The linked Robert Scribbler article supports some of A-Team's concerns that the current Super El Nino may not bring much precipitation to the US Southwest (as forecast), and raises the question of whether Polar Amplification (and/or the Blob) may be creating blocking highs that deflect storms to the north
Do the math: there's not going to be any aftermath in the Southwest (a critical area of prediction effort). I called this one on 10 Dec 15 (bottom 5 links) some 47 days ahead of Scribbler, who deserves high marks though for exploring mechanism and not following the meteorological herd: JPL NASA climatology and 100 others:
http://www.latimes.com/local/weather/la-me-ln-where-is-el-nino-20160126-story.html.On a scale of 1-5, I can at best give the meteorological community a score of -1 in forecasting skill because bad advice is worse than no advice. Instead of squandering the public trust in science on nonsensical preparations for flooding/food hoarding, we should have been preparing them for extension of the drought.
I also predicted the excuse list back in December that will come to dominate weather news in another month but need to add a few new ones:
-- in the past, the big El Nino rains always come in
January, February March April, trust us
-- with all the new data from this godzilla El Nino, we can perfect our computer models for next time
-- our computer models performed perfectly, just not where you are
-- our models successfully predicted heavy El Nino rains if you don't count the jet stream
-- just two big prior El Nino years can provide sound statistics even though the climates were different back then
-- we might be headed for a big La Nada or La Nina (if only our funding can be increased!)
-- wow, that big snowstorm in DC, no doubt that's attributable to El Nino
-- look over there, hurricane season has started in the Caribbean
I've noticed lately a lot of weather sites have taken it upon themselves to redefine 'normal' precip as relative to only the last 20 year average! When 15 of those were drought cycle? Sure, but if we go down that cherry-picking road, 2015 had fairly 'normal' CO
2 and global temps too.
Colorado River basin snowpack (ie Southern California water) is now 102.72% of the January 28th 'average'. In other words, you'll be taking navy showers again by June.
Sierra Nevada snowpack showed water content statewide at 18.7 inches or 115% of the historical average for that date, according to the California Department of Water Resources. The snowpack’s water content must be significantly greater than the April 1 average of 28 inches to have any considerable effect on the drought, according to the department. In an average year, melting snowpack provides roughly one third of the water used by California cities and farms.
I'm trying to keep an open mind about
December, January, mid-February, late-Feb and March but when I open up to the 250 hPA wind and walk it back for a month (no change) or look another 10 days forward at Jeff Masters (no change), it shuts down again:
http://marine.rutgers.edu/~francis/pubs_10-05.html Jennifer Francis publications
http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/isobaric/250hPa/orthographic=-110.80,42.71,393I have a simple proposal: let's compile all weather data from 1980 on but
only north of the Mexican border, double-blind the years (eg 1997/98 --> 2fTy/m4He), test the top 100 self-appointed climate experts for their ability to identify the status of the waters in the south equatorial Pacific (numerical strength of El Nino conditions, or merely which years were the strong El Ninos).
My theory is once meteorologists are told it's a godzilla El Nino, everything under the sun gets attributed to it -- and echoed everywhere (as happened with Piltdown Man, polywater, and desktop nuclear fusion). But if you had told them it's a neutral La Nada, the identical event would get attributed to normal chaotic fluctuations in 'weather'. I'm predicting that
no one can invert the data north of Mexico to the status of south equatorial Pacific waters.
We all know what happens when this is done with wine sommeliers: Two Buck Chuck and Gallo Hearty Burgundy come out on top of all them fancy bordeaux.
2015 El Niño?: Reply #1431 on December 10, 2015
http://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php/topic,1064.msg66948.html#msg669482015 El Niño?: Reply #1429 on December 10, 2015
http://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php/topic,1064.msg66940.html#msg669402015 El Niño?: Reply #1458 on December 21, 2015
http://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php/topic,1064.msg67293.html#msg67293Thermohaline Circulation Connections: Reply #3 on December 31, 2015
http://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php/topic,1448.msg67664.html#msg676642015/16 El Niño the aftermath: Reply #62 on January 10, 2016
http://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php/topic,1454.msg68122.html#msg68122