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California experienced record-setting drought from 2012 to 2017. Based on both seasonal forecast models and historical associations, there was widespread expectation that the major El Niño event of 2015/16 would result in increased winter-season precipitation and break the drought. However, the 2015/16 winter rainy season ultimately resulted in slightly below-average precipitation and the drought continued. In this work we analyze data from both observations and seasonal forecasts made as part of the North American Multi-Model Ensemble (NMME) to better understand the general relationship between El Niño and U.S. West Coast rainfall, focusing on Southern California (SOCAL) rainfall, Pacific Northwest (PNW) rainfall, and the 2015/16 event. We find that while there is a statistically significant positive correlation between El Niño events and the SOCAL and PNW rainfall anomalies, this relationship explains at most one-third of the observed variance. Examination of hindcasts from the NMME demonstrates that the models are capable of accurately reproducing this observed correlation between tropical Pacific sea surface temperatures and California rainfall when information from the individual ensemble members is retained. However, focusing on the multimodel ensemble mean, which deliberately reduces the influence of unpredicted variability, drastically overestimates the strength of this relationship. Our analysis demonstrates that much of the winter rainfall variability along the U.S. West Coast is dominated by unpredicted variations in the 200-hPa height field and that this same unpredicted variability was largely responsible for the unexpectedly dry conditions in 2015/16.

Predictable and Unpredictable Aspects of U.S. West Coast Rainfall and El Niño: Understanding the 2015/16 Event