The Blackboard

Many of us have been wondering when El Niño will peak. In NOAA’s Monday weekly update we find:
A majority of the models indicate that the current El Niño episode is near or at its peak (e.g. December-January-February).
That means the peak might be near So, it’s time to bet quatloos on the Niño 3.4 Average [...]

The data required to compute the “ASO” average El Nino bets are now in. As readers recall, at first I was going to wait for NOAA to publish the value. But when someone found the weekly values, I decreed that the rules were that I would compute my own ASO average based on the weekly [...]

Rumor has it that El Nino is weakening. But, as far as I can tell, NOAA is predicting a continuuing El Nino. So, I think this means it’s time to bet on the value NOAA will publish for the NINO 3.4 3 month average for ASO. That is, we will bet the number [...]

Update: Robot Change Detection alerted me to a second GISSTemp update. The reported August 2009 anomaly rose to 0.52C, up from 0.51C on Tuesday! A whole bunch of data must have arrived at GISS because there were quite a few changes propagating back to October 1882. Below, I’ve inserted a screen shot of [...]

El Niño is still present, but it hasn’t yet turned into the “El Niño of the Baskervilles” one might have worried about based on Joe Romm’s rather excited prose earlier this summer. This is the introduction from NOAA’s latest monthly update with some bits highlighted:
A weak El Niño continued during August 2009, as sea [...]

I know some of you love to hate GISSTemp. But, fair is fair, El Niño is now showing in the satellites data too. Here’s Channel 5 AMSU:
Below, I subtracted the 20 year mean and show daily channel 5 anomalies:

El Niño conditions are in and it looks like the HadSST’s temperature anomalies may finally break their all time high temperature anomalies. The June anomaly of 0.50 C is a big jump up from 0.355C for May:
It’s worth comparing the June anomaly of 0.50 C these to previous values:

May 2009: 0.355C.
June 2008: 0.251C
June 1998: 0.519C. [...]

Last month I discussed Joe Romm’s nearly hysterical reaction to the fact that NOAA thought the Southern Oscillation was about to oscillate back to El Niño (as it often does after La Niña.) This month, NOAA, whose staff write with somewhat less emotion than Romm updated their forecast:
Model forecasts of SST anomalies for [...]