Note above: May temps easily best the 1998 el nino fueled year. This year’s developing El Nino seems to have stalled somewhat. More when I can get to it.
The Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) reported Monday that March-May was the hottest in more than 120 years of record-keeping. It was also the hottest May on record.
This is especially noteworthy because we’re still waiting for the start of El Niño. It is usually the combination of the underlying long-term warming trend and the regional El Niño warming pattern that leads to new global temperature records.
You may be wondering how the world is setting records for the warmest March, April, and May (the boreal spring) when it wasn’t particularly hot in the United States (assuming we ignore California and Alaska). It turns out there’s like a whole planet out there that has been getting very toasty:
From the article:
Currently it appears we will have a moderate El Nino. However, with another burst of westerlies the chances of a stronger El Nino should grow considerably. That burst of westerlies may be provided by an area of enhanced tropical rainfall in the Indian Ocean that is associated with the Madden Julian Oscillation as it moves east and reaches the Pacific.
A little more on this here:
I wonder. Having zero qualifications as a meteorologist. We’ve had 3 years of neutral readings in the SOI in association with a relentless warming of the planet, much of that heat being absorbed by the sea.
Is it possible that there is some tipping point where the SOI ceases to function in the same way that there are fears about the flush of cold water from melting ice in the arctic could stall the gulf stream?
Could the SOI be the oceanic equivalent of the circumpolar jet stream? AS the gradient has lessened, the stream becomes more erratic and unpredictable – purely driven by rising temperatures. Why should something similar not happen also to oceanic systems?
So where is the hiatus that the den-liars talk of ? The graph tells a story that we should all respect, and bear in mind that it shows mean land ocean global temperature, what would a graph of the high Northern hemisphere latitudes only look like ?
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata_v3/GLB.Ts+dSST.txt
On the El Nino developing this year, this :
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-06-14/el-nino-weather-pattern-already-partly-formed/5523136
From ABC online science may be of interest.