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virtualsphere

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  1. Following my last post I've been comparing the monthly CET figures for winter against ENSO data:

    December

    Similar to the seasonal charts I posted yesterday, the stronger the El Nino, the less likely the chance of a cold December CET.  La Nina has delivered a wide range of outcomes and even a strong La Nina in either 1+2 or 3.4 regions doesn't seem to inhibit a cold December.  This is based on average ENSO for the preceding Sept - Nov:

    Nino12vsDecCET.thumb.png.02362cda0560cdccfd48d211cf92f198.png Nino3.4vsDecCET.thumb.png.0309c47032c916efde96b76e1384a214.png

    January

    As with December, the strongest El Nino values are associated with warmer Januaries, however there are some examples creeping in here of moderate El Ninos with a colder January CET, especially in the 3.4 region (2010, 1942 etc).  Stronger La Nina values in the 3.4 region also seem to be associated with warmer Januaries, unlike in December, so a neutral ENSO would appear to be the best bet for a particularly frigid January.  Here, ENSO data is for the preceding Oct - Dec.  Apologies for the weird +1 on the year, I couldn't get Tableau to add 1 to the year of the ENSO data!  

    Nino12vsJanCET.thumb.png.4e67b8ad7a2409b51e5acaaf0e93215c.png Nino3.4vsJanCET.thumb.png.8dd6dc5f3e80b9070a9925b3cb8bd6a6.png

    February

    This is more interesting and, in line with some of the earlier comments, you can see a few stronger El Ninos associated with colder Februaries.  The 3.4 region shows a lot more scatter while still trending slightly to warmer for the higher El Nino values.  1983 is a stand out particularly in the Nino 1+2 region data but 1889, 1942 and 1919 were sub-3C Februaries with +1 ENSO values.  1998 shows that exceptional warmth is still also a possibility.  Here the ENSO data is for the preceding Nov - Jan.

    Nino12vsFebCET.thumb.png.f99ec3596d241343e0a450067b4f2194.png  Nino3.4vsFebCET.thumb.png.3e5ca3800d0584a6c18f6a11fda90bfe.png

    NB: in all the above, the colour represents the 3.4 region in the 1+2 graphs, and vice versa to try and give an idea of which region the strongest ENSO values are located.  eQBO is represented by a square, wQBO by a cross, though the data only goes back to 1979 so there's not much to go on here and earlier years are all represented by circles.  I was just going to ask if there's any older QBO datasets when I saw @BruenSryan's post above - so will have to take a look!

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  2. 22 hours ago, Premier Neige said:

    Question for you as I'm bored with this so called summer and my thoughts are turning to winter already. As I understand it, a weak to moderate el niño gives us a better chance of a colder winter (other factors allowing). Does a strong el niño tend to scupper our chances and have we had a cold winter during a "super niño"?

    I've dug out and updated some data visualisations I created in Tableau a while back on this.  Essentially taking a broad brush approach, the weaker Nino the better for a chance of a cold winter - these are comparing the average Nino data for Sept, Oct & Nov with the CET for the following winter (year is the start year of winter, so 2009 for 2009/10 etc).  Nina winters give a wide range of temperature outcomes but it seems the stronger the Nino gets, the narrower & warmer the range of CET outcome.  

    Nino 1+2 region: for a sub-3C CET overall, there's only one example here above +1.0 (1941/42)

    Nino12vsWinterCET(1).thumb.png.211f309e828df64da644fcd0c99db1d9.png

    eQBO years highlighted (gives a far smaller dataset and very few strong positive ENSO + eQBO examples):

    Nino12vsWinterCET.thumb.png.d0937e30854efaa45f6e319fe7271bfc.png

    Nino 3.4 - similar pattern, perhaps slightly less pronounced: 2009/10 probably as high as it goes in the sub 3.5C range:

    Nino3.4vsWinterCET.thumb.png.433a5f2266476ba13fec5f00c64f0d58.png

    eQBO highlighted:

    Nino3.4vsWinterCETeQBO.thumb.png.5196ed4c3c11b1ad93774631f56771be.png

    Obviously this doesn't really indicate cold spells in otherwise warmer winters, or the synoptic conditions as shown in the charts already posted by SqueakheartLW.  I'll try and take a deeper look at individual months when I get a chance.  

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  3. 6 hours ago, Snow tyre said:

    This interesting dog leg structure (the green 'river') running through Wales and dropping across Hampshire looks almost exactly like this morning's rain radar. Is there a reason this is persisting?

    The animation looks like it's taken from the GFS 0Z run so will show all accumulated rainfall after midnight & so include this morning.

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  4. 1 hour ago, Vorticity0123 said:

    It's quite remarkable that up to now this year has seen a strong tendency towards ridging over Central-Southern Europe. If you look at the 500 hPa gph anoms for this year from January 1 up to November 6, the anomalous ridging over Central Europe is quite clear...

    What I am wondering is whether these anomalies could persist throughout the winter as well. Of course it is far too simple to assume that the observed anomalies this year imply that the winter of 2022-2023 will continue in the same way. Still, I wonder what factors like the persistence of La Niña or other tropical / extratropical forcings have led to the tendency for European ridging to occur, and whether similar forcings could result in a higher likelihood of European ridging for the upcoming winter.

    Yes the anomaly over Europe has certainly had an impact this year - interestingly if you look at some of the variations throughout the year, the ridging has varied in intensity and location, and taking this example for April combined with some of the modelling recently suggesting ridging to move further north (which admittedly has backtracked recently), it's possible the high could move to a more favourable location for seasonal weather as the winter progresses.   

      compday.6izfhml23b.thumb.gif.397064382799a8e2f62a2e233e192559.gif

  5. Dug out this analysis I did a couple of years back, La Nina is not necessarily bad if it's a colder winter you're after, its the strong El Nino event that you probably don't want to see.  This doesn't take into account the longevity of the Nina though.

     @StretfordEnd1996There's some other data sources here https://climatedataguide.ucar.edu/climate-data/nino-sst-indices-nino-12-3-34-4-oni-and-tni and back to 1870 here https://psl.noaa.gov/gcos_wgsp/Timeseries/Data/nino34.long.data 

       971399319_Nino3.4WinterCET.thumb.png.8af3fec6b40d96f599858bc6bf83eb65.png

  6. 2012 was definitely the worst here, followed by 2008: both complete washouts. 2007 probably third, though we did at least get some dry weather that August. 2020 was poor after a very nice spring, though I'm not a fan of heat so am rating that one on the lack of dry sunny weather and can understand why those who like heat would rate it more highly with the very warm August spell.  1992 seemed poor at the time, May was decent but I remember the school summer break being very wet.  

    Then summers like 1998, 2009, 2011 which didn't feel quite as bad overall but lacked a nice dry and sunny spell here as far as I can remember.  

    2013, 1995, 1996, 2021 and 2018 would be my favourites from the same period.  I think we did much better here in the far west last year than much of the country (but again, from the perspective of preferring dry and sunny rather than extreme heat).  

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