El Nino- Doom and Gloom?

Sorry about that, Jack. Too much time reading TGR, me thinks. It's bad for my blood pressure and manners....

Wait a minute: let's check the facts before everyone goes and rips on NOAA. Dec 2005-Feb 2006 was warmer than normal, as predicted in the first link in Jack L's first post above.. One year of archived monthly climate data is available from the National Weather Service at this web site . Here's the relevant information from Sea-Tac:

...THE SEATTLE-TACOMA AIRPORT CLIMATE SUMMARY FOR THE MONTH OF DECEMBER 2005...



CLIMATE NORMAL PERIOD 1971 TO 2000

CLIMATE RECORD PERIOD 1945 TO 2005



WEATHER    OBSERVED     NORMAL DEPART LAST YEAR`S

VALUE DATE(S) VALUE FROM  VALUE DATE(S)

NORMAL

................................................................

TEMPERATURE (F)

RECORD

HIGH       64 12/10/1993

LOW        6 12/30/1968

HIGHEST      62 12/24    MM   MM   MM MM

LOWEST      23 12/16    MM   MM   MM MM

AVG. MAXIMUM  47.4       45.5  1.9  46.9

AVG. MINIMUM  37.9       35.9  2.0  38.0

MEAN      42.6       40.7  1.9  42.5

DAYS MAX > 90   0        MM   MM   MM

DAYS MAX < 32   0        MM   MM   MM

DAYS MIN < 32  13        MM   MM   MM

DAYS MIN < 0   0        MM   MM   MM

...THE SEATTLE-TACOMA AIRPORT CLIMATE SUMMARY FOR THE MONTH OF JANUARY 2006...



CLIMATE NORMAL PERIOD 1971 TO 2000

CLIMATE RECORD PERIOD 1945 TO 2006



WEATHER    OBSERVED     NORMAL DEPART LAST YEAR`S

VALUE DATE(S) VALUE FROM  VALUE DATE(S)

NORMAL

................................................................

TEMPERATURE (F)

RECORD

HIGH       64 01/20/1981

LOW        0 01/31/1950

HIGHEST      58 01/01    MM   MM   MM MM

LOWEST      37 01/15    MM   MM   MM MM

AVG. MAXIMUM  50.8       45.8  5.0  47.4

AVG. MINIMUM  42.3       35.9  6.4  36.8

MEAN      46.6       40.9  5.7  42.1

DAYS MAX > 90   0        MM   MM   MM

DAYS MAX < 32   0        MM   MM   MM

DAYS MIN < 32   0        MM   MM   MM

DAYS MIN < 0   0        MM   MM   MM

...THE SEATTLE-TACOMA AIRPORT CLIMATE SUMMARY FOR THE MONTH OF FEBRUARY 2006...



CLIMATE NORMAL PERIOD 1971 TO 2000

CLIMATE RECORD PERIOD 1945 TO 2006



WEATHER    OBSERVED     NORMAL DEPART LAST YEAR`S

VALUE DATE(S) VALUE FROM  VALUE DATE(S)

NORMAL

................................................................

TEMPERATURE (F)

RECORD

HIGH       70 02/27/1968

LOW        1 02/01/1950

HIGHEST      60 02/07    MM   MM   MM MM

LOWEST      23 02/18    MM   MM   MM MM

AVG. MAXIMUM  49.6       49.5  0.1  51.0

AVG. MINIMUM  36.6       37.2  -0.6  34.1

MEAN      43.1       43.3  -0.2  42.6

DAYS MAX > 90   0        MM   MM   MM

DAYS MAX < 32   0        MM   MM   MM

DAYS MIN < 32   8        MM   MM   MM

DAYS MIN < 0   0        MM   MM   MM

So December and January were quite warm and February was slightly cooler than normal, but overall the three months were certainly warmer than average. In fact, December and January were even warmer then Dec-Jan 2004-05!

Amar has done some serious legwork on this one. I wish I would have found this before I got worried for the season.... thanks!

Conclusions:
An important conclusion from all of this data is to largely refute the common misconception among Pacific Northwest skiers that El Niño seasons are always terrible for snowfall in the Cascades. El Niño certainly does produce warmer than normal temperatures in the Northwest. However, El Niño seasons typically do have adequate precipitation, resulting in winter rainfall but also adequate snowfall, especially at higher elevations which are most important for spring/summer skiing and ski mountaineering.

www.skimountaineer.com/CascadeSki/CascadeSnowENSO.html

It was my fault . I jinxed the season by buying my first season pass to Crystal ever. Immediately after I had bought the pass,the NOAA press release was issued.
I'm sorry everybody. :-[

This is what is most disconcerting to me; my observations tell me that El Ninos have become more frequent and La Ninas very infrequent. That is a very big change in my lifetime. Here is proof backing those observations.

You can find a graph on this website: www.math.montana.edu/~nmp/materials/ess/...dvanced/project.html

Under the topic "project 4". Note there are two scales, since 1876 and since 1950. Note that since the data set ends in 1997 and we've basically been in a pattern of endless El Ninos since, an updated graph would be even more dramatic in frequency and magnitude of El Ninos.

www.pmel.noaa.gov/~kessler/ENSO/soi-1950-97.gif

There is also a very interesting paper by a NWS Anchorage forecaster named John Papineau that shows that El Ninos and La Ninas in themselves are not determinate, rather the "Southern Oscillation" combined with PDO effects (sea surface temps just offshore combine). I would think that at present our offshore waters are quite warm - recall a Blue Footed Booby was found this summer on the Washington shore for the first time since 1935.

pafc.arh.noaa.gov/papers/winterTemperatu...0nino%20and%20PDO%22

Personally I believe that both the strength of the El Nino along with it's stage; i.e. early, mid, late combined with atmospheric patterns of other origins may also play a roll. But that is just an observation and I haven't seen the patterns enough to correlate the various variables even roughly.

The southern oscillation is another name for El-Nino and the SOI (Southern Oscillation Index) is just another El-Nino index based on surface pressure instead of ocean temperature. In fact, El-Nino is often referred to as ENSO for El-Nino Southern Oscillation. In a "normal" or El-Nino neutral year, the tropical Pacific is characterized by warm water in the west Pacific and cool water in the east Pacific. This sets up a global scale circulation with rising air/lots of rain in the west pacific and sinking air/no rain in the east called the Walker circulation. During El-Nino years the east Pacific warms up altering this circulation, essentially moving the rainy area towards the central or even eastern Pacific depending on the strength of the El-Nino. The Walker circulation weakens or even reverses in El-Nino years. There is some indication that one of the effects of the currently warming climate will be a weakening of the Walker circulation and a paper was recently published showing that indeed, the Walker circulation has weakened over the last 100 years (this paper is discussed in depth in the second link below). Essentially, the world's "normal" state might become more El-Nino like. It'd of course be irresponsible not to also point out that this is subject to significant uncertainty, which I think is fairly addressed in the links below.

Here are two links with lots of background info on the Walker circulation, El-Nino and any connection to climate change. They are from realclimate.org, a website with "Climate science from climate scientists." Since it was started, realclimate.org has really blossomed into a wonderful site; highly recommended reading for anyone interested in climate change.

Part I
Part II
(evidently Part III hasn't yet been written)