Brief message from the Bureau of Meteorology of AU on El Nino…..

The 2015 El Niño has continued to strengthen over the past 14 days… “The ocean and atmosphere are reinforcing each other”, with tropical Pacific Ocean temperatures well above El Niño thresholds, consistently weakened trade winds, and a strongly negative Southern Oscillation Index. Strong coupling of the tropical Pacific Ocean and atmosphere is typical of a mature El Niño, “and suggests only a small chance” of the event finishing before the end of the year. All international climate models surveyed by the Bureau of Meteorology indicate the tropical Pacific is likely to warm further, peaking later in the year. Typically, El Niño peaks during the late austral spring or early summer, and weakens during late summer to autumn.

From the MET  (ECMWF)

Some ensemble members produce very large anomalies, with anomalies above 3.3 °C implying NINO3.4 temperatures of 30 °C or higher. Such temperatures are physically unlikely, and forecast anomalies above 3 °C are believed to be largely due to non-linearities detrimentally affecting the model calibration.

“Because they are rare, we have limited experience of how models handle such extreme conditions, so some caution is needed in interpreting the plots shown on the web. We take the EUROSIP forecast to suggest that it is very likely that sea-surface temperature anomalies will be at or above 2 °C by November, and that, although the largest anomalies shown are unrealistic, it is possible that the 1997 record values will be exceeded,” Dr Stockdale said.

Short term weather events…

  1. Strong Typhoon beginning to re-curve up to the east of Japan….   Expect strong constructive phasing with the westerlie’s next week…..
  2. Hawaii need to keep watchful eye on a Hurricane next week as it heads north from the lower tropics….
  3. Strong amplification of the westerlies to bring cooler breezy weather 2nd half of next week…..
  4. Cooling trend next week looses steam as upper trof become cut off…..Mammoth Lakes highs to continues in the 80s through the middle of next week……