2300   EDT  SEPT  15   2012 

One of the best scenes at all the  STAT TREK  movies occurs in ST #6…  titled  The Undiscovered Country “.   In this movie   Captain Kirk  …Captain Spock …. Scottie ….Dr. McCoy…  Sulu  etc have discovered a conspiracy between some Stra Fleet Federation officers and some Klingon officers who don’t want a peace treaty go through and  are out to disrupt the peace conference.  There is a prototype Klingon “bird of prey”  starship that can also fire while it  is invisible   so while Kirk  and the Enterprise are battling …  or  trying to   battle …the  invisible Klingon warship.  The Enterprise is taking a real pounding so they come up with this idea to fire a Photon Torpedo  that is  altered   so that it  can track   the heat energy coming from the  Klingon  warship  exhaust.    As  Spock and McCoy  feverishly work on this torpedo.  Finally out of outrage or frustration   Kirk calls out to  to Spock … ” where is that Damn  Torpedo?”…

As we leave the summer and move into autumn I am reminded of that movie because we keep looking for the photon torpedo   -   the  damn El Nino– and  it continues to not show up.

As has been discussed before and is well documented  El Nino Summers and Autumns strongly correlate to Below Normal   (and sometimes Much Below Normal)   hurricane activity and    Below Normal temperatures  with Above Normal rainfall over portions of the Plains and the Midwest.  Well you don’t have to be a weatherman to know which way this is going….

We are experiencing another near record or above normal hurricane season and we have experienced  a extreme widespread historic heat and drought across most of the country east the Rockies over the past 4  months.  When we we each the   “J” storm two weeks ago in the Atlantic   ( Joyce)  it was the second earliest  on record that the the 10th named storm  has  EVER developed.    Only exceeded by the historic 2005 hurricane season.  So clearly  all of  the early Hurricane seasonal forecast for below or much below normal hurricane activity has NOT  worked out.  And of course we all are very well aware of the extreme heat and drought we saw over the Summer months.  ( really the warm dry pattern took over last Winter  and   in the Spring).

So again the issue remains why hasn’t   the  El Nino  developed as we thought …?  And for you winter weather lovers and fanatics out there the correlation between  Weak  El Nino events   and  active and snowy winters over the central and eastern CONUS is well established .  So the refusal of the   El Nino  to take  over Has  significant implications those of us who like and enjoyed the winter months.

In other words  ” SPOCK!!! ….  Where is that Damn Torpedo!?”……
The SOI   tell us a lot .  This chart from the Australians shows the plot of the SOI over the past two years.  To briefly review this chart when the SOI  — in this case   it is a 30 day moving average–  is  at or lower than  -8 to -12   El Nino conditions are about to develop and what it drops for sustained period of time  below  -12    EL Nino conditions are underway and should begin to  develop  within the overall atmosphere of patterns within  next two weeks.     When the  SOI  is  in POSITIVE  territory… at  + 8 to +12    over a 30 day  period… La Nina conditions are likely to develop and once it moves in a sustained +12… La Nina conditions are likely to take over.

As we can see from the chart since the beginning of the Spring 2012   the SOI   has    dropped  to   around  -10  or so  (the threshold for El Nino)   only to  SUDDENLY    stop then   Jump   back   “up”   reaching either the neutral  Line  ( zero)    or   just barely reaching into positive territory .  As I have highlighted in this graphic we can see that  SOI  has done this  3 times   since  APRIL  2012

This movement tells us a few things.  First as long as the  SOI is doing this   there can be  NO   EL NINO.  Yes in the   technical sense the   warm SSTAs    in  ENSO  region   3.4 but the point here is that  we are NOT seeing anything   like El Nino  weather patterns   and  we have NOT   at any point since  APRIL 1.

This movement of the  SOI …  bouncing Up and down like that …is happening for particular reason.  It is not random and it is not noise. Something in the atmosphere is causing or suppressing   the  SOI  and   FORCING   this sort of movement.

Without getting too technical  the GWO  — global wind oscillation– is essentially a  index  that has been developed by researchers which tells us where the main  ” energy”  is located in the earth’s atmosphere.  This energy is refer to as the AAM  or the atmospheric angular momentum .  The atmosphere flows much faster at the equator and it does at the high latitudes and up towards a North Pole….  simply because the earth is much bigger at the equator that it is at the poles.  However the existence of a large mountain  ranges  on the planet   affects   or  altars  this  uniform  flow  of the atmosphere and these perturbations affects the overall   weather patterns.

The GWO   is similar to the MJO in some ways but there also some or differences.   The MJO develops through tropical convection  forcing which spreads   energy  out into the mid-latitudes from the equatorial regions.  The GWO is based completely within the mid-latitudes and is not tropical.

This chart shows the recent plots  or  movement of the GWO.  As you can see  the GWO has been located since  the SPRING  2012  over the bottom of the  chart stuck in a repeating loop going back and forth from left to right.  When the  GWO is over on  right hand side of the GWO plot  ….the overall patterns across the world are much more favorable and supportive of El Nino. When the GWO  is   over on the    RIGHT  side of the   chart… the  pattern is much closer to what we would see during a La  Nina.

This is the key to understanding  WHY  the SOI keeps bouncing up and down back and forth and never staying in the   El NINO threshold.  Because the GWO is stuck in this repeating loop….  Swinging from left to right and back from right to left…   the SOI   can never stay a located in the negative zone to trigger a El Nino type of weather pattern.

This chart shows a another way of looking at the  GWO / AAM.  If we were to take that long complicated twisting back and forth  motion of the  GWO…  and pull out into one string….  we would have the  AAM chart .  Again without getting too complicated  for North America   the   LOWER or more negative the  AAM the warmer and drier the pattern is likely to be for large areas of North America.

Note that back in late JUNE  and JULY   of 2012 the AAM reached a extreme low value and that is why we had the extreme heat which dominated much of the country this past summer.

So to answer a question from Captain Kirk…   “SPOCK  where is that Damn El Nino.?..“….  until the AAM moves above the neutral  line into positive territory… the GWO will continue to stay at the bottom of the chart and stopping a looping pattern back and forth from left to right and right to left.   And as long as the GWO continues to do that… the SOI   will NOT   lock into a  sustained   negative values  to  Trigger  El Nino  pattern….  And without the  SOI locking in….  the El Nino  will NOT   develop.

Of course this has    SERIOUS  implications   for the Winter and  any  Winter 2012-13 seasonal  forecast  for North America. Most of these   EARLY winter forecasts are   based on the idea of  WEAK   El Nino developing.  Based on that assumption  a forecast  for a colder  than Normal and / or Snowier  than Normal  Winter 20102-13  for the central and eastern  CONUS  makes some sense . But to drive home the analogy… the GWO   stuck in this current pattern ..is the   Invisible   Klingon   BIRD OF PREY  warship and we wont  make it to the   UNDISCOVERED  COUNTRY  – winter of 2012-23-  without  that  damn  Photo  Torpedo.  It is  still   early  but do NOT   blindly  make this assumption  the  weak El  Nino is coming.