![]() Of course, the other issue when determining how good a forecast is, is that our forecasts are probabilistic in nature. So I'd recommend looking at forecasts after that period, which would still be 6 months before the upcoming winter. (Plus as a note, the forecast you showed above in your link is a model-only forecast and not the human based forecasts that are issued at the beginning of every month). ![]() So we know that forecasts made during that period are not as good. This is known as the Spring Predictability Barrier which we have written about here . It is well known that forecasts made in the spring for ENSO have less skill then those afterwards. It sounds like there is a difference of opinion on when "early" is. In future updates, we will spend more time describing ENSO and how it is defined and tracked, but if you can’t wait, you can read more here now.īut, if you just want to keep things simple, then watch Chris Farley play El Niño on Saturday Night Live. It wasn’t until the 1980s or later that the terms La Niña and Neutral gained prominence. It wasn’t until the late 1960s that Jacob Bjerknes and others realized that the changes in the ocean and the atmosphere were connected and the hybrid term “ENSO” was born. However, he did not recognize that it was linked to changes in the Pacific Ocean or El Niño. Sir Gilbert Walker discovered the “Southern Oscillation,” or large-scale changes in sea level pressure across Indonesia and the tropical Pacific. They referred to the warming as “El Niño,” ( niño being Spanish for a boy child) in connection with the religious holiday. Before La Niña was even recognized, South American fisherman noticed the warm up of coastal waters occurred every so often around Christmas. Why is that? Well, that is a fluke of history. So, by now, you might have noticed that while “ENSO” is a nice catchall acronym for all three states, that acronym doesn’t actually have the word La Niña in it. Maps by NOAA, based on data provided by NOAA View. Maps of sea surface temperature anomaly in the Pacific Ocean during a strong La Niña (top, December 1988) and El Niño (bottom, December 1997). However, there are some instances when the ocean can look like it is in an El Niño or La Niña state, but the atmosphere is not playing along (or vice versa). Often tropical Pacific SSTs are generally close to average. The normal easterly winds along the equator become even stronger. Over Indonesia, rainfall tends to increase while rainfall decreases over the central tropical Pacific Ocean.
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