March Climate Briefing: Still Not Cooling

Authored by Jacquelyn Turner on March 20, 2020

Read our ENSO Essentials & Impacts pages for more about El Niño and La Niña.

As of mid-March, the sea-surface temperatures were at warm-neutral to borderline El Niño levels, while atmospheric indicators showed mainly neutral conditions. A new set of model runs predicts neutral conditions are most likely through summer, with a 79% probability for ENSO-neutral (21% chance for El Niño) for the March-May season, with neutral remaining the dominant probability through autumn. This outlook is similar to that of the official ENSO forecast issued March 12, which used both models and human judgement.

Weston Anderson provides the briefing summary:

What’s New

See below for tweets summarizing the current El Niño situation.

The latest weekly Nino3.4 SST anomaly is 0.5ºC, which is within the weak El Niño range. This map and more in our data library: https://t.co/sxpdQ5lhvl. + More about ENSO: https://t.co/GldQNBgs3D. pic.twitter.com/ELxS7WM40B
— IRI (@climatesociety) March 17, 2020

Warm SSTs in the west and warm-neutral SSTs in the east, with a sustained ocean heat content mean that subsurface 'fuel' for a warm event remains, although the atmosphere doesn't seem to be playing ball. The SOI has returned to near neutral#IRIforecast pic.twitter.com/CvwBjIweX8
— IRI (@climatesociety) March 19, 2020

As we've seen in previous months, convection near the dateline is persisting, fueled by warm SSTs, although the signal is pretty far west in the Pacific #IRIforecast pic.twitter.com/zzPXasq2Aw
— IRI (@climatesociety) March 19, 2020

ENSO Forecasts

To predict ENSO conditions, computers model the SSTs in the Niño3.4 region over the next several months. The plume graph below shows the outputs of these models, some of which use equations based on our physical understanding of the system (called dynamical models), and some of which use statistics, based on the long record of historical observations.

The dynamical models are forecasting a possible La Niña by late summer, while the statistical models tend to remain warmer into the summer.

This may be because we are in the spring predictability barrier, which the statistical models pick up on#IRIforecast pic.twitter.com/c7bxkKZwlg
— IRI (@climatesociety) March 19, 2020

The probability for El Niño conditions to continue has dropped to around 40% for the remainder of the year. The El Niño odds are lower in the official probabilistic forecast issued by the U.S. Climate Prediction Center (CPC) and IRI in early March than in the mid-month IRI/CPC forecast. The earlier forecast uses human judgement in addition to model output, while the mid-month forecast relies solely on model output. More on the difference between these forecasts in this IRI Medium post.

ENSO in context: Resource page on climate variability

IRI’s Global Seasonal Forecasts

Each month, IRI issues seasonal climate forecasts for the entire globe. These forecasts take into account the latest model outputs and indicate which areas are more likely to see above- or below-normal temperatures and precipitation.

All forecast maps, including temperature in addition to precipitation, and also including a description of the methodologies, are available on our seasonal forecast page. Additional forecast formats, such as our flexible forecast maproom, are available in the IRI Data Library.

Learn more about El Niño and La Niña on our ENSO resources page, and sign up here to get notified when the next forecast is issued. In the meantime, check out #IRIforecast.