Last week I noted “El Niño-driven sea surface temperatures are soaring. Forecast: Hot and then even hotter.”
They are still soaring. NOAA’s National Weather Service Climate Prediction Center has a good animation of tropical Pacific SST anomalies:
The warming in the Nino 3.4 region of the Pacific is typically used to define an El Niño — sustained postive sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies of greater than 0.5°C across the central tropical Pacific Ocean.
Two weeks ago the anomaly was 1.1°C. Last week it was 1.5°C. This week it’s 1.7°C, as seen in this figure from NOAA’s latest weekly update on the El Niño/Southern oscillation, “ENSO Cycle: Recent Evolution, Current Status and Predictions“:
If this value is maintained for any length of time, this would be a pretty strong El Niño, as this historical graph of the 3-month running mean SST departures in Nino 3.4 region show:
Technically, we aren’t in a “full-fledged” El Niño episode yet. NOAA says, historically, that requires the the 3-month running mean SST departure to exceed 0.5°C “for a period of at least 5 consecutive overlapping 3-month seasons.” As you can see on page 26 of the weekly report, they can’t make that official until the end of this month.
For the rest of us, it’s increasingly clear that this will be at least a moderate El Niño, and many models are forecasting it will last past the winter and through the spring.
And it bears repeating that back in January, NASA had predicted: “Given our expectation of the next El Niño beginning in 2009 or 2010, it still seems likely that a new global temperature record will be set within the next 1-2 years, despite the moderate negative effect of the reduced solar irradiance.”
It still seems likely. And that will be on top of the hottest decade in recorded history by far.
Related Post:
- Skeptical Science explains how we know global warming is happening: It’s the oceans, stupid!
- Another major study predicts rapid warming over next few years — nearly 0.3°F by 2014
- Must-read AP story: Statisticians reject global cooling; Caldeira — “To talk about global cooling at the end of the hottest decade the planet has experienced in many thousands of years is ridiculous.” Levitt “said he does not believe there is a cooling trend”!!
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Price of natural gas may be going up soon…radioactive NG.
Is New York’s Marcellus Shale Too Hot to Handle?
http://www.propublica.org/ feature/ is-the-marcellus-shale-too-hot-to-handle-1109
[JR: Nah, lots of places to get NG from.]
“El Niño-driven sea surface temperatures still soaring. Hottest decade poised to get even hotter”
Not that there’e anything inaccurate here, but be prepared for deniers to say “Romm admits that el Nino, not manmade greenhouse gases, causes global warming!”
[JR: The deniers do like to take what I say out of context and then attack that. But frankly I'd be delighted if they would admit that this is the hottest decade in the temperature record.]
The scary thing is that TSI is still low. Put TSI back up again, throw in the next proper El Niño and a few more PPM of CO2 forcing, and you’re starting to get some pretty warm years up ahead.
What is TSI?
I think it’s Total Solar Irradiance.
This does look set to be the strongest El Nino since the 1998 one.
It should be peaking in strength soon now, the Dec-Jan-Feb ENSO number is typically the strongest 3-month period in the El Nino cycle.
I have read that at least some of the shale fracturing has lead to contamination of underground water sources, leading to homeowners (maybe towns) losing their well water. I guess the question is how widespread this is and if it can be avoided by improved techniques.