The Current El Nino Picture

Michael Tobis

Michael Tobis, editor-in-chief of Planet3.0 and site cofounder, has always been interested in the interface between science and public policy. He holds a doctorate from the University of Wisconsin - Madison in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences where he developed a 3-D ocean model on a custom computing platform. He has been involved in sustainability conversations on the internet since 1992, has been a web software developer since 2000, and has been posting sustainability articles on the web since 2007.

via Kevin Trenberth

ssts_evol

It’s early days and it may not pan out, but we’re still on track for a Super-ENSO.

The image (Slide 43 in this briefing) shows the evolution of the equatorial temperature anomaly through time in the two super-El-Ninos in the observational record, and the evolution to date of the current likely El Nino.

UPDATE: Peter Sinclair has more

Comments:

Interesting, but for a layperson such as myself, it would be helpful to include charts for moderate and minor ENSO events so that I could see the contrast. Admittedly, it might not mean a lot to me but then, it might.

I there a link and a complete figure somewhere?

Good Q

I had trouble finding directly comparable examples, but there's one in the left panel of figure 1 here. See also accompanying text on pages 92-93.

I have passed your inquiry on to Dr Trenberth.

I have the chops to draw the pictures but not the data or the (eww, Fortran) software handy.

Slide 43 in this briefing.

Thanks for the NCEP/NOAA June 6 report, that's handy.

Another interesting resource here:

http://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php/topic,730.1050.html

(not sure if one has to sign up to see the graphics, and it is necessary to go to the final page (22 currently) to see the most recent comments on this long-tunning topic)

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