El Niño, 2015-2016

From David Swain, of Weather West:

“[T]he  flagship American and European models (the CFS and ECMWF, respectively) continue to hint at the possibility that this event could eventually become the strongest on record. That’s a pretty tall order–given the enormous magnitude of the events which occurred in 1982-1983 and 1997-1998. On the other hand, model projections have become increasingly eyebrow-raising at the same time of year when our confidence in their reliability increases dramatically, so it would be unwise to discount them outright. Generally speaking, healthy skepticism is warranted when complex dynamical models make predictions that involve totally unprecedented extreme events. But 2015 has already been a year of record-breaking meteorological extremes across vast swaths of the Northern Hemisphere, and considerable evidence suggests that there will be more to come. At this point, it seems quite likely that very strong El Niño conditions will be in place by late autumn 2015, and there is some risk that the present event could eclipse even the extreme events of 1982-1983 and 1997-1998….

Overall summary: a very strong El Niño event in the tropical Pacific is now highly likely, and although the likelihood of a wetter-than-average winter in California is increasing, considerable uncertainty remains due to a highly unusual temperature configuration elsewhere in the Pacific.”