SST anomaly -- what do you think?

[The Big Dog]

What do you all make of the warm pool off the west coast of Colombia/Ecuador? It wasn't there last week, and the cold pool doesn't look nearly as impressive.

http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/PSB/EPS/SST/d ... 1.2005.gif

[MWatkins]

Here's last week's:

http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/PSB/EPS/SST/d ... 5.2005.gif

I don't believe that this area is especially significant. In 1997 for example, the warming that helped create the nino event started on the other side of the equator and moved north and westward over time...

Here's what it looked like on 3/15/1997:

http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/PSB/EPS/SST/c ... 5.1997.gif

Notice all of the warm water collected to the west of South America...also notive that temps in this region have actually gone down as opposed to normal since last week.

Actually...the basin in general looks a lot like last year at this time:

http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/PSB/EPS/SST/d ... 3.2004.gif

So...I would venture a guess that this is not an indicator of any long-term warming trend...although the cool tounge sticking out has warmed some since last week.

Just have to keep watching...

MW

[StormChasr]

EL NINO for summer of 2005, and a repeat of 1997?? I think so.

[MWatkins]

EL NINO for summer of 2005, and a repeat of 1997?? I think so.

Other than trying to stir up opinions...why do you think we'll see the strongest Nino in 100 years or more? I can give you 15 reasons against it...but I'd be interested to learn how you think it's going to happen...

MW

[HurricaneBill]

Aren't twin cyclones (one in the northern hemisphere and one in the southern) a sign of an oncoming El Nino? I don't think we've had any recently.

[StormChasr]

Other than trying to stir up opinions...why do you think we'll see the strongest Nino in 100 years or more? I can give you 15 reasons against it...but I'd be interested to learn how you think it's going to happen...

Why? Because we've had increasingly warmer PAC temps. We've had a lot of tropical cyclone activity in the PAC, including two in the Western Australia area at the same time. There was already a weak El Nino in place this winter. Seismic activity has been high in the Indian and Pacific rims---put it all together, seems like an active PAC time, and a less active ATL time in my opinion, and as I've said before, I am NOT trying to stir up anything---just the opinion of a mathematician, NOT a pro Met.

[Scorpion]

Seismic activity?? How does that have anything to do with SST's or hurricanes.

[StormChasr]

You don't think that had an effect upon the temperature of the water, when a chunk the size of Manhattan drops out of the ocean floor? What about all of the kinetic energy?????

[AussieMark]

I don't think Cyclones numbers has anything to do with El Nino personally.

for example the 2 strong Cyclones off West Australia only 1 actually developed in the Indian. Ingrid had developed in the Pacific and just emerged into the Indian Ocean via her westward track.

over the last decade we have had lots of seasons of heavy cyclone numbers in both basins and some had very heavy counts of what u call a "Major" Hurricane.

depending if its EL Nino, Neutral or La Nina generally the amount of strong cyclones float around the same number annually. over the last 11 years there has been a minimum of 5 and a max of 11

1994/1995 - 8
1995/1996 - 8
1996/1997 - 8
1997/1998 - 6 (1997 event was at its peak at this time)
1998/1999 - 7
1999/2000 - 8
2000/2001 - 5
2001/2002 - 8
2002/2003 - 11
2003/2004 - 6

[MGC]

No way the ocean can warm up that fast from below normal to above in shuch a short time. Since this is a satellite derived product with a bias to return data to nominal, I would speculate that this is some form of data glitch, corrupt data or other form of anomaly....MGC

[Ed1]

[MWatkins]

Other than trying to stir up opinions...why do you think we'll see the strongest Nino in 100 years or more? I can give you 15 reasons against it...but I'd be interested to learn how you think it's going to happen...

Why? Because we've had increasingly warmer PAC temps. We've had a lot of tropical cyclone activity in the PAC, including two in the Western Australia area at the same time. There was already a weak El Nino in place this winter. Seismic activity has been high in the Indian and Pacific rims---put it all together, seems like an active PAC time, and a less active ATL time in my opinion, and as I've said before, I am NOT trying to stir up anything---just the opinion of a mathematician, NOT a pro Met.

I wasn't trying to come across condecending...so if you read my tone that way I'm sorry...I didn't intend that.

The items you have above are good discussion points...It just looked like one of those posts that tend to get people all riled up.

1989 and 1990 were active South Pac seasons (at least in terms of landfalls for Australia) yet no nino developed.

To my knowledge there is no link between seismic activity and El Nino...

The arrangement of SST's still looks pretty neutral to me...without much overall warming or cooling taking place. Little blips like the ones shown above can occur as a result of local feedback...or just as an artifact of the model done to complete the analysis.

Severe ninos such as 1997 almost never occur like that event unfolded...and there is still enough cool water hanging around that a rapid developing nino seems unlikely (althoug a weak nino remains possible). I would be more worried about a nino return if last season was a Nina year like 1996...

However...if one (a cataclismic 1997 event) occurs...you can be the first to say I told you so.

MW

[AussieMark]

1989 and 1990 were active South Pac seasons (at least in terms of landfalls for Australia) yet no nino developed. MW

thats a good point Mike

1996/1997 season had 2 systems make landfall and that was the season that came before the strongest El Nino in ovre 100 years.

1997/1998 season had 3. (that was during the strength of the El Nino)

2001/2002 had 1 and that was a season that came before another El Nino.

2002/2003 had 1 and that was during the El Nino.

So u can't really say that if we get lots of landfalls thats a El Nino is on its way as most the years recently on either side of El nino have not been heavy landfalling years on the Australian Pacific Side.

[MWatkins]

1989 and 1990 were active South Pac seasons (at least in terms of landfalls for Australia) yet no nino developed. MW

thats a good point Mike

1996/1997 season had 2 systems make landfall and that was the season that came before the strongest El Nino in ovre 100 years.

1997/1998 season had 3. (that was during the strength of the El Nino)

2001/2002 had 1 and that was a season that came before another El Nino.

2002/2003 had 1 and that was during the El Nino.

So u can't really say that if we get lots of landfalls thats a El Nino is on its way as most the years recently on either side of El nino have not been heavy landfalling years on the Australian Pacific Side.

Good point, Mark...

Could be the activity we're seeing is coming on the back side of the existing event rather than being a harbinger of things to come this season...

MW

[StormChasr]

Mike, I think you make very good points, and I am sorry for the misunderstanding. I understand the variables you've introduced to indicate the impact of SSTs upon the impending hurricane season, and you'r most likely right. It just seems to me from a Physics standpoint, the kinetic energy that was liberated by the earthquake and tsunami in the Indian Ocean has not been completely used up--I am certain that you'r famililar with the theories of conservation of energy, and the fact that kinetic energy will eventually manifest itself in significant ways that we don't know fully.

My question was: Is it possible that the PAC is under a ciimate influence due to this historic level of seismic activity?

[MWatkins]

Mike, I think you make very good points, and I am sorry for the misunderstanding. I understand the variables you've introduced to indicate the impact of SSTs upon the impending hurricane season, and you'r most likely right. It just seems to me from a Physics standpoint, the kinetic energy that was liberated by the earthquake and tsunami in the Indian Ocean has not been completely used up--I am certain that you'r famililar with the theories of conservation of energy, and the fact that kinetic energy will eventually manifest itself in significant ways that we don't know fully.

My question was: Is it possible that the PAC is under a ciimate influence due to this historic level of seismic activity?

Perhaps this question would be better suited for a geology major...but I'll give it a whirl.

I have no context to compare current vs. past seismic activity. So I wouldn't be able to answer your question about current conditions and the role on Pacific warming. But by reading below I think it's a good discussion item...but probably not likely.

However...I would think that as potential energy is converted to kinetic energy in an earthquake on land, the kinetic energy radiates away from the epicenter within the earth's crust (in the form of seismic activity) until (friction I guess) slows down then stops the process. I'm not entirely sure how this energy interacts with the atmosphere directly from a physics standpoint...but I would guess other than sound waves little energy is translated to the air.

In the water, I would guess that more energy would be translated to the ocean in the form of shock waves (see tsunami) but much of that is probably absorbed within the topography (can I use topography?) of the ocean floor...radiated away in the form of a shock wave (with less net-loss in energy due to friction) and or radiated away from the epicenter within the ocean floor much like land-based quakes.

In all cases, I would guess that the amount of thermal energy buildup would be slight even in the most extreme case as most of the kinetic energy is dispersed elsewhere.

Even in the case of large amounts of magma pushing up through the ocean surface, a significant portion of this heat-energy would be used up converting the liquid rock to solid form...and again I'm not sure how significant/deep this would translate to the ocean surface. This is the part I am most unsure about...though...and someone like Windspeed may be able to help more.

By and large though...so little is understood about these processes (in terms of SST warming) that I could be completely wrong about everything I have written above.

MW

[x-y-no]

My question was: Is it possible that the PAC is under a ciimate influence due to this historic level of seismic activity?

A little back-of-the-envelope calculation indicates this isn't a significant factor.

I did a little googling, and found several articles which asserted that the energy in the Sumatra earthquake was about 200 megatons or so. Let's ignore the issue of dissipation in the earth's crust for now and assume that all the energy goes to warming sea water:

200 megatons ~= 8.4e17 joules. It take about 4.2e6 joules to heat 1 cubic meter of water by 1 degree celsius. So that means the total energy of the earthquake applied to heat sea water would heat 2e11 cubic meters by 1 degree.

The global average thickness of the mixed surface layer is about 70 meters or so. That means that if it were all concentrated into that volume and all converted into heat, the total energy of the quake would warm an area of about 2800 square kilometers of the ocean's surface by 1 degree celsius.

That's a tiny fraction of the kind of area we're looking at. Now going back to the fact that we made a very unrealistic assumption of concentrating all the quake's energy in the surface layer of the ocean, when in fact it would be distributed through the crust and also the entire water column, and we can conclude that any warming due to energy released in earthquakes would be immeasurably small.

(hopefully, I didn't make some scaling boo-boo here - I think these numbers are right)

Jan


EDIT: I don't know what the numbers are as regards ocean warming due to volcanic activity. But I'm also not aware of any evidence that the overall level of underwater volcanism is any different than usual.

[Stormsfury]

Recent trends along the SS have revealed that the overall ENSO state has cooled somewhat the last couple of months ...



However, there has been a recent proprogation of a Kelvin Wave (during Phase 8) that disrupted things a bit in the Equatorial Pacific ...

and furthermore, we'll probably see some of the recent development of a hot spot anomaly centered about 160W about 150M deep will eventually proprogate to the SFC in the next month ...

[StormChasr]

hopefully, I didn't make some scaling boo-boo here - I think these numbers are right)

My calculations seem to support yours, based on the info that you supplied. The only question is, we're basing that on an assumption of the actual energy released, absorbed, and transmitted. There's no true way of ascertaining how much impact the quake actually had, especially since there have been multiple aftershocks, and frequent precursor quakes in Indonesia since the mid 1990's. Your math does look correct, based on the facts presented.