The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/NOAA issued its winter outlook Thursday. It is heavily influenced by a currently strong El Nino. El Nino’s significantly warmer than average sea and surface temperatures in the Eastern Tropical Pacific change barometric pressure patterns at the surface and aloft around the globe through substantial heat release.
Strong El Ninos are one of the more reliable long-fuse (months in advance, rather than weeks) signals from nature, not present in most years, that can be used in making a seasonal outlook with somewhat higher confidence. You may have already seen my early winter season outlook – which focused more heavily on impacts in our region – in which I included a number of factors in addition to the current dominant El Nino.
The NOAA outlook has to be broader in scope, since it applies to the entire U.S. In a general sense, their thinking aligns well with mine concerning this El Nino. It does not currently count out what is known as a “super El Nino,” which occurred in 1997-98 and most recently in 2015-16. But the unusual depth of the abnormally warm Pacific waters is greater than usual and suggests that this El Nino still has some notable strengthening ahead, peaking in late autumn and early winter. It may yet reach super status in a couple of months, as modeled by the National Center for Atmospheric Research.
Should such a peak intensity be reached, it would make the NOAA predictions even more likely to verify, in general. I have seen a few private sector meteorologists on social media downgrade the intensity of this El Nino by December, but there is no current real evidence to support such a view, in my analysis. El Nino should remain quite strong into at least January.
In terms of temperature, the highest likelihood for a warmer than average cold weather season is in the northern tier of the U.S.
This year, NOAA has a new subcategory, called “near normal,”…
Read the full article here
Leave a Reply