Everbridge Report. El Niño 2016 Forecast 8 Questions with Weather Decision Technologies

Transcription

1 Everbridge Report El Niño 2016 Forecast 8 Questions with Weather Decision Technologies

2 Everbridge Report This report is based on the forecast presented by WDT (Weather Decision Technologies) during a December 10 th, 2015 webinar. El Niño 2016 Forecast 8 Questions with Weather Decision Technologies Unpredictable, fickle and sometimes severe weather poses a constant threat to residents of cities and towns across the United States. Throw in the fact that the country is currently experiencing a strong El Niño season, and what you have is a recipe for disaster. This is evident from the storms, mudslides and snow in southern California, an area of the country that just weeks before was experiencing a major drought. On December 10th, we sat down with Dr. David Gold, a Senior Scientist, and Mike Gauthier, Senior Vice-President of Weather Decision Technologies (WDT). The pair highlighted what to expect from this El Niño season, how it stacks up to previous seasons and how to leverage WDT tools to prepare, mitigate and respond to severe weather events. Q&A with Dr. David Gold, a Senior Scientist, and Mike Gauthier, Senior Vice-President of Weather Decision Technologies 1. What exactly is El Niño and what does the current data suggest in regards to the upcoming El Niño season? El Niño is a departure from the normal climatological state over the Equatorial Tropics. Trade winds that ordinarily blow strongly from east to west, piling up water and creating a strong change from cool waters near the South American Coast to much warmer waters in Indonesia, are disrupted. The warm pool of water that is normally stationed from the Eastern Indian Ocean into Indonesia, sloshes eastward. Currently, we've got a pretty solid El Niño event in progress. According to a lot of the metrics that many meteorologists and climatologists use, it is one of the strongest in our database. However, the atmospheric response to it is not nearly as clean as I think we would like. If we look at the climate model consensus for the months of January, February and March (Figure 1) and compare it to the composite that shows the precipitation departure from normal during moderate to strong El Niño years (Figure 2), we see that the two look very similar. This means that if we were to verify, we would see a storm track that sets up from basically the coast of California through the Southern Plains and especially along the southern half of the East Coast of the US.

3 Figure 1. Figure What would it mean if the storm followed the El Niño Plan? This would mean excessive snowfall over the Sierra Nevada, some of which would occur as far south as the Mountains of Arizona and spread through the plains as we get repeated storms. Later in the winter, we would also probably see some nor'easters develop over the Southeast and move up to the Mid-Atlantic Coast. That would be if the atmosphere followed what I called the El Niño Plan. 3. What has been happening so far and how does it differ from other El Niño seasons? Over the last 60 days worth of precipitation anomalies, as well as the different hydrological divisions, there's been an excessive amount of rainfall over the Pacific Northwest, especially from about Portland through Seattle (see Figure 3). Seattle is off to its wettest start by far for a strong El Niño year. Never before has there been such a fast start to the winter wet season for that region. Compare that to Figure 4, the same composite map we showed before but only for October to December, the activity is quite a bit farther north than typical El Niño year. Also when comparing the maps, Figure 3 shows an excess of rainfall and storms over the Southern Plains the past couple of months. Some of that precipitation has extended up into the Mississippi River Valley and the West Coast precipitation has shifted. In fact, the entire storm track, if you will, has been shifted well to the north. Interestingly, as Figure 4 depicts, in most El Niño falls, we actually see the reverse signal here.

4 Figure 3. Figure What insight can you give on why this El Niño season is different than those in the past? To get to that bottom of this question, I ve taken the pattern of heights, the light pressure in the upper levels of the atmosphere, from three strongest El Niño years, and subtracted them from this autumn (Figure 5) and then averaged them together. Figure 5. The upshot is we had much more high pressure throughout the middle latitudes of the northern hemisphere and down in the southern hemisphere than we did in the past 3 strong El Niño events. What this is basically telling us is this is a signal of the jet streams is being shifted closer to the north and the south poles. It almost looks like we're amplifying the climate change signal. We're shifting those jet streams even farther north.

5 5. How does climate change impact this El Niño season? Climate change is making this El Niño behave in a fundamentally different manner so far than in the past years. El Niño typically tends to cause the jet stream to strengthen and shift south and extend towards the West Coast, but climate change opposes that. It shifts the jet streams farther to the north in the northern hemisphere and farther to the south in the southern hemisphere. That may be the reason why we're already seeing more or less a continued deficit rainfall for areas like Southern California (as shown in Figure 6). We may continue to see that occur throughout the rest of the winter, at least versus the previous strong El Niño events. Another possibility is that the storm track may setup somewhat farther north across the country, generally from the Great Basin of the Southern Plains and at times even up into portions of the Midwest. Furthermore, in places like the Interior West Rockies and the Plains, they may become much snowier over time than the past few strong El Niño events, especially as we get later into winter. Figure What temperature changes do you predict for the months of January, February and March? We previously generated two probabilistic temperature forecasts here in the WDT office (Figures 7 and 8). We assumed there would be some impact from El Niño lingering into January, giving us above normal temperatures across the north and below normal temperatures across the southwest. This would actually represent a shift to the west of the cold risks versus what you would see in your "typical" El Niño setup. However, by February we really think that this El Niño event (which by many measures has already peaked) will be rapidly decaying. This may cause the recent tendency for upper level storm systems to amplify over the Western United States. Some of that cool air may finally begin to spread east, maybe reducing the magnitude of some of this very intense

6 warmth that we've been seeing across Central and Eastern United States. Along with those cooler trends, we may see an increase in storminess across parts of the Plains and Rockies. We could see a lot of late season snows, assuming we get enough cold air drawn into these systems, which recently has been a problem. Figure 7. Figure 8. Jan Feb 7. What tools does WDT offer to provide weather intelligence? On a daily basis, WDT provides a series of tools that we named the Forecast Funnel (Figure 9). At the top of this funnel, we start with a very powerful tool called the Daily Planner for a particular location or theater of operation. The Daily Planner (Figure 10) shows up every morning in your . It's color-coded by threat, customized matrices and thresholds. You can go on there and say, "I'm concerned about temperatures or snow or rain or whatever event at my particular location." Figure 9. Figure 10. Then, if we indicate that those events or thresholds are going to be met, we color-code this planner to you in a green, yellow, and red matrix out to 7 days. This is a really great tool that a lot of our clients use on a daily basis for multiple locations. They get their cup of coffee and they check this out and they decide, "Hey, do I need to take some action today?"

7 Figure 11. Along with that Daily Planner, we provide a daily hazardous weather outlook. This is a meteorologicalderived tool from our WeatherOps Forecasters that gives an in-depth analysis of the potential hazardous winter weather or convective weather that might be affecting a broad region (Figure 11). We look at the key forecast drivers and forecast justifications. Then we can provide regional discussions as needed for inclement weather. A lot of clients will take this and use this to make action plans or work on their response plans. When the time frame becomes a lot closer and to the actual event, 48 hours prior to that event, we'll start issuing these weather checks that will break down the situation every 2 hours (Figure 12). We'll color-code them again based on those threat matrices that you can set. These weather checks will let you know what time periods during those days you can really expect the impact of this weather to come through. Figure 12. Figure 13. At the very end of the funnel, as the actual event occurs, we start issuing storms advisories and alerts, whether they'd be derived from our meteorologists or from the National Weather Service. This is designed to come in an , color-coded with you at that location which I ve included below (Figure 13). In this particular case, you see rain, snow, and ice in the pink coming through.

8 8. Can you give us a real-life example of how your tools provide weather intelligence? Recently, we had a very significant icing event in Oklahoma. Our client, Oklahoma Gas and Electric, used this particular forecast funnel methodology to hone in on where their impact was going to be. It was pretty devastating. We couldn't prevent it, but we did help them channel resources, both personnel and equipment, to the impacted areas. They were even able to call in mutual assistance from three surrounding utilities. As a result, we worked with them before the storm, during the storm, and now we're sitting out with them after the storm to discuss with them how we can all improve - how can they improve their internal communications, how can we improve our communications to them, how can we make this better. That particular winter event severely impacted Oklahoma but OG&E had a fantastic response to it and actually got the power back on it in a very rapid format. ~~ Weather Decision Technologies (WDT) is a global leader in providing state-of-thescience weather detection, nowcasting and forecasting systems. If you would like to hear more from Dr. David Gold or Mike Gauthier of WDT regarding El Nino predictions and the steps your organization can take in preparation, visit Everbridge s SMARTWeather Alerting leverages Weather Decision Technologies to provide location-specific severe weather alerts from the National Weather Service at the speed of a click to help keep everyone informed and safe. If you re interesting in learning more about Everbridge s SMARTWeather product, visit

9 About Everbridge Everbridge provides a unified critical communication suite that helps clients be better prepared, make better decisions, and respond quickly and confidently during disruptive events. When an incident happens, whether it s a natural disaster or an IT service outage, we automate communications to ensure that the right messages get to the right people at the right time. Widely recognized by analysts as the market leader, Everbridge solutions are trusted by clients in all major industries and government sectors to connect with over 50 million people around the world. THE ONLY END-TO-END PLATFORM Planning: Everbridge is easy to set up, maintain, and organize, meaning that you re always ready for a quick, coordinated response. Everbridge ensures that the right messages get to the right people - with the most advanced opt-in portal on the market, streamlined integration with internal and external data sources, and simple group and contact management. Assessment: When trouble strikes, you need rich insight, presented simply - so you can quickly assess potential impact and make an informed decision to avoid loss. Everbridge offers the only solution on the market that meets these demanding requirements, with the most advanced interactive dashboard in the industry. Response: In critical situations, ease-of-use can mean the difference between an effective response and a mistake that carries serious consequences. Everbridge is engineered to be simple to use under pressure, with a user interface that accelerates time-to-message and reduces the likelihood of errors. Delivery: Even during large-scale disruptions, Everbridge stays on. The most advanced platform in the industry ensures that you reach your contacts - every time. And with worldwide coverage and capabilities, including globally local calling infrastructure and data storage, we re ready to support you wherever your people are in the world. Visit to learn more.