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roarusdogus wrote:Stormsfury wrote:king of weather wrote:Well here was last years outlook...............As you can see WAY Warm as well!!!!!LOL
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories/im ... 21202d.jpg
That was on the premise of a forecasted stronger El Niño last year which weakened dramatically after the November peak.
SF
I disagree. The whole time they were saying a weak to moderate El Nino, which is what it turned out to be. I agree with many others from various private sectors and BBs that the CPC has a bad habit of only looking to the Pacific for seasonal forecasting, when in fact the Atlantic can play a big role as well. I remember last year they made a mention of the NAO which they said can't be forecasted more than a couple weeks ahead of time. Some may argue that but I suppose I can agree with them there. Then they said they expected it to be mostly positive because the it has been positve more the past decade. I agree that it was positive a lot of time in the '90s but as it's definitely headed the other way now that the PDO has changed cycles. Do they even look at climate history when they do these outlooks other than ENSO? It sure doesn't seem like it.
Roardog, I never said that they were forecasting a strong El Niño. IMHO, the El Niño was weak to moderate just like you said it was. However, here's the spin on things. El Niño clearly peaked in November and after that, Niño was on the way and actually looked more like La Nada overall by February. You'll notice on these archives that during November and December that the equatorial Pacific featured above normal SST's. However, as we reached into the winter season, the El Niño slowly retreated back into the Central Pacific. (Not as quick as the original post made it out to be ... but clearly remembered the outlook saying El Niño to last till the beginning of summer)
I agree about the CPC sometimes seemingly not looking at the WHOLE picture and scheme of things especially when the original outlook came, remember that they much overforecasted the length of the El Niño episode. This was a huge debate about this Tropical Atlantic Season. As we had gotten deeper into the Winter Season, more and more evidence that El Niño wasn't going to last as long as the CPC outlooks (lasting into the beginning of summer). Obviously with last winter, there's a lot more to it than just El Niño (unless we're talking 1997-1998).
Week ending August 31st, 2002
Week ending October 5th, 2002
Week ending November 2nd, 2002
Week ending November 19th, 2002
Week ending December 7th, 2002
Week ending December 29th, 2002
Week ending January 19th, 2003
Week ending February 1st, 2003
Week ending February 8th, 2003
Week ending March 2nd, 2003
SF
