Posted this over at the WesternUS forums, but thought I'd post it here for you guys as well. Still a complete novice, and I'm sure there will be issues you can point out, but give it a read and let me know what you think. Btw, this is geared towards the PNW, so keep that in mind while reading. 100th post
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Looking at the current MJO, we definitely won't have any tropical forcing support for cold in the PNW anytime soon from what I can see. The MJO is currently passing over the Maritime Continent and headed out over the Western Pacific in the next couple weeks. Unfortunately, this will position the jet stream in a position to keep us in a +PNA pattern for quite a while, which is supported my the models currently. If you take a look at the MJO Dynamical forecast, they take the MJO into the COD (Center of Death) almost immediately, which is representative of a weak signal.
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However, after a little research as to what's happening, this is wrong. The dynamical models are confused by a MJO Wave 2 pattern, which is 2 areas of enhanced convection or suppression. This "noise" as you will, causes the MJO signal to become weak, and head directly towards the inner circle. We know however that this is wrong, and the MJO will continue to propagate over the Western Pacific. Not sure when dynamical models will pick up on this, but I'm sure it will have the signal re-emerge over the western pacific eventually when in reality it never died off.
Mike Ventrice, who has a B.S. and Ph.D. in Atmospheric Science and Meteorology has an amazing site with a lot of useful resources. One of the useful resources regarding the MJO is a model which forecasts the MJO in a filtered manner and incorporates the last 200 days of data to improve accuracy. The model shows exactly what the MJO forecast should look like, had it not got confused with the convection over South America
So, what lies ahead? Given the above forecast and the expected progression of the MJO, we look to head into Phase 6 sometime near/shortly after the New Year. It looks like a -EPO/+PNA regime is going to lock in for quite a while at least, which means the East looks to get in on the action and our weather may end up quite dull. Keep in mind, just because the MJO is headed for Phase 6, doesn't mean the atmospheric configuration is going to match up to a Phase 6 plot perfectly. Sometimes they are very similar, and other times other factors override the MJO signal. One issue coming up could be a Sudden Stratospheric Warming event which looks to possibly unleash the PV into the lower 48. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that IF the PV splits that we can get in on the action, but we'll see. As of right now however, the MJO seems to line up pretty well with the Euro Ensembles, which have proved to be fantastic at medium range forecasting. In all honesty, I'm hoping this whole write up gets mocked in the coming weeks because we're back to the freezer, but as of now... not looking good.
MJO Phase 6 pattern and 168 hour Euro Ensemble valid the 12/29/13:
MJO Phase 7 pattern and 360 hour Euro Ensemble valid the 1/6/14: