NOAA ENSO Model Says L Nina Likely By July
By Drew Lerner
Kansas City, April 10 (World Weather Inc.) – Three weeks ago, World Weather, Inc. reported rapid changes in ocean temperature anomalies were occurring below the surface of the ocean and that was likely to change the potential for La Nina. The change implies La Nina would evolve faster than we anticipated and we speculated that the impact would be for greater dryness and warmth in a larger part of the Midwest and Plains this summer relative to our original summer outlook. The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s ENSO forecast model “CFSv2” flashed a 
significant La Nina Signal during the weekend adding more reason for believing that La Nina is probably going to occur sooner rather than later.
The change in NOAA’s model should not come as a surprise, but it is a significant change from a week to ten days ago when the model was an outlier in relation to many other international ENSO forecast models. The reason for the outlier position was due to a change in the ENSO model that was made because of someone’s decision that the model was too cool biased for a portion of the ocean. The change resulted in the NOAA model always ending in a significant warming trend out more than six months in time. This was in error and made the model questionable. Instead of being a leader in the prediction of ENSO events the CFSv2 model run became unreliable.
Considerable discussion about the changes to NOAA’s model occurred over a few months and a correction to the correction was then instigated. Since then the model has been performing more correctly. However, because of the changes made to the mode recently it needs to be viewed with caution until it is again proven to be a trustworthy product.
With that said, there has been consistent evidence over the past few weeks that the ocean is cooling quickly and the potential for La Nina has greatly increased. NOAA’s CFSv2 model has shown this trend from one day to the next over the past week, but the latest outlook has a dramatic signature suggesting, with little doubt, that ENSO is certainly headed for La Nina.
World Weather Inc. has noted that the depth of warmer than usual ocean temperature water has shrunk from more than 200 meters down from the surface of the eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean a few weeks ago to less than 25 meters early this month. We are expecting that some areas in the eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean will experience near normal temperatures in either this week’s updated ocean temperature data or in the following week. Warm water may continue in the central Pacific for a while longer. However, we anticipate sufficient amounts of cold water building up below the surface of the ocean that will perpetuate the cooling trend and help bring about La Nina this summer.
World Weather, Inc. will provide a further update with the latest data when it is released Monday morning.
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