ENSO Blog

This is a guest post by Dr. Stephen Baxter who is a NOAA Climate Prediction Center (CPC) meteorologist and does applied research on subseasonal-to-seasonal climate variability.  In particular he specializes in understanding how the middle-to-high latitude circulation is influenced by the tropics versus other processes. He also has a lot of opinions on Siberian snow cover and the role of the western tropical Pacific in forcing seasonal climate over North America.  Recent cold air outbreaks over the north-central and northwestern U.S., along with record cold on Veterans Day in parts of the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic, should have people excited about (or dreading) the upcoming win…   Read article

Well, it’s November, and the CPC/IRI ENSO forecast is declaring the presence of La Niña conditions! I could just link to my November 2016 post and head home for the day… but that would be no fun! There’s about a 65-75% chance that La Niña conditions will continue at least through the winter. As we head into our fifth “double dip” La Niña (an unofficial term for when neutral conditions briefly prevail in between La Niña winters) in the historical record, let’s dig into what we talk about when we talk about La Niña. A quick flashback If you recall, last month there were several signs of the presence of La Niña conditions. East-central tropical Pacific sea surface temperatures were co…   Read article

If it’s October, it must be time for my annual blog post detailing NOAA’s forecast for the upcoming winter. And as always seems to be the case (well not in 2015), we’re still trying to figure out what will happen across the tropical Pacific. Here I look ahead to provide some insight as to what is most likely to occur during the upcoming winter with regards to both precipitation and temperature. Standard reminder: probabilities are not certainties Before discussing the outlooks, I do want to remind readers again that these forecasts are probabilities (% chance) for below, near, or above-average climate outcomes with the maps showing only the most likely outcome (1). Because the probabil…   Read article

The task of a climate forecaster is to see the forest, and not get hung up on the individual trees. Especially that extra tall one over there, with the gnarl that looks like a face, and the low branches that would be so easy to climb, and… uh, right. My point is that we try to look beyond shorter-term weather to see longer-term monthly and seasonal patterns. After all, a particular winter can have several colder-than-average days and still be warmer than average overall. Which brings me to the current situation in the tropical Pacific! The October ENSO forecast says La Niña conditions are favored during the fall and winter 2017-18, but at press time the ocean-atmosphere system didn’t…   Read article

You may be thinking “There are even more things that forecasters look at when making seasonal forecasts?” or “Haven’t you already written about those other things, multiple times?” And the answer to both of those questions is yes. But what if I told you that there is another mysterious thing that, at least for seasonal temperature outlooks, gives forecasters a better idea of what will happen than predictions of ENSO or the Madden Julian Oscillation, or the Arctic Oscillation or the North Atlantic Oscillation or the Pacific Decadal Oscillation or…I think you get the point (1). And it’s much simpler than all of those. It’s called the trend. Cool, another vaguely science sounding term. W…   Read article