The El Niño forecasts are part of an ongoing research effort at COLA, and do not represent official forecasts. These forecasts should not be used as the basis of any commercial, policy, or other decisions. They are strictly research tools for advancing the understanding of the ocean-atmosphere system.
The NINO3 time series of the predicted SSTA for three
forecasts initialized on, March 1, 1997, April 1, 1997 and May 1,
1997, are shown below. Each forecast is run for 18 months. The
evolution of all three forecasts are fairly consistent. The model
predicts steady warming through boreal summer and fall of 1997 with
the strongest anomalies (approximately 1ºC) occurring during the boreal
winter of 1997-98. After the boreal winter of 1997-98 the NINO3 anomaly
in all three forecasts decay to near normal conditions by the boreal
summer of 1998.
| Time evolution of the NINO3 SSTA forecast. The solid red curve corresponds to the forecast initialized in March 1997, the dashed blue curve corresponds to the April 1997 forecast and the dotted green curve corresponds to the May 1997 forecast. |
The ensemble mean (average of all three forecasts) horizontal
structure of the predicted SSTA for the boreal summer of 1997, the
boreal fall of 1997 and the boreal winter of 1997-98 are shown in the
three panels below. The ensemble mean forecast for summer 1997 calls
for relatively warm SSTA throughout much of the equatorial central and
eastern Pacific. Typical of this model there are two maxima; one in
the central Pacific and one in the eastern Pacific. Given the typical
evolution of ENSO in this coupled model, this current forecast for
is quite warm. The SSTA continues to warm through the boreal
Fall with maxima will over 1ºC. By winter much of the tropical
Pacific is over 1ºC warmer than normal and there is a sizable region in
the central Pacific were the SSTA exceeds 1.5ºC.
| The ensemble mean anomalies in sea surface temperature (SSTA). The top panel shows the predicted ensemble mean averaged over June-July-August 1997. The middle panel shows the predicted ensemble mean SSTA averaged from September 1997 to November 1997. The bottom panel shows the ensemble mean averaged over December 1997 to February 1998. |
These latest forecasts are consistent with the forecast from the previos period, and indicate that peak El Niño conditions can be expected for the winter of 1997-98.
