El Nino Has Finally Arrived, Far Weaker Than Predicted

An anonymous reader writes "The periodic warm weather pattern called El Niño has finally arrived in the mid-equatorial Pacific Ocean, more than a year late and far weaker than predicted by scientists. "The announcement comes a year after forecasters first predicted that a major El Niño could be in the works. At the time, NOAA predicted a 50% chance that an El Niño could develop in the latter half of 2014. The agency also said the wind patterns that were driving water east across the Pacific were similar to those that occurred in the months leading up to the epic El Niño of 1997, which caught scientists by surprise and contributed to flooding, droughts and fires across multiple continents.

In the end, last year's forecasts came up short, in part because the winds that were driving the system petered out. Researchers, who have been working to improve their forecasting models since 1997, are trying to figure out precisely what happened last year and why their models failed to capture it."

Comments

Re:Let's do the Chicken Little Climate Change danc

[KermodeBear]

Well, hell, why not? Just remember that it's Climate Change now though, not Global Warming. Among other amazing things, Climate Change is responsible for:

ISIS: Yup, somehow, Climate Change was one of the reasons we have ISIS.
Crime. Climate change is also responsible for more rape.
Prostitution. Yeah, see, climate change may increase prostitution too.

I know, I know, this comment is a little snarky, but even the people here on Slashdot that are hardcore global warming types can see that there's a whacko fringe in their camp that is beyond ridiculous.

Re:But, our climate models are perfectly accurate

[sjames]

Weather != climate.

If you flip a coin and get heads twice in a row, do you claim statistics is bunk?

50% wrong or 50% right?

[rmpotter]

"NOAA predicted a 50% chance that an El Niño could develop in the latter half of 2014"

With odds like that, how could they be wrong?

Re:50% wrong or 50% right?

[itzly]

If you predict a 50% chance 50 years in a row, and it really happens 80% of the times, you were wrong.

Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO)

[duckintheface]

The real story is a lot more complicated that TFA indicates. The new el nino is just starting and it's six months out of phase with the usual timing. So instead of starting six months late, it could just as well be seen as starting 6 months early in the next cycle. And more importantly, it is now combined with a phase change in the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO). The two cycles combine to produce a much stronger warming effect. The negative PDO was responsible for the impression that warming had slowed. Now that it has reversed the warming will not just return to pre-1998 levels but will be much stronger. This could last for the next 10 to 15 years. Hopefully by then people with short attention spans will have realized that the planet is irrevocably getting hotter.

Re:Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO)

[itzly]

because in the grand scheme of things man has little or nothing to do with squat. Long after we are gone, the sun will change phases, engulf this planet for real global warming and then the universe will die a heat death

Using that perspective, why not rob a bank today ?

Re:Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO)

[bunratty]

From that perspective there is absolutely nothing to be gained from getting out of bed either. That's why it's not a useful perspective.

Re:Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO)

[cbiltcliffe]

Bullshit. If I have a glass half full of boiling water, and a glass half full of ice water, the two glasses have an average temperature of around 50 degrees C. If I pour one into the other, the hot water will cool, and the ice water will warm; but the average temperature is still 50 degrees.
The heat was redistributed, but the average temperature hasn't changed.

This is exactly what ocean currents do; redistribute heat on the earth. A high El Nino/La Nina year like 1997, while it may warm the Arctic, cools the tropics at the same time, keeping the average temperature the same. Despite the "climate change chicken dancer's" claims, a high El Nino/La Nina year cannot affect the average temperature of the earth to any significant extent. Since, considering 1997, it appears to do so, then our method for measuring the average temperature of the earth is badly flawed. We obviously have more temperature measuring locations in spots that are warmed by El Nino than spots
And before you say these currents are carrying this heat to the bottom of the oceans, remember that study last year that analyzed ocean temperature data from 2005 to 2013, and found the oceans didn't measurably warm during that period. That was the entire time period they analyzed data for.

Despite the climate change proponents claims, the peak global average temperature of 1997 was not, and could not, be caused by ocean currents. And, despite the majority of the northern hemisphere having the coldest year in decades in 2014, in some cases breaking winter cold temperature records that were a century old or more, and a summer that saw people with quilts and comforters on beds, rather than the single sheet or nothing at all that summer sleeping usually requires, the global warming proponents are still saying that 2014 was the warmest year on record. Really? Was the south pole on fire? Because unless it was, the southern hemisphere certainly wasn't warm enough to counteract the 6-10 degrees C cooler than average that the northern hemisphere saw. Sure, Australia had a heat wave at the beginning of 2014, with temperatures a measly 4 degrees higher than normal for a few weeks. Hardly enough to counteract the 9 months of significantly colder than average temperatures that the north saw.

Re:Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO)

[rgbatduke]

Empirically, ENSO has been tightly associated with bursts of warming -- nearly discrete jumps in global average temperature. The 1997-1998 super-ENSO event was very directly associated with a jump of nearly 0.15 C, and temperatures have remained basically neutral ever since except for peaks in "normal" ENSO years that quickly regressed to a mean. Indeed, if you look at the SST record (arguably more pristine than the heavily processed global temperature record, at least in the recent past) it exhibits a pattern called Hurst-Kolmogorov (punctuated equilibrium) jumps with the transitions often associated with ENSO. This is actually one of the arguments of skeptics -- global temperature is almost certainly regulated by CO_2 concentration, but only weakly/logarithmically and according to radiative theory, the total climate sensitivity (increase per doubling of CO_2) should be between 1 and 1.5 C, which is warming but unlikely to be catastrophic in any reasonable future CO_2 scenario. The unknown factor is how much of the warming is due to shifts in a punctuated, locally stable equilibrium from what amount to natural factors, the biggest of which are the multidecadal oscillations and associated shifts in global atmospheric circulation patterns (where as noted, ENSO especially is an empirical smoking gun in the shifts) but which also include discrete shifts in the thermohaline circulation patterns, especially at certain critical junctions in the Atlantic, and the possibility of nonlinear effects from solar variability. Since the system is highly multivariate, chaotic, nonlinear, and with profound feedback loops and self-organized dissipative structures in abundance, it is incredibly difficult to model and the general circulation models yield almost no useful information beyond "if you increase CO_2, it will more likely warm than cool" which we already knew from radiative theory in the first place and which is built into them in such a way that they can give no other answer. There is little reason to believe that the multimodel ensemble mean of means of the many different models has any real predictive force, however, and in fact that mean is systematically diverging from the observational record just as it has systematic deviations in its hindcast from the historical record.

This is why catastrophic global warming enthusiasts are so excited about the prospects of a new super-ENSO. If it happens, it could cause another Hurst-Kolmogorov jump, bump the average temperature a bit, and validate the models (or at least, rescue them from a richly deserved back-to-the-drawing-board oblivion). It is difficult to escape the feeling that they want this to happen, that they want the world to heat up disastrously to punish the human race for using energy and building civilization. One would think that evidence that TCS was not, in fact, 2 to 3 C but instead was 1-2 C (or even less) would be welcome news, but for them it would be acknowledging that the deliberately created panic, the political manipulation and selling of the catastrophic warming meme, and the associated shifts of enormous amounts of money into ameliorating a hypothetical disaster on the basis of unproven models has been directly responsible for the perpetuation of 1/3 of the world's population in a state of energy poverty.

rgb

Re:Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO)

[itzly]

a high El Nino/La Nina year cannot affect the average temperature of the earth to any significant extent.

True, but it can affect the surface temperature, which is only a small portion of the earth. The bulk of the heat resides in the ocean water.

Was the south pole on fire? Because unless it was, the southern hemisphere certainly wasn't warm enough to counteract the 6-10 degrees C cooler than average that the northern hemisphere saw.

The northern hemisphere was significantly warmer than average. Here's a map of the global temperature anomaly for 2014:

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-...

Re:Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO)

[cbiltcliffe]

My high school OAC (grade 13, for non-Ontarians) chemistry mark was the highest of any student, in any school in the county, for both semesters of the year I took that class. I got an award for it, actually.

The amount of energy needed to melt ice into water without changing the temperature (remaining at 0 degrees C) is the exact same as the amount of energy you need to remove to freeze water into ice without changing the temperature. Which makes your claim about time scales (WTF does time have to do with energy transfer and average temperatures of a region, anyway?) complete, unadulterated bullshit.

Re:Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO)

[cosmicaug]

Bullshit. If I have a glass half full of boiling water, and a glass half full of ice water, the two glasses have an average temperature of around 50 degrees C. If I pour one into the other, the hot water will cool, and the ice water will warm; but the average temperature is still 50 degrees.
The heat was redistributed, but the average temperature hasn't changed.

No, in your example the average temperature will drop but the total heat of the system will remain the same.

In the commonly understood meaning of ice water, you will have a mixture of ice and water. Such a mixture is understood to have a temperature of 0 degrees centigrade but additional heat needs to be lost to make the transition from liquid water at 0 degrees C to solid water at 0 degrees C (heat of fusion). The mixture of your water at the boiling point and your ice water will equilibrate at a temperature below 50 degrees C. The actual temperature will depend the percentage of water that is in the form of ice in the ice water.

So if the heat can go somewhere other than to change the temperature of water you can have changes of the mean temperature of the water.

Likewise in the rest of the comment, a global energy balance surplus need not mean a short term global surface temperature increase and an energy balance deficit need not mean a short term surface temperature decrease because the energy balance affects more than air temperatures. The oceans, in fact, act as a massive heat sink (and the data is there showing that surplus heat is going there). That is, additional heat affects more than surface air temperatures, it affects ocean temperatures. As a result, anything which affects the heat balance into this heat sink will affect air temperatures. This means that a heat surplus can be masked if additional heat gets temporarily dumped into the ocean but it also means that if the process that is dumping surplus heat into the ocean decreases you will see an atmospheric temperature rise.

Re:Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO)

[rgbatduke]

Dude, look at the map of climate zones sometime. Look at the range of normal temperatures, and the range of extreme temperatures. The entire shift they are talking about is basically moving one climate zone north -- order of 100 miles. It is utterly lost in the noise. It isn't frog slowly "boiling" in a pot. It is frog in a pot that is 15 C (that is, rather cold) on average (maybe) but that has a range of maybe 5 to 10 C either way on a daily basis, an average that itself varies by a lot more than 20 C annually in much of the world, getting raised to a pot that -- if we don't condemn the poorest people in the world to remain poor for most of the next century and do keep burning coal to make electricity to make their lives better, cheaper, and uplift them out of 18th century poverty and into (I dunno) maybe the 20th century -- will go up 2 whole degrees C. Frogs don't cook at 17 C. The frog might well be more comfortable. I would.

I do like the way you minimize the impact of spending order of a trillion dollars a year combatting CO_2 without recognizing that this is a choice, and it comes at the expense of other ways we might spend the money -- like ending world poverty, which would probably cost less than half of that. You worry about a future catastrophe. How about the ongoing catastrophe, the catastrophe right now, caused by spending all of this money in measures that: a) benefit the very energy companies you no doubt would condemn as the culprits far more than any other groups -- so much so that if CAGW theory didn't exist, they would have a strong motivation to invent it. Anything that increases the marginal cost of energy is going to increase the profits of energy companies before it does anything else, because they make marginal profits. b) don't even work. Carbon trading is an expensive joke. Thorium might work (Uranium does work) but the same people who hate CO_2 hate U235 even more. Wind energy is an expensive joke nearly everywhere, suffering as well from massive NIMBY syndrome and for very good reason. Most other resources such as geothermal or hydro are already exploited and/or regional. Natural gas is lovely but again it is a carbon based fuel, everybody NIMBY's fracking, and I personally like it for heating houses and cooking and hate the thought of using it all up making electricity.

The only two contenders for replacing the coal infrastructure in the long run are solar, largely PV solar, and fusion. Solar isn't a good candidate for replacing coal, but it can certainly eke it out. It isn't ready for prime time as a replacement because electricity is difficult and expensive to store in anything vaguely like the quantities needed to sustain demand at night, and is difficult to transport the 5000 mile plus distances needed to e.g. provide power to the entire temperate zone and points north in the winter, especially if one plans to use that power to heat houses because burning fuel isn't allowed. There is a disconnect so vast that it is difficult to begin to describe it there. We don't have the storage technology, and there are no feasible alternatives visible in the technological pipeline to provide it although there are a bunch of very expensive projects to demonstrate how to do it lots of very expensive ways. Could a breakthrough make this all work? Sure. And if and when it does, one won't need to subsidize the transition or promote it, it will just happen because electricity will be cheaper that way.

Nuclear fusion would solve the problem once and for all for the projected future of the human species. The problem there is that it is like saying that "we should run our energy infrasttructure using magic" because so far getting steady state fusion energy from anything less than balls of mostly hydrogen a million miles or so across just doesn't seem to work. Sure, maybe Lockheed-Martin will do as they just promised and deliver commercial fusion in four years and six months (counting down), but if they do again we won't

Re:Awesome Models

[K. S. Kyosuke]

So weather IS climate, just on a much shorter scale.

Just like the position and speed of an atom in a cloud of heating gas is thermodynamic data, only much more detailed. Just because you know the cloud is heating doesn't mean you can predict where that one atom will be at a given point in time. I'm not surprised that one el Nino gets mispredicted. It means very little.

Re:Awesome Models

[sgrover]

I'm fully aware of this phenomenon myself. However, I'm seeing a consistency to the wrongs. One would think the models would be altered to reflect real data, instead of ignoring "anomalies" on a regular basis. (of course, climate models are not very simple either...)

I feel it in Houston

[Billly Gates]

It has been one of the coldest and wetist winters in awhile. High around 39 should not be a common occurrence on the gulf coast but it feels more like Seattle than a subtropical place. It got in the 70s only a few times last February.

El Nino was supposed to be big as a big surge of very warm water up to 150 ft deep and almost 1,000 miles long headed east. However the winds picked up and chilly Antarctic current which cools west South America mixed in for a few months so it is not so warm anymore.

Weather is complex and last decade (no I do not deny global warming) had a solar null which means cooler temperatures and more la nina events like those in the mini ice age from 1400 - 1840 which explains colder temperatures and dryer conditions. California hit a 500 year drought where the climate actually changed from mediterranean to desert. Same in Chile and Peru.

Re: I feel it in Houston

[Anonymous Coward]

http://images.nationalgeographic.com/wpf/media-content/photos/000/891/cache/89188_990x742-cb1425485788.jpg

Re: I feel it in Houston

[93 Escort Wagon]

I am in Portland and this has been one of the warmest and sunniest winters coming ever. Some times the weather gods are nice to us.

SHUT UP.

Do you really want even more of them moving here?

Re: I feel it in Houston

[cbiltcliffe]

I'm not preoccupied with US weather. That was just the map that the poster I replied to used.

Now, in response to yours, it shows that Antarctica is for the most part .5 to 2 degrees colder than the 1951-1980 average, yet the global warmists are saying that massive ice sheets are breaking off and melting because of (record?) high Antarctic temperatures.

the winds... petered out?

[fustakrakich]

It's all those damn turbines we're putting up. Slow down all the wind, and pretty soon there won't be any. Then what are you going to do, eh?

Therefore Global Warming NO REAL

[psinet]

...no.

The fact that they did not accurately predict the weather, does NOT have a bearing on the legitimacy of the theory of human-induced global warming.

None. Zip. Zero. Zilch. Not significant.

So you can stop posting about it.

Re:Therefore Global Warming NO REAL

[itzly]

The models for prediction El-Nino and other ocean currents aren't very good at this time. This is well known. But unless there's a permanent change to the oceans, we know that the currents fluctuate around a mean, and that their effects is superimposed on the global climate, which is noticeable on decadal time scales.

Mostly, they effect the climate by redistributing the heat in different ways, including transporting some heat to deeper ocean layers where it's hidden from surface temperature sensors, and transporting it back at other times.

As far as significance for the longer term global warming trend, there's isn't much. Over a period of a few decades, the fluctuations in ocean current start to average out.

Re:Therefore Global Warming NO REAL

[itzly]

The heat is in the ocean...is that Pause Excuse

There's no pause. There's just short time fluctuations around the trend. And you are completely right, this is nothing new.

Why can't you people admit you have no fucking clue what's happening?

The people who don't have a fucking clue are the ones that are screaming that there's a pause when the global temperatures don't break new records every single year.

darn

[slashmydots]

It's a shame this hasn't so far made it rain in the California area. At least freak weather patterns can help sometimes by simply causing different weather. Hopefully that changes in the near future. Then again, California's economy and politics are so fucked up, the weather might as well crap out too.

Re:But, our climate models are perfectly accurate

[sjames]

Nice try, but 15 years of weather statistics is climate. One winter is not. The science has been fairly consistent, only the specifics seem up for grabs.

You might also want to note that El Nino isn't itself part of climate change.

And I wouldn't crow too much about the name change. The term 'global warning' has mostly fallen out of favor due to idiots thinking a slightly chilly morning in the middle of winter meant it couldn't be real.

Re:Awesome Models

[Anonymous Coward]

The best scientists on earth can't tell you how a particular molecule in a balloon will move over the next second, but any kindergartner can tell you what will happen if you keep pumping more and more air into it.

Re:Awesome Models

[penguinoid]

If you're so confident in your political score-pointing criticism, how would you like to make a bet? Let's say, you predict the average temperature and rainfall for each day the next seven days, and I predict the average temperature and rainfall for each year the next seven years. Whoever is off by the lowest percent wins. And I assume you'd be willing to give me odds of approximately 1:365 in my favor since clearly my task is that much harder.

Re:Awesome Models

[Crashmarik]

Lets see a mole of any gas 6.02214x10^23 atoms

Fifteen years has has 5479 days (rounded to the nearest)
a century has 36525 days.

So lets take the other way. What are the odds that a random sample of 10^18 atoms in a gas would have a significantly different temperature than the overall the temperature ?

Virtually zero.

Re:Let's do the Chicken Little Climate Change danc

[riverat1]

And yet temperatures continue to rise, ice continues to melt, sea level continues to rise and the oceans continue to acidify.

Re:Awesome Models

[itzly]

Put a pan of cold water on the stove, and turn it on. After a while, watch the little swirls of water. Can you predict how they'll move around 2 seconds from any given time ? Probably not. Can you predict the average temperature 60 seconds later ? Probably yes. There's the difference between weather prediction and climate predication. Climate prediction is easier, because it deals with averages. Weather deals with chaos.

Re:But, our climate models are perfectly accurate

[riverat1]

One definition of climate is the statistics of weather, IOW the average and standard deviation of weather over some time period. The World Meteorological Organization defines the standard classical period for climate as 30 years.

One scientists misstatement about snow doesn't make climate science collapse.

Re:Awesome Models

[riverat1]

The difference between weather models and climate models it that weather models solve initial value problems, given the current conditions how do we expect weather to evolve over time. They're good for maybe 10 or so days usually. Climate models solve boundary value problems, given the forcings involved in climate and their interactions and feedbacks what are the boundaries we expect future weather to vary within. So far globally the weather has remained mostly within the boundaries projected by climate models so they're doing ok.

Re: But, our climate models are perfectly accurate

[itzly]

Because after 15 years, many of the chaotic changes in weather average out. The sun cycle is 11 years, for instance. After 15 years, you'd expect a few El-Ninos and La-Ninas. You can calculate that a 15 year period is about the minimum. For a more robust number, you could take 30 years. More than 30 years isn't very useful. There aren't really any weather related patterns that last longer than that.

Re: But, our climate models are perfectly accurate

[AuMatar]

There was an ice age 10K years ago. So there are definitely longer term weather patterns on this planet. That's not evidence for or against global warming, but to claim we understand the climate well is disingenuous at best.

Re: But, our climate models are perfectly accurate

[itzly]

Of course, there are longer term patterns, but these aren't weather patterns. Glaciation cycles are caused by orbital patterns. On even longer time scales you have things like continental drift, and gradually increasing solar output. These patterns are interesting, and it's good to know they exist when you want to compare climates over similar time spans, but they aren't really relevant for the discussion about climate change.

Re:but, but .......science

[NoMaster]

But computer models are always right and we can NOT investigate further....science is settled.

What fucking idiot has ever claimed that?

In other news, the strawman still needs a brain...

Re:Awesome Models

[TheRaven64]

Weather is a chaotic system, but often chaotic systems have longer-term trends that are possible to observe. For example, if you pour sand into a pile, then you can fairly accurately predict the shape of the cone that it will create, but the exact pattern of bounces for each grain is impossible to predict as it depends on the exact position, shape, and location of every grain that it hits on the way down and a tiny error in any of these will magnify to a huge error after a few bounces. It's a chaotic system that has macro-scale effects that can be predicted.

Weather is a chaotic system with very similar properties. The longer the timescale, the easier it is to predict. Predicting the average temperature difference between summer and winter, for example, is much easier than predicting the temperature tomorrow.

To give a simpler example, if I toss a coin 100 times, I'd expect you to be able to tell me, with a fairly small margin of error, how many times I will roll heads. I wouldn't expect you to be able to guess what the result of any individual toss will be more than about half the time.

If you think that predicting weather and predicting climate are similar problems, then I'd encourage you to read up a bit on chaos theory.

Re:But, our climate models are perfectly accurate

[nierd]

Wow the cognitive dissonance is stunning.

No kidding one winter isn't. That's the reason why the 'settled' science saying snowfalls would be gone in a decade (pub. 2000) is laughed at. Instead of embracing the joke and laughing at the kook element that is crying that the sky is falling the fact that you feel the need to 'defend' science (why is this a thing - science is what it is - evidence doesn't need defenders it speaks for itself) just doubles down on the hypocrisy.

There are plenty of us that thing the world is getting warming - are unsure but willing to let the actual evidence and further research prove how much is human forcing - and actually think most 'green' policies are fine at face value, however also think that the fervor used to tout 'climate change' is neither scientific or rational.

Re:Awesome Models

[cbiltcliffe]

In other words: "It's only a good analogy when it supports MY point of view, dammit!"

Re:Let's do the Chicken Little Climate Change danc

[itzly]

If cold air is getting pushed out of the Arctic, what kind of air do you think goes back in to replace it ?

Re:Let's do the Chicken Little Climate Change danc

[itzly]

There isn't an equal balance of warm and cold air

There's not a perfect balance, but the local, day to day fluctuations we call weather are mostly a result of the same heat being distributed in different ways. Total heat on earth isn't going to be dramatically different between yesterday and tomorrow.

the sun is entering into a new solar minimum, meaning there is less warm air all around.

The amplitude of the solar cycle is about 0.1% of the total solar output. That's not a significant contribution.

Re:Let's do the Chicken Little Climate Change danc

[thegarbz]

It takes a certain kind of mind to counter measurable and published evidence with a flawed thought experiment using a single condition experienced by a small portion of the world for a small portion of the year.

Even ignoring the problems with your thought experiment, why not instead try and prove the visible evidence we see, rather than try and disprove it.

Or are you merely exposing your true identity as Adam Savage? "I reject your reality and substitute my own."

Re:Let's do the Chicken Little Climate Change danc

[riverat1]

Remember the whole "polar vortex" thing in North America last year?

Not really. I live on the west coast of North America and it never affected us. The "polar vortexes" you are referring to only affected less than 5% of the surface of the Earth. February 2015 was in the top 5 warmest globally.

Re:Awesome Models

[phantomfive]

So far globally the weather has remained mostly within the boundaries projected by climate models so they're doing ok.

Not according to scientists. Quote:

"The slowdown in the rate of global warming in the early 2000s is not evident in the multi-model ensemble average of traditional climate change projection simulations.......The loss of predictive skill for six initial years before the mid-1990s points to the need for consistent hindcast skill to establish reliability of an operational decadal climate prediction system."

Re:Let's do the Chicken Little Climate Change danc

[Hognoxious]

Awk Awk.

Well sed.

Re:Awesome Models

[riverat1]

People get excited about the hottest year but it makes more sense from a climate perspective to look at it in terms of decadal temperature trends. This graph does that. From it you can see that the 2000s were about 0.15 degrees C above the 1990s and so far the 2010s are about 0.05 above the 2000s.