Hi Roger, How much of an influence does the Madden Julian Oscillation have on ENSO. Specifically rainfall. In my neck of woods (California), an El Nino or La Nina weather pattern can potentially determine a wet or dry water year. In winter 2015/2016, El Nino was quite strong based on sea surface temps, but California experienced average rainfall. This winter La Nina was still present, but weaker then two years prior. And as you are aware, California experienced well above average rain and snowfall. Your thoughts? Any research on MJO you can pass along?
Unrelated to this article, but I’m interested in your thoughts on this article in Fin Times Apr 27: The devastating drought in the Horn of Africa “would not have occurred without climate change” as global warming made such exceptionally dry conditions in the region about 100 times more likely, scientists have concluded.
When I hear about El Niño I think of all the additional anchovies the Peruvian fisherman will harvest due to enhanced upwelling along their Pacific coast. At least that's what I remember about El Niño from my "Descriptive Oceanography" course from the mid '60s.
Agree this is an excellent post, and informative. Question: Because there have been essentially an equal number of El Ninos and La Ninas, would it be correct to infer that these patterns cannot be attributed to global warming or emissions growth?
Correct, ENSO has been documented to have existed far into the past. However, there are various hypotheses about how human-caused climate change might influence ENSO behavior in the future. My reading is that there is no consensus on this and an enormous spread of hypotheses in the literature.
When I look at sea surface temperatures from NOAA it appears that El Nino conditions already exist in the Eastern Pacific. I think using the Nino 3.4 area in the Central pacific as the benchmark oversimplifies the whole ENSO phenomena.
Excellent analysis, sir. It's very clear and easy to understand by the average layman (e.g., me). The almost symmetrical shifts in effects between El Nino and La Nina are especially interesting.
What i notice from coverage is that even though "the world is careening to unlivable conditions" when there has been no temperature increases for years, with a likely El Nino coming there seems to be glee that finally, FINALLY, we'll get some catastrophic warming and therefor death which will then show us deniers how wrong we have all been.
One motivation for this post has been seeing frequent news articles stating that El Nino means more disasters worldwide, and some even say warmer global average temperatures means more disasters. Neither is correct. I can shout into the wind ;-)
This data has a global focus. Speaking from Australia I can say that the local impacts of ENSO events can be dramatic. For instance the recent thriple La Nina has been blamed for devastating record floids on the East Coast, and El Nino years are associated with dry winters, droughts and crop losses, forest fires etc.
Exactly. ENSO matters not because of its net global impact, but because of its significant impact across different regions. Australia is one of many places where people don't need to be told this!
And to me, the fact that the global circulation models cannot predict these (ENSO) important cyclical (3 to 7 yr) weather events with any skill is telling. How can we justify spending trillions (~$275T per the McKinsey report) and undergo massive social engineering on unvalidated computer projections?
Hi Roger, How much of an influence does the Madden Julian Oscillation have on ENSO. Specifically rainfall. In my neck of woods (California), an El Nino or La Nina weather pattern can potentially determine a wet or dry water year. In winter 2015/2016, El Nino was quite strong based on sea surface temps, but California experienced average rainfall. This winter La Nina was still present, but weaker then two years prior. And as you are aware, California experienced well above average rain and snowfall. Your thoughts? Any research on MJO you can pass along?
Unrelated to this article, but I’m interested in your thoughts on this article in Fin Times Apr 27: The devastating drought in the Horn of Africa “would not have occurred without climate change” as global warming made such exceptionally dry conditions in the region about 100 times more likely, scientists have concluded.
I did a Twitter thread on that here: https://twitter.com/RogerPielkeJr/status/1651572617177075712?s=20
And this new preprint challenges the use of statistics in such studies: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4385979
This holds up well: https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/how-to-be-a-smart-consumer-of-climate
When I hear about El Niño I think of all the additional anchovies the Peruvian fisherman will harvest due to enhanced upwelling along their Pacific coast. At least that's what I remember about El Niño from my "Descriptive Oceanography" course from the mid '60s.
Agree this is an excellent post, and informative. Question: Because there have been essentially an equal number of El Ninos and La Ninas, would it be correct to infer that these patterns cannot be attributed to global warming or emissions growth?
Correct, ENSO has been documented to have existed far into the past. However, there are various hypotheses about how human-caused climate change might influence ENSO behavior in the future. My reading is that there is no consensus on this and an enormous spread of hypotheses in the literature.
thank you, sir.
When I look at sea surface temperatures from NOAA it appears that El Nino conditions already exist in the Eastern Pacific. I think using the Nino 3.4 area in the Central pacific as the benchmark oversimplifies the whole ENSO phenomena.
Excellent analysis, sir. It's very clear and easy to understand by the average layman (e.g., me). The almost symmetrical shifts in effects between El Nino and La Nina are especially interesting.
What i notice from coverage is that even though "the world is careening to unlivable conditions" when there has been no temperature increases for years, with a likely El Nino coming there seems to be glee that finally, FINALLY, we'll get some catastrophic warming and therefor death which will then show us deniers how wrong we have all been.
Just my take on it.
One motivation for this post has been seeing frequent news articles stating that El Nino means more disasters worldwide, and some even say warmer global average temperatures means more disasters. Neither is correct. I can shout into the wind ;-)
"experts say"
"scientists say".
How awful is it that some of us refuse to be told and instead read and think for ourselves?
That is the thing "they" fear the worst.
Ordinary people asking simple questions.
This data has a global focus. Speaking from Australia I can say that the local impacts of ENSO events can be dramatic. For instance the recent thriple La Nina has been blamed for devastating record floids on the East Coast, and El Nino years are associated with dry winters, droughts and crop losses, forest fires etc.
Exactly. ENSO matters not because of its net global impact, but because of its significant impact across different regions. Australia is one of many places where people don't need to be told this!
And to me, the fact that the global circulation models cannot predict these (ENSO) important cyclical (3 to 7 yr) weather events with any skill is telling. How can we justify spending trillions (~$275T per the McKinsey report) and undergo massive social engineering on unvalidated computer projections?