El Niño weather-pattern is nearing

[Mikey]

El Niño pattern could emerge by 2018-19 winter: U.S. forecaste

If this happens I would say it's the warm water push more from Hawaii and not Mexico. 
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THOMSON REUTERS
May 10th 2018 11:20AM

The El Niño weather pattern, associated with warmer and wetter weather than usual that may give rise to damaging conditions, could emerge by the 2018-19 Northern Hemisphere winter, with neutral conditions expected to prevail through November this year, a U.S. government weather forecaster said on Thursday.
The last El Niño, a warming of ocean surface temperatures in the eastern and central Pacific that typically occurs every few years, was linked to crop damage, fires and flash floods in 2016.
The possibility of a transition to El Niño weather-pattern is nearing 50 percent by the 2018-19 Northern Hemisphere winter, the National Weather Service's Climate Prediction Center (CPC) said in its monthly forecast.
Look back at the most recent El NIño to hit the U.S.: [/size]
   

El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) neutral conditions are favored through September-November this year, it added. ENSO-neutral refers to those periods in which neither El Niño nor La Niña is present, according to CPC.

[size=undefined][size=undefined]Last month, the weather forecaster said there was a more than 50 percent chance of ENSO-neutral conditions prevailing through the northern hemisphere summer in 2018.
During ENSO-neutral periods, the ocean temperatures, tropical rainfall patterns and atmospheric winds over the equatorial Pacific Ocean are near the long-term average, according to the CPC website.[/size][/size]

[So.Cali]

That could get interesting... Wahoo in SoCal again?

[Mikey]

Right

[Mikey]

A Striking New View of the Pacific “Blob”
To better understand the strange mass of warm water that appeared from 2013 to 2016, scientists are mapping it from space.


This map shows anomalously high sea-surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean in May 2015 as compared to the 2002–2012 average. The recent warm-water phenomenon is known as “the Blob.”
MAP BY AMERICAN GEOPHYSICAL UNION

By Betsy Mason
PUBLISHED FEBRUARY 8, 2017
In late 2013, scientists began to notice something strange happening in the Gulf of Alaska: The temperature of the sea surface was much warmer than usual.


Then in early 2014, warmer waters also started appearing about 125 miles off the West Coast of the United States. By the fall of that year, the warm area extended all the way to the coast. The warming persisted along the California coast and other parts of the Pacific during most of 2015 and into 2016. In some places temperatures were more than 10°F above average.
As scientists struggled to figure out what was going on, they began calling the mass of warm water “the Blob.”
Now a team of scientists has mapped the life story of the Blob in unprecedented detail—from space. Using data from multiple satellites from several countries, the scientists traced the changes in temperature and wind on the Pacific Ocean’s surface from 2014 to 2016. Their findings, along with the image of the Blobabove, were publishedin the January issue of Geophysical Research Letters.



Why Hundreds of Sea Otters Died in the Pacific 

“This phenomenon is something new,” says the study’s lead author, Chelle Gentemann, a physical geographer at Earth and Space Research in Seattle. Gentemann compared the Blob’s temperatures to sea-surface temperatures dating back to 1910, looking for similar events.
“From that entire record this event is unprecedented in magnitude and duration,” she says. “There's just nothing like it in our historical record.”


The new detailed map of the Blob may help biologists understand why unusual problems afflicted sea life from 2013 to 2016. Those include unexpected die-offs of California sea lions, Guadalupe fur seals, common murres, and Cassin’s auklets, and a toxic algal bloom that stretched along the entire West Coast of the United States (shown in the satellite image below)—a phenomenon that led to delays and partially close recreational and commercial fishing seasons for sardines, anchovies, crabs, and razor clams.

A map of a toxic algal bloom on the West Coast of North America in July 2015.
PHOTOGRAPH BY NOAA

Gentemann’s team found some clues about how the Blob may have been involved in these problems by looking closely at temperature and wind changes along the coast using satellite data. Thanks to a new international collaboration, they were able to combine data from nearly all the active satellites that measure sea-surface temperature to get a detailed picture of what was happening.


Normally winds along the West Coast push the top layer of water away from the shoreline, which makes room for colder water from below to rise up and replace it. The upwelling water brings with it important nutrients—including nitrates, phosphates, and silicates—that are crucial for sustaining the coastal food web. Species from plankton to marine mammals and birds depend on those nutrients.
Scientists studying the upwelling typically use pressure measurements from ocean buoys as a proxy for the the winds that clear the way for the colder water from below. But in this case, something was off on the California coast: The pressure data looked as if the coastal winds were behaving as usual, but for some periods they weren’t accompanied by colder sea-surface temperatures, as would be expected during upwelling.
To find out what was going on during these periods, Gentemann’s team used satellite measurements of infrared and microwave radiation from the ocean’s surface. They tracked temperature with the infrared data and ran the microwave data through a mathematical model to gauge the winds. This revealed that the winds on the California coast had weakened and stopped moving enough water to allow the upwelling cold water to break through the unusually warm water at the surface.


Findings like these should help biologists better understand the Blob’s impact on sea life. Small shifts in water temperature and upwelling can have large impacts on species that depend on those deep sea nutrients, Gentemann says. “Timing is really important, because the entire food web in that area—the whole ecosystem—has evolved to specific timing in upwelling.”

[So.Cali]

When the wahoo were here in 2016, it is believed the fish traveled from the mid pacific and not southern waters i.e. Mexico. 

This might get quite interesting

[Mikey]

that is very true and yes the water never really came up it cam in from the mid pacific. it seems to be that it could be happening again right now

please and thank you
haha