Notice that Greenland, Alaska, and western Siberia areas are running 4-5 C above the baseline average. Not coincidentally, both coasts of Greenland melted off fast, and open water is already present along much of the coast of Siberia.
http://iup.physik.uni-bremen.de:8084/amsr/arctic_AMSRE_nic.png

The colder than normal temperatures this year in central northern Canada, seems to have delayed the ice melt in Hudson’s Bay, but the ice pack at these lower latitudes should melt out fast in the coming weeks, so expect the ice extent to drop faster than normal.

Given the huge loss in thicker multiyear ice the last two years, the ice pack is bad shape. The comments I have read on denier blogs like WUWT, that said ice pack is back to normal, and the ice pack is recovering, seem to be pretty far off the mark.

0 DJF
0 JFM
0 FMA
1 MAM
6 AMJ
2 MJJ
1 JJA
3 JAS
3 ASO
0 SON
1 OND
0 NDJ

If we do transition to an El Nino it will likely be in the MJJ or JJA 3-month periods which is consistent with the starts of previous El Nino’s. March was about neutral SSTs, June looks on track to average around +0.5C, July would need to be very warm to get a start in MJJ, but if June+Aug are both +0.5C then the El Nino would start in JJA. I’d say a JJA ‘official’ start looks likely.

Once the El Nino’s start, they all tend to persist through the next December/January and usually into spring/summer months.

And I’m going to throw caution to the wind and bet that 2009 will break the 1998 temperature record on the NASA series, although maybe not on every measurement series. I think 2010 will be across-the-board convincingly hot as we have El Nino-to-neutral conditions along with SC24 warming up.

When the condition is met for a period of less than five months, it is classified as El Niño or La Niña conditions; if the anomaly persists for five months or longer, it is classified as an El Niño or La Niña episode.

So they won’t call it a full-blown El Niño unless it persists for five months after the transition they expect this summer, and since the weather effects normally follow some months after the switch starts (which perhaps is where the five month persistence before it’s labeled an “episode” comes from? guessing), you can see it’s all consistent with the “El Niño” name …

…hits all the denialists beliefs that
we’re in a new SC24 “Maunder Minimum”…

Guess they’ll have to call it the “Little Cool Water Age” rather than the “New Little Ice Age”, eh?

How is it we can have an El Nino effect in the summer? My understanding is that it occurs around late December, hence the name.

The prediction is for possible El Niño conditions “later this year”, so not inconsistent.

I live in the mid-Atlantic, and we are having the same sort of very wet weather that we normally see during an El Nino. In fact, this is about as wet as it’s ever been, with rain almost every day now for months. If it was winter we would be having the best ski season ever.

For those interested, I have done a comparison of smoothed observations and IPCC projections. Observations are somewhat lower than projections, but well within reasonable confidence intervals, despite what you have read from contrarians like Pat Michaels and Lord Monckton. And, of course, the 2000s are significantly warmer than the 1990s.

http://deepclimate.org/ 2009/ 06/ 03/ ipcc-ar4-projections-and-observations-part-1/

If that happens it’ll be interesting to watch all the thrashing around it produces when the fact of a new temperature record hits all the denialists beliefs that
we’re in a new SC24 “Maunder Minimum”…