LONG RANGE ANALYSIS FOR NZ FOR 2016
WEDNESDAY DECEMBER 23, 2015
LONG RANGE ANALYSIS FOR NZ FOR 2016
A successful track record bodes well for the lunar method of long range forecasting and for the set of next year's suggestions. Some of our predictions for 2015 were summer starting and finishing late, autumn sunny and warm, dry May, snow not til late winter, a warmer than average March-June, a cooler spring with a concerning lack of NI sunshine, seismic activity at the end of January, the second week April, and the ends of May, July, September and November, and a 5-mag earthquake between 31st-1 January 2016. These all came about.
IN BRIEF
If not for a very wet July and very wet October for each respective island, both the North Island and
the South Island could look forward to a drier than average 2016. But those two months will push trends above average overall.
The main feature of 2016 will be a serious drying out for Gis/HB and between Otago and Canterbury. Also parts of Northland and Manawatu are at significant risk of moisture deficiency for the first five months of 2016. The aforementioned may have no significant rain relief until June. Areas which began to dry out from last August are likely to continue receiving soil moisture deficits through to the end of 2016 almost to levels where plant growth ceases with some areas only recording 2 months with above average rainfall before December 2016. The dryness is due to solar cycles, not El Nino. The coming dryness will remind people of what happened in 1992, and 1968, and these years are a jump of 23-24 years which is the complete solar cycle, and which controls heat and dryness. So farmers are best advised to go to their data records and look those years up.
IS EL NINO TO BLAME?
First it has to be asked, what does one mean by El Nino?
The problem is that meteorologists have been calling the past three years the strongest El Nino ever, to keep their funding going. This has rendered the concept of El Nino null and void, and its meaning now is just 'local weather patterns'.
2013: http://www.abc.net.au/environment/articles/2013/12/11/3908868.htm
2014: http://www.wired.com/2014/04/el-nino-effects/
2015:
http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/world/283038/strongest-ever-el-nino-headed-for-nz
http://time.com/3996227/el-nino-forecast/
And for this year the predictions of the 'strongest El Nino
ever' cannot now be correct because the Australian Bureau of Meteorology in
December declared that this El Nino was over, rains were imminent and the SOI
is heading back towards neutral..
http://www.weatherzone.com.au/news/bureau-of-meteorology-says-el-nino-on-its-way-out-widespread-rain-on-the-way-in/398164
Because comprehensive satellite data goes back only to 1979, it
is impossible to call any El Nino the worst or strongest ever. Although
"El Nino" was only named as such in 1982-83, conditions in 1965-66
would be the most destructive El Nino so far, worldwide and also for NZ, but
most would have forgotten or lost data from those years. For example, the NZ
Metservice have said that the 36C day in Christchurch was the hottest
ever,
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11564168
"The heat in Christchurch reached a sweltering 36.1C,
breaking the previous record of 35.4C measured in December 1975 at the
airport"
but it was over 41C in 2009
http://www.weatherwatch.co.nz/content/will-it-hit-40-degrees-christchurch
and in 1973, 30 minutes away at Rangiora, 42.4C was recorded on
February 7, 1973 with Christchurch airport recording 41.6 °C that same year.
Timaru reached 41.3 °C on Waitangi Day in 2011.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_of_New_Zealand
One therefore has to conclude that data is being selectively
chosen just to make a case for a news story and for a case for global warming,
for which funding is available to study it. In fact because El Nino only used
to be applied to the Australian wet season, from autumn to winter, there can be
no such thing as an El Nino summer. ( In fact it was unusually cold in QLD at the start of summer from southerlies up from Antarctic. A farmer emailed me and
said he had to wear a coat and scarf to go outside). We have to remember that
El Nino was only called off on, at the end of any given year. Earth scientists
have now made El Nino into something it never was. Ongoing funding is to now identify
El Nino as being always around, and one of the big three baddies, the other two
being Global Warming and Climate Change. The idea is that if one doesn't get
you the others will unless you pay carbon taxes. The alarmists want it to be
something fearful instead of what it always described, which was the
oscillating sea levels of both sides of the Pacific Basin, that was all. So now
everyone wants an El Nino, even the northern hemisphere wants to be in on the
excitement to get the research grants even though it only ever applied to the
Pacific. So by moving the goalposts to qualify for the funding, El Nino is now
whatever anyone wants it to be. Plus, apart from our almanac 2016 on p11, no
one has mentioned the heavy New Year's rain that drenched many parts of the
country and sent campers scurrying back home.
Here's what NIWA said on 20 December
http://www.radiolive.co.nz/Chris-Brandolino-El-Nino-Will-he-Wont-he/tabid/506/articleID/110313/Default.aspx
Extract: "El Nino means different things to different
people. There can be a NZ El Nino and an Australian El Nino". Now we
can have them wet or dry, cold or hot, strong or fizzers. Like love or wealth, it is in the eye of the beholder. That is not science but a
designer-El Nino, something they will make fit to render it a qualification for
funding.
Warm weather just used to be called summer. El Nino just used to
be called off on at the end of any year and in hindsight. And El Nino only ever
referred to the Australian dry season, which is the Australian autumn to
winter. Besides, NIWA and metservice always claim no predictions can be made
for more than a couple of days ahead, after which the computer makes it up and
doesn't even know how many times it does so..
http://tvnz.co.nz/seven-sharp/weather-showdown-video-5623813
One must ask, for good science, by what means can one falsify this hypothesis? What set of observations over what period of time would be enough to refute a/the theory? Are there any predictions that come as a result of this theory that can then be tested against the real world or real observations? If the answer to that is no then a theory is not science but pseudoscience. The lunar method of long range forecasting is something that puts predictions of events way ahead of time. Therefore real world observations can be compared to what was predicted. That makes what we do a science. When our official forecasters admit that they can only go a few days ahead, and after 5 days rely on a machine that not only makes it up but also doesn't know how many times it does so, then there is no procedure, no system in place to declare any accuracy of prediction for an El Nino season, any cyclone season or any climate variability beyond 3 days. B
y their own definition as would-be scientists
, these earth-scientists are using pseudoscience,
It used to be called the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) which is a regular cycle of changing levels in the Pacific Basin. It is a 4.5-yr cycle which is one quarter of the moon's declination cycle. There is no such thing as a strong or weak SOI, just as in a pendulum swing each side oscillates with the same period of displacement. The part that changes to westerlies usually follows a solar max or solar min. Yes, weather effects can be more or less intense, and these are due to cyclicity of solar and lunar patterns impacting on the SOI, which itself is always in balance. And this is playing out, because despite a few very dry regions, this El Nino is expected to not affect all the east of the country, for example, Inland Otago can expect rain in January at the same time as other SI areas will start to dry out.
Further, it cannot be called an El Nino if some places get affected and others not. For example 3 of the last 7 so-called strong El Ninos have been low snow years in California (Squaw Valley, NorthStar, Mammoth Mountain). The other 4 were really high. They are having a mild winter in the UK, but really mild winters come every 9 years and are always wet. It is just varying weather patterns. The metservices open themselves to ridicule when they say that the past 3 years have seen more extremes and more intensities, in flooding, heat, cold, droughts, winds and whatever else one can think of, because we might rightly ask. Compared to what? What is the norm supposed to be? What is the recommended temperature of the earth? Who decides?
THIS YEAR'S EL NINO LIKELY WEAK
This year a weak El Nino is likely, and here are the reasons.
We have just come through solar cycle#24 which peaked at the end of 2014 and cycle#24 is now in decline. It's a fact that El Ninos typically follow solar cycle peaks and minimums, so the strength or weakness of the solar cycle just beforehand, determines the strength or weakness of the El Nino that follows. As we have just come through a weak solar cycle - logical outcome: a weak El Nino. There are examples from history - weak El Ninos following weak solar cycles have been 1976-78 and 2006-7, and strong El Ninos after steep solar cycles were 1957-58, 1965-66, 1982-83, and 1997-98. It's also a fact that El Ninos reduce cyclones. So a weak El Nino will reduce number and strength of cyclones. Due to the solar and lunar cycle of seasons it is true that this summer will be long and dry, but only a few areas are at great risk, and they will get most media attention and pictorial coverage which will make it look as though it is the whole country, and that will be Northland, Gisborne/Hawkes Bay, maybe parts of Manawatu and Canterbury. But some eastern regions should receive good autumn rain and a strong El Nino does not usually only affect selected eastern regions and not all at once.
So those regions that will be dry will really feel it, for example Northland has a serious dry season looming, about 5 month's worth, starting at end of a fairly wet-at-times December and lasting until good rains in June. It is most likely that 2015-16 El Nino will be chased away by a spring La Nina around next October and November. The next El Nino, in 2020, should be worse than anything 2015/2016 can deliver.
NIWA in their Feb-April Outlook have said that February - April 2016 temperatures would be 45% chance above which means 55% chance to be BELOW average for the north and west of the North Island.
Then they said Feb was hotter than average and called it a record, yet the NZ Metservice has simply said it was probably hotter in 1998 or 1997-8 was an equally hot summer. Well, whoever said what, what has caused the warmth? Well, not global warming. NIWA does not even discuss it. Metservice has put the heat down to the increase in
anticyclonic systems to the east of NZ, bringing northerly winds onto the country. So no mention of emissions, types of light bulbs, cows farting or outdoor camp fires. One can't help wondering what has happened? Has the whole GW thing suddenly vanished? Or never here in the first place, instead just cycles of weather patterns?
So March rain should be moderately above average for North Island, but much above average for South Island which includes good rain for the southern hydrolakes. The SI gets more rain than the NI, and a bit of snow around 25th for S Cant hills. That will be full moon snow. Sunshine is above average for NI, but only average for SI. Temperatures above average for both islands. Drought intensifies in Hawkes Bay. Chance of cyclone bringing high winds early in the month.
So the north of the NI will be drier and warmer, the west and centre of NZ wetter, GIS/HB to Wgtn drier, Nelson wetter, Cant drier, Otago wetter, W+Sthld wetter.
Most rain to come for the NI will be 6th, 15-16th and 20-25th and for the SI; 6th, 15-21st, 24-25th, 28-29th
And as to where, for the NI; most will be between Dargaville to Rotorua/Taupo and Taranaki, and for the SI; the W and S and also the top.
AUTUMN
Unusual warmth to the north and east whilst the south and west of South Island receive rain. Remnants of the cyclonic system that forms in the last part of March and a bit into April may affect NZ, but on the whole this year the cyclones are few in number and mostly of low intensity. There's one early in April that brings high winds from north and west as it crosses the lower South Island. By mid-April warm seas and anticyclones result in continued warmth over North Island, and even well into May the talk will be of an Indian Summer.
WINTER
The east stays dry and the lower North Island is wet. June is still warm and cloudy in the north but the second half of July brings high rainfall with flooding to northern half of North Island and northern South Island, and dry conditions for the far south. Because of lateness of lasting snow NI skiers may have to wait until mid-August for their season to open. August - In the second half it is still dry in the east but wet, warm and cloudy in the north. Over much of the South Island, winter cold will often accompanied by sunshine.
SPRING
September - sunny and continuing dry in the east and north of the North Island but wet in south of the South Island.
October - a very wet month for the SI.
November - the first half sees north-westerly gales bring rain and possible flooding to Taranaki, Buller and central New Zealand whilst Gisborne and Hawkes Bay continue to be dry. After mid-November, La Nina easterlies bring dry weather to west and south of the South Island, warmth to the north and west, but cooler conditions in many parts of the east.
December - in the second half, agricultural drought is back in full swing, expected to affect the North Island and Canterbury.
RANKING OF CONDITIONS
The driest will be Gis/HB, then Cant then S Cant then Coastal Otago.
The wettest will be the top of the SI (due to July and Oct), then Taranaki, then SI WC then Auckland.
The driest months for the NI will be January then Feb then April, and for the SI, Nov then May then Jan.
The heaviest rains in the year will be in the NI, on 11-12 and 18 July, 20 Aug and 7 Nov. In the SI the wettest months will be March, July and Oct.
The sunniest month for both islands should be January, and the cloudiest month will be June.
The coldest month in the NI will be August, and for the SI, July.
The hottest month in both islands may be February then March.
The driest spells for the NI are; 10-17 Jan, 10-19 Feb, 7-13 March, 1-7 April, 15-29 Nov, 21-26 Dec
The driest spells for the SI are 11-25 Jan, 7-14 March, 15-23 April, 25-31 May, 22-29 July, 17-23 Sept, 15-27 Nov
Driest regions in 2016
Gis/HB
Canterbury + S Cant
Coastal Otago
Wettest regions in 2016
Auckland
Taranaki
Central Plateau
Top of SI
South Island West Coast
Regional expectations for next dry trends
Northland fairly dry from end of this December to June:(5 months dry)
Auckland dryness until next March rain. (4 months dry)
BoP dry from November to end of February. (3 months dry)
Waikato dry from December to March
Rot/Taupo dry from November to March. (3 months dry)
Gis/HB rain deficiencies from November to July. (7 months dry)
Cent Plat dries out only through January
Taranaki dry only through January
Manawatu dry from November to June. (6 months dry)
Lower NI dry from November to March
SI West Coast dry only through January
The top of SI goes into drought until March. (5 months dry)
Canterbury dry from August to March. (6 months dry)
S Canterbury dry from November to March. (3 months dry)
Coastal Otago dry from January to March
The Lakes dry from Sept to March. (5 months dry)
Inland Otago dry from January to March
Southland dry from January to March