Second warmest March on record; will La Niña be gone by hurricane season?
March 2008 was the 2nd warmest March for the the globe on record, according to statistics released by the National Climatic Data Center. Over the Northern Hemisphere, and over all of the globe's land areas, March 2008 was the warmest March in the 128-year global record. Only the presence of a moderately strong La Niña event that cooled ocean waters in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific prevented March 2008 from surpassing March 2002 as the warmest March on record. March broke a string of three straight months when the globe did not record a top ten warmest month ever. Between February 2006 and November 2007, the globe set top ten monthly warm temperature records for 22 straight months.
Figure 1. Departure of temperature from average (the anomaly) for March of 2008, the second warmest March on record for the globe. While the U.S. recorded slightly below average temperatures, much of Asia and Europe saw remarkably warm temperatures. Image credit: National Climatic Data Center.
How much cooling did La Niña give to the globe in March?
La Niña is a periodic cooling of the Equatorial waters of the Eastern Pacific that occurs every 3-7 years. The cooling is due to a natural cycle of anomalous winds from the east that act to push surface waters away from the coast of South America, allowing cold water from deep in the ocean to rise to the surface to replace the surface waters blown to the west. These cool waters often cause a noticeable drop in global temperatures. Conversely, when the opposite phenomena occurs--an El Niño event, which brings anomalously warm Sea Surface Temperatures (SSTs) to the Equatorial Eastern Pacific, enough heat is added to the atmosphere that global temperatures warm significantly. According to Trenberth et al. (2002), a typical El Niño event increases global temperatures by about 0.1°C. Exceptional El Niño events, such as occurred in 1997-1998 and 1982-1983, increase global temperatures by up to 0.2°C. El Niño events heat the atmosphere by causing changes in cloudiness and atmospheric circulation, and through direct radiation of heat from the ocean to the atmosphere. There is a lag of 3-6 months between the time an El Niño event occurs and the time the atmosphere heats in response. Similarly, when a La Niña event occurs, heat is drawn out of the atmosphere and the oceans are recharged with heat. Global temperatures cool, again with a lag of 3-6 months. The correlation between global temperature anomalies and El Niño/La Niña temperature anomalies can be plainly seen in Figure 2. Note that the correlation is not perfect--there are some El Niño/La Niña events that do not affect the global temperature much. For example, global temperatures did not cool much during the strong 1988-1989 La Niña event. Therefore, it is a good bet--but not certain one--that had we not had a strong La Niña event this winter, March 2008 would have been the warmest March on record, since it missed the record by only 0.04°C.
Figure 2. Comparison of temperature anomalies in the equatorial Pacific Ocean bounded by a box between 5°S, 5°N, 120°W, and 180°W (the Niño 3.4 region) and global temperatures for 1950-1998. Means for 1950-1976 and 1977-1998 (horizontal lines) are shown separately to highlight a climate shift that occurred in 1976/1977. The reasons for this shift are unknown. Note that when an El Niño event occurs, the globe tends to warm by about 0.1°C, and when a La Niña event occurs, the globe tends to cool. Image credit: American Geophysical Union's Journal of Geophysical Research.
Warmest month ever stats
It is interesting to compare what the phase of El Niño/La Niña was during each of the 12 record warmest months the globe has recorded. If we adjust for the 3-6 month lag between an El Niño/La Niña event and the monthly global temperature records, it turns out that nine of the twelve monthly records were set when an El Niño event occurred during the 3-6 month period prior to the record. Considering that climatologically El Niño conditions are present only about 25% of the time, El Niño has a major impact on when record global warmth will occur. The warmest year on record, 1998, occurred during the strongest El Niño of the past century. The table below compares the 12 monthly global temperature records with the temperature in the Niño 3.4 region (a 3-month average centered four months before the record was set). El Niño events, which occur when the Niño 3.4 index is greater than 0.4°C, are marked with an "E".
Record......Niño 3.4 index
-----------------------------
Jan 2007 +0.7 E
Feb 1998 +1.7 E
Mar 2002 -0.1
Apr 1998 +2.5 E
May 1998 +2.3 E
Jun 2005 +0.5 E
Jul 1998 +1.4 E
Aug 1998 +1.1 E
Sep 2005 +0.5 E
Oct 2003 +0.0
Nov 2004 +0.7 E
Dec 2003 +0.4
Figure 3. A La Niña event exists when ocean surface temperatures in the equatorial Pacific Ocean bounded by a box between 5°S, 5°N, 120°W, and 180°W (the Niño 3.4 region) are cooler than 0.4°C below average (based on means from 1971-2000). La Niña events between 0.5°C and 0.9°C are referred to as weak, 1.0°C and 1.4°C are moderate, and 1.5°C or cooler, strong. The winter of 2007-2008 saw strong La Niña conditions, but this has weakened to a moderate event in March. Image credit: NOAA Climate Prediction Center.
An El Niño by hurricane season?
Presence of El Niño conditions usually causes enhanced levels of wind shear over the Atlantic, reducing hurricane activity, so it would be nice to see an El Niño this Fall. The strong La Niña event we had over the past winter has weakened considerably in the past two months, and is now classified as a moderate event, according to the latest El Niño discussion issued by NOAA's Climate Prediction Center. There is some hope that an El Niño will develop by hurricane season. Two of the long-range computer models are now calling for an El Niño to develop by hurricane season (Figure 4), and none of them were calling for El Niño last month. However, there is probably not time for a full-fledged El Niño event to develop, and it is expected that we will have weak La Niña or neutral conditions this hurricane season. Since reliable El Niño records began in 1950, there has never been a switch over to El Niño by hurricane season from a La Niña as strong as the one we have now. Columbia University's International Research Institute is predicting that neutral El Niño conditions are most likely for the coming hurricane season (57% chance), with a 20% chance of an El Niño, and 23% chance of a La Niña. This is pretty much what climatology says--on average, we experience El Niño conditions 25% of the time and La Niña conditions 25% of the time.
Figure 4. Computer model forecasts of El Niño/La Niña made in April. The forecasts that go above the red line at +0.5°C denote El Niño conditions; -0.5°C to +0.5°C denote neutral conditions, and below -0.5°C denote La Niña conditions. Image credit: Columbia University's IRI.
References
Trenberth, K. E., J. M. Caron, D. P. Stepaniak, and S. Worley, >Evolution of El Niño, Southern Oscillation and global atmospheric surface temperatures", J. Geophys. Res., 107(D8), 4065, doi:10.1029/2000JD000298, 2002.
I'll be in Orlando next week for the American Meteorological Society's bi-annual hurricane conference, and plan to make some quick posts during the week to update everyone on the latest hurricane research. I may make one more post before then.
Jeff Masters
Reader Comments
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If you work for State Farm.......beaware
I had State Farm insurance for years, then, I was in a wreck with a girl that ran a stop sign spun my truck around a few times, my head hit the rear veiw mirror and I don't know what else. Anyway, the wreck was in 1991. My left side still goes numb, and I am scarred to death of cars pulling up too close to a stop sign while I am driving. State Farm dropped me as a client, called me a melingerer or something it was horrible...turned out she had State Farm insurance too...Won't even tell you what they did to my grandmother (or the boys family)when her sitter hit and killed a young man on a motorcycle...I had Farm Bureau for Katrina
866. Caffinehog 5:17 AM GMT on April 27, 2008
I DO agree with the USGS on this point: Aftershocks usually decrease in magnatude, not increase. Something's fishy, and the USGS knows it.
Could it be a Super Volcano? Like the one at Yosemite?
Last mass extinction of people suppossedly occurred around 75,000 years ago and a Super Volcano was given credit for being the cause. There has been a lot of upwelling there in the last decade and scientists were wondering what it all meant.
Super Volcano? Like the one at Yosemite?
LOL Yosemite is not a Super Volcano
What will its name be? and where is it headed?
Next name of the list is "Nargis"
Expected to reccurve back to the northeast
Forecast Track
So would Nargis be a threat to Bangladesh
possibly yeah
So would Nargis be a threat to Bangladesh
possibly yeah
---
Looks like Myanmar is going to get this cyclone
http://www.weatheroffice.gc.ca/data/satellite/goes_sigwx_1070_100.jpg
The "mega Thrust" earthquake of 1700 on the Cascadia Subduction zone has been studied fairly extensively. Steve Earl at Malaspina University College has a fine presentation on his web site.
Link
This link shows an obvious TC in The Indian ocean
I just think India's scared of naming it its to well organized to be a depression
Two things:
1. Look up definitions for categories in the N Indian basin (Bay of Bengal, basically) and you will note that there are some differences in meaning for some apparently familiar terminology. It makes it seem as if the Indian mets are downplaying systems when it's really a difference of nomenclature.
2. India is famous for not calling it until what seems to us to be "the last minute". In fact, they were so last minute last year that a hurricane hit Pakistan (cat 2 or 3, if I remember correctly) and they hadn't even given it a name as yet! It's not fear, I think; it's something else. What, I'm not quite sure. (However, if weather could precipitate a war, India is likely to be on one side . . . lol)
An 11-year epoch of increasingly severe solar storms that could fry power grids, disrupt cell-phone calls, knock satellites back to Earth, endanger astronauts in space, and force commercial airliners to change their routes to protect their radio communications and to avoid deadly solar radiation could begin as soon as this fall, scientists announced Monday.
When the solar cycle reaches its peak in 2012, it will hurl at Earth mammoth solar storms with intense radiation and clouds of high-speed subatomic particles millions of miles across, the scientists said.
A storm of that magnitude could short-circuit a world increasingly dependent on giant utilities and satellite communications networks. Such a storm in 1989 caused power grids to collapse, causing a five-hour blackout in Quebec.
Monday's forecast was announced by scientists from agencies including NASA and the National Science Foundation, based on research centered at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado.
There is disagreement on exactly when the new cycle will begin -- one key researcher predicted the cycle will start in late 2007 or early 2008, and another said it could begin either late this year or in early 2007. But they did agree that the most severe storms won't begin popping on the solar surface for several years, but when they do, they'll be huge.
The solar storms in the past have knocked out huge power grids and screwed up global electronics and data communications, but "the next sunspot cycle will be 30 to 50 percent stronger than the last one," the scientists said in Monday's statement.
Reaching that 50 percent threshold would make it the most intense solar cycle since the late 1950s and the second worst since the early 1700s, Peter Gilman, one of the researchers, said in a phone interview.
Astronomers will monitor the sun daily in the coming months to see how it's doing. Early warning signs will be the formation of large groups of sunspots, which are clusters of solar magnetic fields that are cooler than the rest of the sun.
"I look (at telescopic images of the sun) almost every day, thinking, 'It could be today,' " said David Hathaway, solar physics team leader at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama. He compared it to "waiting for the first sparrow of spring."
Solar storms can happen at any time during an 11-year solar cycle. However, by far the worst storms are likeliest to occur during the period known as "solar maximum," or solar max for short. The last solar max was in 2001.
The scientists are confident of their forecast for 2012 because they've successfully used a new computer model to "forecast" the past. That is, they used records of old solar cycles to figure out how the sun should have behaved during eight past cycles, as far back as the early 20th century. They "forecast" the sun's past behavior -- "hindcasting," they call it -- "with more than 98 percent accuracy" the scientists said.
"I'm really excited about this (discovery)," said NASA's Hathaway. "It's based on sound physical principles, and it finally answers the 150-year-old question: What causes the sunspot cycle?"
The cycle's victims could include space satellites. The coming storms could heat the upper levels of Earth's atmosphere, causing it to expand and exert drag on low-flying satellites -- perhaps enough drag to tug some of them back to Earth. Solar storms have been blamed for the U.S. Skylab space station's premature fall back to Earth in 1979.
Air travelers could be affected, too. Since the end of the Cold War, to avoid headwinds, airlines have increasingly flown subpolar routes to get between the United States and other Northern Hemisphere continents quickly and cheaply. But during solar storms, they must avoid the poles and fly more southerly routes.
They do so partly in order to avoid having their radio communications disrupted over dangerous polar terrain and partly to avoid exposing passengers -- especially pregnant women -- to the increased radiation, said solar-storm expert Joseph Kunches, chief of the forecast and analysis branch of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Environment Center in Boulder, Colo.
The northern and northeastern portions of North America are historically more vulnerable to system outages caused by solar storms than California and most of the Western states, said Gregg Fishman, spokesman for the California Independent System Operator. That's possibly because among other things, he said, there's a higher iron and mineral content in the North and Northeast that conducts the ground current more easily and allows for more of an impact during solar storms
The India Meteorological Department uses 3 minute sustained wind average unlike the NHC that uses 1 minute sustained winds and other RSMC/TCWC that uses 10 minute sustained wind average.
The cyclone that hit Pakistan last year did get named in post cyclone analysis. (Yemyin was its name)
all4hurricane
The IMD advisory is from 9:00 AM UTC, before the JTWC even designated it a 35kt cyclone.
IST = UTC plus 5 and a half hours.
Link
In the Gulf of Mexico..."Gale Warning W of 94w"
www.AdriansWeather.com
They prediction does put landfall near Myanmar
Tropical Cyclone Bulletin
17:30 PM IST April 27, 2008
Subject: Deep Depression over southeast and adjoining Southwest Bay of Bengal.
The depression over southeast and adjoining southwest Bay of Bengal remains practically stationary and intensified into a deep depression. The deep depression lays centered as of 12:00 PM UTC over southeast and adjoining southwest Bay of Bengal near 12.0N 86.5E or about 700 kms east-southeast of Chennai. The system is likely to intensify further and move initially in a northwesterly direction.
Under its influence, rain/thundershowers is likely in many places with isolated heavy falls over Andaman & Nicobar Islands during the next 48 hours.
Sea conditions is very rough around the system's center.
In the words of the Peggy Lee song:
Is that all there is?
If that's all there is, my friend, then let's keep dancing;
let's break out the booze and have a ball,
if that's all there is . . .
Fortunately for us, there's still hurricane season to look forward to . . . LOL
Tropical Cyclone Outlook
16:00 PM UTC APRIL 27th 2008
The depression over southeast and adjoining southwest Bay of Bengal remains practically stationary and intensified into a deep depression. The deep depression lays centered as of 12:00 PM UTC over southeast and adjoining southwest Bay of Bengal near 12.0N 86.5E or about 700 kms east-southeast of Chennai. The system is likely to intensify further and move initially in a northwesterly direction.
Under its influence, rain/thundershowers is likely in many places with isolated heavy falls over Andaman & Nicobar Islands during the next 48 hours.
Sea conditions is very rough around the system's center.
In association with the system, broken intense to very intense convective clouds are seen over the Bay of Bengal between latitude 9.5N to 15.5N and longitude 82.0E to 87.0E. Moderate to intense convective clouds are also seen over Andaman and Nicobar Islands and adjoining Andaman Sea.
You know...It may have been Yellowstone. At least I got the 'Y' right :-)
Anyway, there has been some discussion over the last few years that there may be evidence of a Super Volcano in that area and coupled with the fact that it has been rising steadily for quite some time might be cause for concern.
( for those of you who do not know Elmer Fudd, ask your daddy or grandpa )
Time Sunday, April 27, 2008 at 10:49:49 AM (PDT)
Sunday, April 27, 2008 at 17:49:49 (UTC)
Distance from Reno, NV - 8 km (5 miles) W (270 degrees)
Sparks, NV - 14 km (9 miles) W (268 degrees)
New Washoe City, NV - 28 km (18 miles) NNW (336 degrees)
Loyalton, CA - 32 km (20 miles) ESE (120 degrees)
Coordinates 39 deg. 31.8 min. N (39.530N), 119 deg. 54.7 min. W (119.912W)
Depth 0 km (0.0 miles)
Quality unknown
Location Quality Parameters Nst= 45, Nph= 45, Dmin=0 km, Rmss=0 sec, Erho=0 km, Erzz=0 km, Gp=0 degrees
Event ID# nn00243001
they this had a 3.0
Date-Time Sunday, April 27, 2008 at 18:31:10 UTC
Sunday, April 27, 2008 at 11:31:10 AM at epicenter
Location 39.550°N, 119.913°W
Depth 0 km (~0 mile) set by location program
Region NEVADA
Distances 5 km (3 miles) NE (44°) from Verdi-Mogul, NV
Some serious stuff there man. Tomorow, I will cash in all my chips, sell my dog and chickens, and prepare to meet 2012 in a suitable state of bliss.
Kind of looking forward to it actually.......
Farm Bureau are good people.
I agree...They have taken very good care of me, especially during all the Katrina mess. My agents are great. The company is great...I am sticking with them.
01B is getting more organized!
East Atl SST's are above normal
Clear sky over the trop Atl would allow for additional heating
ITCZ is still south of where it should be ( in the Atl and South America )
Mid and High level winds still south/westerly from Caribbean to Azores ( approximately)
GOM and Carib. sea Temps are increasing
No negative influence to date from SAL, Dust etc from Africa
Bermuda high has not yet shown its hand
Enso looking to be neutral by Aug, / Sept
What else ??
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Wunderground dosent give predictions for storms. The predictions come from the NAVY site which Im pretty sure comes from the JTWC (dont quote me).
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