Wednesday, October 3, 2012

El Nino Now Officially Stagnant

For the second week, the update of sea surface temperature anomalies is indicating that there is no discernable body of warm water in the Equatorial Pacific, thereby bringing the El Nino to a stagnant stage in my eyes.

In a stunning turn of events, the El Nino disappeared from the charts last week. I did think that this was only temporary, and that the next update could bring back the El Nino warm water anomalies. However, after the most recent update, it is apparant to me that this is an actual issue, and that the El Nino may be starting its painfully slow demise.

A regional breakdown of SST anomalies across the Equatorial Pacific shows the sudden disappearance of the El Nino is confirmed, with a sudden drop-off in warm water anomalies depicted in Nino regions 3 and 3.4. These two regions are typically classified as the central ENSO regions, meaning that the supposed El Nino dissipated in its central stage.

You may notice warming in Nino region 4. Beware, Region 4 is notorious for giving false warmings and cooling that may be nothing more than simple warming. If you want to see the El Nino, watch for warming in at least Region 3.4 and do not rely on Region 4- that solution does not end well.

Andrew

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's funny that you would proclaim the El Nino stagnante when another site has the daily SOI numbers in the negative range beginning on Oct.1 thru today. Maybe you should monitor it a little more closely thru this month and Nov. before claiming the El Nino is duing a slow death. I also have to share that even though the El nino is weak now the atmosphere here in the east is reacting similarly to the pattern in 2002 and 2009. So maybe we don't have to have a weak to moderate El nino to get a similar outcome, maybe we need the ocean temp. to be not as cold as last year to have the atmosphere jump start to a different result.

Andrew said...

If you're referring to the BOM AU SOI site, yes, it is negative. However,if you look at today's value, it has skyrocketed to -10 from -21 yesterday.

WinterStorm said...

Hi Andrew! So does it look like we aren't going to be in an el nino this winter? Do you think that we might be able to get into a negative-neutral ENSO by winter? Thanks Andrew!

ERN WX said...

WinterStorm, the best I see is neutral. La Nina looks very unlikely. Still you will see snow.

Anonymous said...

@ Andrew - I appreciate the response although I do not agree with your assessment of the El Nino,but in any case you did not address my abservation regarding the weather in the Eastern U.S. and how it is similar to 2 other Nino years. 2002 & 2009 had very similar patterns and I was speculating about whether a Nino is necessary to obtain the same result. In other words becasue the water was so cold in the Pacific last this increase in temperature that you keep down playing couldn't that also give you a similar result???