Tag Archives: El Nino

January 2016: moist again

Posted in Manilla NSW, Monthly weather by
Photo of Senna-bush

Jewel-box Cassia

Unlike December, this month saw varying temperatures. The week around the 7th was quite cool. The maximum on the 3rd reached only 22.3°, but worse was to come. The 15th reached only 21.1°: equal coldest January day in the new century (with 31/1/2001). It was more than 12° below normal, and that happens less than once in a year. There was also one very hot day above 40°, which is the normal number for January.
Rain fell, mainly as showers, on ten days spaced through the month. The higher readings were 28.4 mm on the 6th, 24.2 mm on the 23rd, and 27.6 mm on the 24th.

Weather log January 2016.

Comparing January months

Like January last year, this month could be called “moist”. It was cloudy, and the rather cool days were only 14° warmer than the nights.
The total rainfall of 104.7 mm was well above the average of 87 mm, and in the 72nd percentile. Again, there are no serious rainfall shortages for totals for any number of months. In fact, totals for 2-, 3-, 4-, 5-, and 6-months are very high.

El Niño

Manilla’s climate is now out of step with the El Niño – Southern Oscillation (ENSO). This “super” El Niño has not brought dryness here, and the dryness in January 2014 (for example) came at a time without an El Niño.

Climate for January 2016

Data. All data, including subsoil at 750 mm, are from 3 Monash Street, Manilla. Rainfall data up to 26/3/15 is from Manilla Post Office, Station 055031.

El Niño and My Climate

Posted in 21st-century climate, Australian Climate, Climate Change, Manilla NSW, World Climate by

ENSO and Manilla NSW temperature anomalies over sixteen years

Temperature

The first graph shows that the temperature at Manilla NSW agreed very closely with El Niño and La Niña temperatures for a good part of the last sixteen years.
The El Nino – Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is shown by NINO3.4 monthly anomaly values, and temperature at Manilla, NSW is smoothed monthly mean daily maximum temperature anomalies. (See the Note below.)
Values of Manilla temperatures agree with those of ENSO through the major temperature peaks and troughs in the spring seasons of 2002, 2006, 2007, 2009, and 2010. In the two highest peaks of 2002 and 2009 and the deep trough of 2010, Manilla temperature extremes were more than a month ahead of ENSO temperature extremes.
Since mid-2011, the two curves do not agree well:
* A La Nina in summer 2011-12 that was very weak produced the deepest of all troughs in Manilla temperature.
* An El Nino in winter 2012 resulted in heat at Manilla, but not until four months later.
* In spring 2013, when there was no El Nino at all, Manilla had a heat wave just like those with the El Nino’s of 2002 and 2009, .
The record for ENSO since January 2013 is unlike that earlier this century: it flutters rather than cycles.
To show slower changes, I have drawn cubic trend lines for both of the variables. These also agree closely, with ENSO going from a maximum (2004) to a minimum (2011) seven years later. Manilla temperature trends remained ahead of ENSO temperature trends by one or two years.

Rainfall

ENSO and Manilla NSW rainfall anomalies over sixteen years.

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3-year trends to May 2015

Posted in 3-year climate trends, Manilla NSW by

Parametric plots of smoothed climate variables at Manilla
“May 2015: less moist”

Trends to May 2015

May raw anomaly data (orange)

May anomalies moved back towards normal from the cool moist conditions of April for the variables daily maximum temperature, rainfall, and daily temperature range. Cloudiness, however, became extreme, as it had been in the (smoothed data) a year earlier. Daily minimum temperature became very high, keeping the climate in the “Maritime” area. This, again, prevailed just one year ago.

Fully smoothed data (red)

The latest fully-smoothed data anomalies (November 2014) complete the season for spring 2014 (SON). As is most clearly seen in the graph at the bottom right, the daily maximum temperature anomaly (smoothed) reached a minor maximum just above normal in October. Other variables moved little. All were “normal” except the Dew Point anomaly, which had the low value of minus three that has now become normal.

Springtime temperature peaks

Each of the spring seasons of 2012, 2013 and 2014 marked a peak in daily maximum temperature anomalies. Spring 2013 was the hottest, breaking the record for this data set. Spring 2013 also had extreme peaks of lowest rainfall, least cloud, lowest dew point, and highest daily temperature range. This is just what is expected at an extreme El Niño, but there was no El Niño at that time.

Note:

Fully smoothed data – Gaussian smoothing with half-width 6 months – are plotted in red, partly smoothed data uncoloured, and raw data for the last data point in orange. January data points are marked by squares.
Blue diamonds and the dashed blue rectangle show the extreme values in the fully smoothed data record since September 1999.

Normal values are based on averages for the decade from March 1999.* They appear on these graphs as a turquoise (turquoise) circle at the origin (0,0). A range of anomalies called “normal” is shown by a dashed rectangle in aqua (aqua). For values in degrees, the assigned normal range is +/-0.7°; for cloudiness, +/-7%; for monthly rainfall, +/-14 mm.

 * Normal values for rainfall are based on averages for the 125 years beginning 1883.

Log of the Southern Oscillation Index with climate shifts

Posted in Australian Climate, Climate Change, Global context, World Climate by

SOI plot with climate shifts

This graph relates to a graph of the cumulative values of the Southern Oscillation Index, posted earlier and copied below.

SOI CUSUM plotThe graph above is in a more familiar form . It may help to explain what the earlier graph means. That is, that the SOI was dominated by positive values (towards La Niña) for about fifty-nine years before 1976, and was dominated by negative values (towards El Niño) for twenty-four years after that date. From 2000 the trend seems to be upward, showing La Niña dominance again. Broadly, these were straight-line CUSUM  relationships throughout each of the periods, as shown by the coloured trend lines. Slopes on a CUSUM plot represent offsets of the mean monthly value: the mean SOI in the earlier period was +1.4 units, and that in the second period was -3.5 units. Since 2000, the mean monthly value is around +1.0 units. Continue reading →

17 Years of “Droughts and Flooding Rains” at Manilla

Posted in 21st-century climate, Anomalies smoothed, Australian Climate, Climate Change, Manilla NSW by

Manilla 17-year smoothed rainfall anomaly record

Times when Dorothea Mackellar’s “droughts and flooding rains”* affected Manilla in the years from 1997 are shown by the wavy line on this graph. The climate swings in and out of times of high and low rainfall.

Peaks or troughs were often a year or two apart, but most of them were not very far from the normal rainfall value. Only two of the troughs were so far below normal that they were severe droughts: August 2002, and December 2013 (or maybe later). Milder droughts came in October 2006 and September 2009.
The rainfall in these 17 years was not below the long-term average, but slightly above it. As well as droughts there were two peaks of extremely high rainfall: in July 1998 (when the new Split-Rock reservoir suddenly filled) and in November 2011. These “deluges” had rainfall that was further from normal than the low rainfall in the droughts. Other rainfall peaks came in November 2005, October 2008, and October 2010.
In total, there were nine peaks and troughs with rainfall outside the normal range. Six of them came in the spring months of September, October or November.
Peaks and troughs in rainfall at Manilla quite often come near times of La Niña and El Niño. These are events in the record of Pacific Ocean temperatures called ENSO (El Niño – Southern Oscillation). The ENSO record for the last 17 years is shown in the second graph.

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