Warming Pacific Gets NOAA Model Excited For El Nino
By Drew Lerner
Kansas City, February 1 (World Weather Inc.) – An accelerated demise in La Nina conditions has induced a warming trend in the equatorial eastern Pacific Ocean that has created some excitement in the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) ENSO model. This week’s forecast run is decidedly biased toward El Nino and not just during the summer, but with the evolution of El Nino beginning this spring. World Weather, Inc. believes the model is much too quick in trying to bring back El Nino conditions, but the new trend is going to be a worry for many producers, traders and consumers doing business in or living in the tropical areas of the world. Confidence is very low in the aggressiveness in the El Nino forecast and caution is advised.
The NOAA ENSO model forecast released earlier this week seems overly Zealous for returning El Nino conditions, but the change in outlooks does raise quite a bit of concern, especially for places like India and Southeast Asia where drought occurred just a year or two ago.
India has suffered from dryness frequently in recent years and even though 2016 was a much better year, sugarcane production was still suffering from lingering drought in Maharashtra and Karnataka. Returning El Nino conditions in 2017 would not be a welcome event and could further impact the sugar, rice, oilseed, cotton, pulse and coarse grain production in India, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and areas from Myanmar to Vietnam.
Other areas in the world would be impacted, as well with returning dryness possible to western Canada and another mostly good production year in the United States, Brazil and improved conditions in Argentina. Drought might return to South Africa in its 2017-18 production year, as well. All of this would likely have influence on the world’s economy and there would likely be a little more support for inflated agricultural commodity futures prices for at least some products. But how real is the forecast?
World Weather, Inc. believes the NOAA model forecast is much too aggressive in bringing warmer ocean water to the eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean given the current condition of subsurface ocean temperatures. The trend for warming is real, but the aggressiveness is not likely to verify. NOAA’s model has suggested a significant trend change in February and March that would warm the eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean water sufficiently to induce El Nino conditions as soon as late March and April of this year. That seems far too aggressive given the trend in ocean temperatures recently.
Prior to this week the model had been predicting neutral ENSO conditions with a slight bias for El Nino during the summer and that forecast made more sense than this recent forecast. With that said, World Weather, Inc. has noticed general warming in many of the world’s ocean bodies in recent weeks with exception to the Indian Ocean which appears to be cooling. The trend for warming is not likely to continue as aggressive as it has been and we believe future NOAA ENSO model runs will eventually correct this aggression toward El Nino. Certainly the trend of ocean temperatures recently is a concern, but the odds of seeing a significant El Nino event in place by April are very low. Nevertheless, the mere thought of El Nino returning and dominating world weather in 2017 is enough to raise concern and to induce a closer monitoring of the changing trend.
As reported here a week or two ago, some of the recent years of ENSO forecasting have not been very successful – at least not in periods greater than a few months. A strong La Nina was predicted by many forecasters a year ago for the summer of 2016, but it did not materialize. Forecasts for La Nina came and went and then returned again in the second half of 2016 with very little accuracy in the longer range outlook. The last El Nino event to occur in 2015 was also advertised to be the strongest event in history that would create much calamity around the world. However, the impact of that event was less than its predecessors in 1982-83 and in 1997-98 and the event turned out to be no more intense than either of those two events.
The bottom line to this writing is that there is reason to be concerned about the recent rise in ocean temperatures and the latest forecast from NOAA, but the situation needs to be closely monitored before panic evolves. Certainly the news of more aggressive El Nino evolution suggested by NOAA in 2017 will have turned many heads and may impact long range forecasts for the coming Northern Hemisphere around the world. The situation needs to be (and will be) closely monitored, but World Weather, Inc. says look for changes in the forecast later this month and next that will – at least – slow the evolutionary process for El Nino, if not potentially eliminate the prospects for a “significant” event later in the year. El Nino is not an impossibility for 2017, but the aggression shown in the latest NOAA model run seems out of line with reality.
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