch-5.html
The last four days with SOI:
-16.5
-34.4
-28.6
-28.4
Everyone seems to have gone rather quiet.
Kind regards
George
Seems like all the data is on my side at the moment – I’ve just updated your Cobar “heat island” post – seems like even when the wind isn’t blowing from the direction of the town that minima are warmer at the Met Office than at the Airport.
(unfortunately tonight the winds may be too strong to form an inversion at the airport – so I may miss out on getting the hat trick)
George.
And again this year, as has been the habit of Wangaratta’s rain gauges, for the last three years, we have missed out on rain, due to faulty rain gauges, this time about 58 MM and the previous two years 30 mm each. As missed rain is not recorded, we have a serious contender for Wangaratta being cherry picked for a “reduced” rainfall” award, which could be used by BOM, as they use these silly records for bolstering their Climate Change mantra…. Nothing is done to recover this data with no back up system in place…… Be amazed…
Last 6 days ..
-16.5
-34.4
-28.6
-28.4
-28.5
-30.8
Expect it to go even lower over the next few days before a temporary recovery during next week. 90 day value is back below -7.
Kind regards
George
Poor old confused NOAA-
Weak El Niños and La Niñas Come and Go from NOAA’s Oceanic NINO Index (ONI) with Each SST Dataset Revision
wattsupwiththat.com/2015/06/24/weak-el-ninos-and-la-ninas-come-and-go-from-noaas-oceanic-nino-index-oni-with-each-sst-dataset-revision/
Seriously Warwick – is that all you’ve got? A minor documented improvement in a process makes a small change to data and consequentially some events that were just above a threshold now fall just below a threshold.
Anyway – daily SOI value now down to -44.4. Amazing what a bit of science will do – when applied carefully.
Regards
George
-48.9 today – seems awfully quiet in this thread ATM!
Hi all
-40.9 today – starting the rebound back up – never the less looks like June’s SOI will fall below -7 before months end.
I’m wondering where all those commenters are that claimed El Nino was over? Or that the future couldn’t be forecast with a good level of accuracy?
George
Surprised Warwick that you haven’t commented on the out of season tropical low / tropical cyclone that will bring heavy rain to the Solomon Islands / Bougainville Island over the coming week.
George
Hi Warwick
Last 11 days of SOI:
-16.5
-34.4
-28.6
-28.4
-28.5
-30.8
-44.4
-48.9
-40.7
-34.5
-28.4
30 day SOI is down to -9.4 and will very likely average -10 for the month. 90 day SOI is -8.7.
Your lack of commentary is quite disappointing – as is the absence of other commentators who were very quick to criticise. It is somewhat telling (IMHO).
George
Sorry, George. Only just revisited this page.
As I said on 18th Jul, the SOI is very volatile and is now trending down quickly into El Nino territory.
However, despite that, some drought affected areas in Qld and northern NSW did have some rain this week.
Very very quiet from all of those with “certain” views.
30 day and 90 day SOI values all around -13. A strong El Nino continues to develop.
George