The 00z GFS has latched on to the re-emergence of a North American dipole that I got laughed off the Weather West blog by the moderator, Daniel Swain, for even suggesting("you couldn't be more wrong", effectively).
http://ggweather.com/loops/gfs_00z_ten_all.htmHe is (was?) planning on doing a post on the 18z GFS operational run, even though it hinged entirely on a low being positioned juuust right and an atmospheric river somehow penetrating a ridge, two ideas that were not supported by ensemble members or the ECMWF. I didn't find that very credible even in concept, much less with the strong model disagreement.
http://ggweather.com/loops/gfs_18z_ten_all.htmAs chronicled so well here, El Nino lost much of its atmospheric support in November, partially due to an unfavorable phase of the MJO and IOD. The downwelling phase of the last EKW was already fading around 150W, and total equatorial oceanic heat content had already long ago peaked.
As also noted here, this year's El Nino isn't actually nearly as large as everyone says: in terms of temperatures(e.g. ONI, MEI) it is very intense, but the volume of warm water moved as recorded by TAO/TRITON was only half of that moved in 1997. The high ONI and MEI readings could very well just be global warming at work.
You can see the persistent heat in the Gulf of Alaska, which I believe is an artifact of reduced upwelling in the North Pacific(see Thermohaline Circulation thread), rebuilding, and the diminishing El Nino failing to flare out along the coastline of the Americas. Combine that with the massive slowdown in the AMOC and the slower and less accurate uptake of oceanic data into GCM's and I felt comfortable making the below calls even without model support. Slowing thermohaline circulation is an overwhelming force and a much less fickle beast than ENSO, though still not stable, obviously.
I apologize for airing "someone on the Internet was wrong" laundry, but if they hadn't gone so far as mocking me for my autism, I wouldn't feel the need. I'm on the record as of a long while ago predicting a rebound of the ridging in the Pacific, all before any of the models or any professional(except the ECMWF did hint about the dipole in the last frame of one run, which was all I needed to see). You can see all of this in the comments on the thread linked(hi, I'm Nate).
http://www.weatherwest.com/archives/3607#disqus_threadThe human mind is capable of incredible information assimilation, pattern recognition, and selective ignorance(not just bug, but also feature). This can all be judiciously used or not: if you get into a tactical slugfest with a chess program, you're going to lose, but if you strategically see a general theme or favorable endgame evolving that you can draw the computer into, you may well win(I always lose anyway). This is even more applicable to a vastly more complex system like global circulation as rendered by a GCM.
I fear that we're applying the same tactical thinking to climate change modeling and policy as well. Perhaps the impacts on the global climate from e.g. a slowing thermohaline circulation are so overwhelmingly massive that they are much more pressing issues than climate sensitivity or ocean acidification's effects on coccolithophores.
Last but not least, the re-emergence of this festering pattern dramatically reduces the chance that California will get any meaningful precipitation this year, and I fear that planners and public agencies will have listened to the monotonic chants, and California is going to be in actual, serious water trouble next autumn.
