
GODAS Image (courtesy of the NOAA/Climate Prediction Center) showing the January upper 300 meter heat content and sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies (differences from the long-term average).
What does this mean in terms of the “Blob?”
The North Pacific Mode (NPM) Index (image below, courtesy Richard James, Prescient Weather, following Hartman, 2015) has crashed, falling from +1.35 in November to -1.05 in January. This is the most negative value of the NPM since June 2012. So if we consider the NPM loading pattern as the canonical Blob, then we might say the original Blob as we knew it has at long last gone the way of all blobs – away. However, if what we’re interested in is a continued pattern of unusually warm water in the northeast Pacific, well, that’s a story that lives on even though the original Blob mechanisms may no longer be in effect. — Rick
–Rick