From the BOM:
ENSO Outlook decreased to El Niño WATCH; positive IOD possible
Indicators have been close to El Niño thresholds over the past several months, but signs have emerged of a weakening of these patterns. As a result, the Bureau's ENSO Outlook has been downgraded to El Niño WATCH. This means the chance of El Niño developing in 2019 is approximately 50%, which is still double the normal likelihood.Look for later hurricane season forecasts to add one or two more hurricnes than the earlier guesses.
While sea surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific Ocean remain close to El Niño levels, water beneath the surface has slowly cooled over the past few months. Atmospheric indicators such as the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) and cloudiness near the Date Line have generally remained in the neutral range, despite short-term El Niño-like SOI values in the last fortnight.
International models surveyed by the Bureau indicate that sea surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific are likely to remain near El Niño thresholds until mid-winter, before cooling in late winter to spring. By August, two of the eight models are clearly at El Niño levels, with another two near El Niño thresholds....MORE
The BOM is one of our big three public sources on ENSO conditions, along with Columbia Uni/IRI and the US. NOAA.
For El Niño Modoki situations Japan's Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC) is the go-to.
Finally, the comment thread on this NOAA page seems to be leaning toward a Modoki
February 2019 ENSO Update: El Niño conditions are here
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Regular or Modoki El Niño?
How can we tell if it's a regular or Modoki ENSO event?
RE: Regular or Modoki El Niño?
It
is difficult to give a definitive answer to this question because El
Nino types do not separate cleanly into canonical or Modoki types. As this post describes,
the location of maximum sea surface temperature anomalies varies rather
continuously from east to west, so there is no clear separation between
the two types. With that said, and also consistent with this post,
the weaker El Nino episodes tend to be centered more toward the central
Pacific (Modoki-like), and this event is no exception. For researchers
who study the differences between canonical and Modoki El Nino, I'm
pretty confident nearly all will characterize the current event as a
Modoki event. However, keep in mind that there are different methods
for distinguishing ENSO "flavors," so we cannot expect universal
agreement for all cases.
