March TLT and SST: Remarkable parallels

I've been tracking the Temperature of the Lower Troposphere (TLT) and the sea surface temperature (SST) in the El Niño 3.4 zone for each month since October 2015.  I'm doing this primarily because the TLT was the cited data set that skeptics used to claim there was "no global warming" post-1998, which is when the last big El Niño took place.   Even though this claim was made with little or no grasp of the climate system, and the manifestations of climate and Earth system warming are observable everywhere and have been for years, the claim was still annoying.

Well, as we have seen, the now-clearly-waning 2015-2016 El Niño drove the TLT to never before seen high temperature anomalies.  So the next question is:  how long will these anomalies persist?

The most recent plot shows truly remarkable parallels between the 1997-1998 event and this one.  I'm really excited to see what happens in April, because if the dip in TLT after the high peak in February, (with a timing and magnitude almost exactly the same as for 1997-1998) is actually related to atmospheric circulation, the TLT might go even higher this month.  The cold snaps of early April may be indicative of a lot of energy in the atmosphere from the El Niño heat, so it's possible.  But much of the month remains to take place.

So here's the plot.  Note that this month's TLT anomaly is only about a hundredth of a degree lower than the 1997-1998 event's highest temperature.