#276 NOAA said it was conducting the rapid assessment due to heightened interest over El Niño’s impact upon California, which is in the midst of a historic four-year drought. El Niño brought a slew of rain to California in December and January, prompting warnings to residents not to let their guard down in an unprecedented water conservation push.
No it didn't. Nothing of the sort happened. Does NOAA not realize that 50 million people are actually living out here?
When December was bone dry, we were told 50 times to wait, El Nino wasn't expected to kick in until January. Stop your car at every dry drainage, there might be a flash flood upstream. Forget about water conservation, your house will wash into the sea.
When January had one Pacific storm train that didn't remotely fit anything previously defined as the "El Nino Pacific storm pattern", we were told 100 times that it was a perfect fit to the "El Nino Pacific storm pattern" but just wait until February, that is normally the big month.
When February did not provide a drop, we were told 150 times that March or -- because this was a godzilla year -- April would be big.
But, see the cross-post at Arctic Humor #260, now we're being told by Keith Trenberth at NCAR that this was in fact a fairly minor El Nino if the strength is measured the right way (his way, not NOAA's or NASA's) and that the only part that counts for North Pacific tele quit two weeks ago.
"While this is technically a very strong El Niño, it’s not playing out as expected because tribal members are too focused on temperatures of specific regions, rather than the big picture. This El Niño has been called ‘very strong’ but that is true if one measures it only by the warmth in the eastern tropical Pacific. But most El Niños also feature a cooling in the western tropical Pacific, and that is largely absent this year.”
As a result, Trenberth said, the differences in temperature along the equator are much less than previous super El Niños, and the reversal in the trade winds that blow across the tropics is much weaker than we saw in the winter of 1997-1998, when Southern California saw nearly 14 inches of rain in the month of February alone..In addition, a lot of action is occurring in a very warm tropical Indian Ocean, which is interfering with the Pacific Ocean activity.
“A consequence of this is that the activity in the eastern Pacific has been nowhere near as strong as expected, and in fact it disappeared a couple of weeks ago,” said Trenberth. It’s the eastern Pacific activity that tends to have the most influence on Southern California storm tracks. 12 Feb 16
So naturally no rain should be predicted in February, especially from the safe perspective of a hindcast (Trenberth could see dry weather out to March 1st). We learn his
computer model performed brilliantly, though time constraints
prevented results from being shared with NOAA, FEMA, NASA, western water managers, agricultural interests, and the public until months after the fact.
Right: computer modeling successfully predicted tele effects of this El Nino on the northern hemisphere. And war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength.
If the models are already so great, why do we need to spend further millions on this rushed new airplane survey of NOAA & NASA?
In June 2015, we were told that Miracle May -- that broke 125 year old rain records in Colorado and ended water rationing downstream in Arizona and California -- was exactly the kind of thing to be expected in an El Nino year even though
the indices had hardly budged by then and the main event was still 8 months away. I'm not joking, those are the exact words of a climate scientist to Associated Press.
I'm going on the record as predicting -- if we get another Miracle May this year -- it too will be attributed to the current El Nino, even though the supposed tele effects of that have already disappeared. Everything anywhere in and around an El Nino event is attributed to that El Nino, it's that simple. In La Nada years, it's just weather (though patterns can coincidentally be a perfect match to El Nino's!).
There seem to be no agreed-upon rules or criteria for attribution, only endlessly shape-shifting definitions and measures that provide a good temporary fit to recent weather. There are no consequences for pushing complete rubbish out to the press. There seems to be zero accountability or standards within the profession -- a C
- grade on a multiple choice test certifies you as meteorologist.
Will some science-hating humanities academic pound on Google Search to ridicule who said what when during the last six shabby months? I think that very likely.
My take overall is that El Nino tele climatology is not outright scientific fraud but is pushing the limits. By any practical measure, it's been harmful, which is worse than useless.
People are pretending to have knowledge that they don't. There is pressure to show results after decades of continuing failure. We are still stuck at recording event data and developing backwards-looking indicators that fit it.
Interestingly, D Swain has backed off from the 'ridiculously resilient ridge' as having any predictive value ('resilient means persistent and that can only be determined after the fact') and has (wisely) frozen his California weather blog awaiting a flurry of El Nino scientific papers (excuses) expected in June.
This could just as well go in the humor forum: the endlessly repeated mantra of 1982/83 and 1997/98 bringing above average precip to the Southwest will get dragged down badly this 3rd year but carry on, that can be quietly changed to the one thing you can count on in El Nino years is below average precip without the little people even noticing.
The participants here really need to look at the larger picture -- when one sector of science abuses public credibility, legitimate scientists in other fields get caught up in the downdraft of public contempt. This will very much detract from our ability to communicate the real risks of coming climate change.
