Yes for the most part.

I’m interested to see how ENSO evolves going into the next year, esp given what happened after this in 1982.

This increase in tropical westerly momentum favors an equatorward shift in the Pacific Jet Stream, which leads to an increase chance of high-latitude North Pacific blocking (-EPO), consistent with current model forecasts & Winters et al (2019)

journals.ametsoc.org/view/journal...

I think we see things transition sometime late in January or early February. Oth, this year is mostly following the Nina script to a T thus far

Even when you look at November, this year really isn’t doing anything out of the ordinary for a La Niña

We will likely have a much heavier +PNA look over the conus this year in December

thanks ant 😃!

I found the east qbo/solar max tendency for strong late winter/early spring +NAM to be weird at first, but It‘s indeed very real.

agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

-IOD collapse leading to El Niño is something we’ve seen as recently as 2023

The timing of this yr’s WWBs in the IO are well ahead of schedule vs 2023 & this year’s -IOD is of course more extreme w/ greater warm water volume.

Another strong Nino could be in the cards if things evolve properly

Not really. Extratropical SSTs are mostly a lagged response to lower frequency forcing from the atmosphere at interannual scales.

This favors slower MJO events which have stronger & more consistent extratropical teleconnections as Yadav et al (2024), Yadav & Straus (2017) & Tseng et al (2020) have argued

agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

journals.ametsoc.org/view/journal...

journals.ametsoc.org/view/journal...

Also, the current global tropics SSTa are also almost the exact opposite of the MJO phase speed & SST correlation pattern derived from Suematsu & Miura (2021): journals.ametsoc.org/view/journal...

Many things are lining up for a fast start to winter this year in the East-Central US

For ex: being in a La Niña w/ a slower-moving and more amplified MJO (due in part to easterly QBO) makes a subsequent -NAO/AO more likely

Fig from Lee et al (2019): agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

This early winter -AO, followed by significant +AO is also more believable given the favorable precursors we have in place for a -EPO/+TNH style pattern this year, which will likely grow only more prominent as the winter wears on due in large part to wave reflection

The other key takeaway here about these kinds of winters is that we see more frequent early winter -AO/-NAO & stratospheric warming events (as the latest Euro weeklies below suggest), followed by a much stronger polar vortex in mid-late winter (Jan-Feb)

Both of these lead to the development of this pattern, which often becomes more strong/persistent late winter as it interacts w/ the stratospheric polar vortex via wave reflection.

Here's what this -EPO/+TNH or "ABNA" pattern looks like in winter (annotated over their fig 1)

Extending the analysis back to 1900 in 20CR (& using the Bronnimann et al (2007) QBO reconstruction) reveals a similar pattern for IPWP strength during eQBO/-ENSO winters:

Imho this SST trend is a "fast" ocean dynamical thermostat response to the increasingly warmer climate

The atmosphere's hydrostatic adjustment to vertical advection of water from depth that warms less quickly in the Eq Pacific is reinforced by Bjerknes feedback, making the trend look "La Nina-like"

This is what the 500mb difference looks like for these east QBO/cool ENSO winters based on IPWP warm pool strength (left)

This is almost exactly what the long-term 500mb trend looks like (right), which isn't surprising given that IPWP is warming at a faster rate than the adjacent tropical oceans