"El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) indicators have shown a steady trend towards El Niño levels since the start of the year. Sea surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific Ocean have exceeded El Niño thresholds for the past month, supported by warmer-than-average waters below the surface. Trade winds have remained consistently weaker than average since the start of the year, cloudiness at the Date Line has increased and the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) has remained negative for several months. These indicators suggest the tropical Pacific Ocean and atmosphere have started to couple and reinforce each other, indicating El Niño is likely to persist in the coming months.You can see an animation of the last 50 days of ENSO-responsive SST here.
International climate models surveyed by the Bureau indicate that tropical Pacific Ocean temperatures are likely to remain above El Niño thresholds through the coming southern winter and at least into spring."
Sou has more on the story here.
ps In terms of Arctic sea ice, 2015 has been lately well ahead in melting of most recent years. It has just passed 2006 (which is fading after an early spurt) to have the least ice for this day (12 May).
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April AMO ticks up and April PDO ticks down.
ReplyDeleteThey updated. Their model spread now has some pretty high numbers for ONI later this year.
ReplyDeleteThe POAMA Nino3.4 forecast for October is modest compared to the other models. The mean of all models is 2.4, some of them approaching 3. See:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.bom.gov.au/climate/ahead/model-summary.shtml#tabs=Pacific-Ocean
The ENSO model that the Azimuth Project forum http://forum.azimuthproject.org/discussions is constructing has nailed the behavior over much longer intervals. With forcings precisely defined by the much more periodic QBO and Chandler wobble, long deterministic stretches of ENSO behavior can be modeled.
ReplyDeleteWHT - I don't see a forecast. If there is one, where is it?
ReplyDeleteThe forecast is for erratically alternating La Nina and El Nino events ... seriously, science doesn't need to be done by forecasting and then mindlessly waiting for the results to come in. It can just as easily be done by training a model on a specific interval and then evaluating the extrapolation on an out-of-band interval. There are hundreds of years of ENSO proxy records for evaluation purposes.
DeleteFor sure, there is a practical use for forecasts, but I am not going to get caught up in a can't-win situation.