Tuesday, April 3, 2012

El Nino/La Nina Update

Tuesday, April 3, 2012
1:06 P.M.

This has to be a super speedy post, cause I have a chem lab orientation I have to be at by 1:30 and it takes around 10 minutes to walk over there. But hopefully I can get some stuff down before then.

I might as well give you guys a brief overview of how our La Nina is doing. It's pretty much dead. Let's take a look at some of the SST anomalies for the different regions. As I have said many times before in this blog, Nino 3.4 is the region that is generally the most telling of the general state of the tropical Pacific as it relates to El Nino or La Nina.

Retrieved from Columbia University's International Research Institute for Climate and Society

Nino 3.4 is just about neutral, and it is forecast to warm up even further over the next couple months. Still, it is not expected to transition to an El Nino phase (thank goodness, I hate those things) but it will likely be a tad warmer than average. We are definitely not in a La Nina anymore. Here's a picture of the SST temperatures and anomalies over the Tropical Pacific for the past week.


And finally, here's a picture of some model forecasts the Nino 3.4 region SST anomalies over the next year or so. The forecast is a little old, but you can clearly see a transition to a neutral phase, with temperatures ever so slightly above average.


I'm a fast typer.
Charlie

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