Most of the monthly and seasonal climate models that come out and forecast general weather patterns across the world whether it’s North America, Europe, Australia or what have you, are usually issued during the first few days at the beginning of the month. Specifically, the Canadian climate model comes out either on the first or second day of every month which is followed closely by the European model which comes out on the 5th day of the month.
The purpose of these climate models is to give forecasters a sense of the general weather patterns for the upcoming months. These climate models come out in monthly and 3 month time increments as well. In other words, you can look at the three-month weather pattern for December January February in the northern hemisphere — essentially the heart of the winter season — or you can look at just December 2023, January 2024, February 2024, and March 2024.
In looking at the climate models for the upcoming winter season you have to understand what the models are showing, which models are reliable, and have the experience to know when to get overly excited and when not to. Case in point, I can show you several climate models from August, Septemberm and October in 2021 showed a “ good” winter — above normal snowfall below normal temps — for the eastern third of the CONUS. Even the normally superior European climate model was showing a decent winter for 2021–22. But when the new updated climate models in November 2021 came out, they all showed a dramatically different scenario with below normal snowfall and above normal temperatures.
As I present these early climate models, please keep in mind that this is preliminary. ***PRELIMINARY.***
The only reason I am bringing this to your attention is because the Canadian and European climate models are quite bullish in terms of producing a cold and snowy winter across the East Coast and into the Upper South. It has been a long time since there has been a decent winter on the East Coast so if something like this were to verify it would be significant.
One other point before I finally present the actual models. The new European climate model forecast for the El Nino shows the ENSO region 3.4 — which is the critical region that forecasters focus on to determine the intensity and status of the El Nino.
The new European climate model which came out on August 5 actually warms the ENSO region significantly for the winter when compared to the June and July projections. The August 5 European model now has ENSO region at +2.5 in December and January.
The Australian climate model continues to be extremely aggressive or bullish with its ENSO 3.4 region forecast as it continues to show +2.8c by December and January. On the other hand, the latest projections from the other climate models such as the CFS, the Japanese model and the British model keep the ENSO 3.4 region at around +1.7C. In addition, the CFS model has done a much better job over the past 4 weeks showing the temporary pause or plateau in the rising of sea surface temperature anomalies (SSTA) in ENSO 3.4
The reason why this is important is that if the El Nino becomes a strong or super El Nino (ENSO region 3.4c reaches at least 2.0c or higher). It will likely have a significant impact on temperatures along the east coast. Of course you can still get a big Northeast US snowstorm. Indeed, the super/ strong El Nino winters of 1982–83, 1997–97 , and 2015–16 all had 1 big East Coast snowstorm. But outside of those snowstorms events, the entire winter along the I-95 corridor as well as in the upper South was mild and snowless during those strong or super El Nino winters.
Finally, it needs to be pointed out that for whatever reason this particular El Nino event is NOT acting like a regular El Nino event. We can see this looking at the latest MEI — Multivariate Enso Index. This is another more comprehensive way of measuring the El Nino that was developed by Klaus Wolter and the folks over at CPC/ ESRL. The brilliant meteorologist Eric Weber is continuing tracking and formulating the MEI and keeps a fabulous database of all ENSO events back to 1850 and the MEI to 1900.
The point here is that IF…IF… the MEI continues to show such an anomalous EL Nino event as we move into the winter of 2023–24, even though the SSTAs are somewhere between +1.7 to say +2.2C, I dont know what the hell will happen.
Now that we have gotten that critical but important information out of the way, here is the August 2nd Canadian climate model projections for this winter. JAN- FRB -MAR. This first set of images represent the 500mb projections for January, February, and March. In particular, the months of JAN/ FEB/ MARCH look quite stormy with a classic looking East Coast winter storm signature. There is a strong blocking signature showing up in Northeast Canada /Greenland, a strong Ridge in western Canada supplying the cold air and a very active southern jet stream with the mean Trough position located across the Ohio Valley and the Appalachians. The blue colors represent negative anomalies or storm track that will favor surface LOW w pressure areas taking what can only be described as a very favorable East Coast winter storm track based upon Canadian climate models.
This next set of models shows the Canadian surface temperatures valid for January, February, and March. Now some of this is undoubtedly due to El Nino which usually brings below normal temperatures to the Southern States.
And here is the precipitation anomalies again valid December January and February from the Canadian model,
Next, we have the European climate models which from my perspective have a better track record than the Canadian model or the CFS model this far out in time.
Looking at the 500mb projections from the European climate model they look very close to what the Canadian model is showing. It is too early to say whether or not this is significant or just happenstance but usually you don’t see this kind of strong seasonal or model agreement between two very different climate models.
Finally, over the next 10 days other climate models will come out including more projections about the El Nino as well as upper air patterns across North America for this winter. As of this date I don’t have any particular bias as to whether or not these climate models are going to verify or whether they’re full of shit. Now come October or early November and IF these climate models are STILL l showing 500MB, Temperature in precipitation patterns like what we are seeing now, then I am going to get damn excited.