Tag Archives: Climate and weather

Jonas: The Giver Of Really Crappy Weather UPDATED

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GO HERE FOR THE LATEST UPDATE

See below for update

Jonas, (and no, I do not condone naming of storms that are not tropical cyclones) is going to do bad things to the US East Coast and hinterland.

Imma let you get back to setting your hair on fire over this storm, but first I want to ‘splain something to you.

A big No’reaster like this is a big swirling fast moving low pressure system that is drawing potentially huge quantities of moisture off of a global warming and El Niño over-heated Atlantic ocean, driving that moisture inland where it will mix with cold air and turn into various forms of liquid and non-liquid precipitation.

Predicting where rain, sleet, freezing rain, or snow will fall, and how much, in such a storm is probably one of the hardest things to predict in weather. Even if the center of the storm’s track is accurately predicted, and the overall size of the storm is accurately predicted, values of actual precip will not be known until it is known from direct measurements after the fact.

Also, people will get this wrong, and some will use that wrongness for evil purposes. Remember when the Great New England Blizzard of 2015 (almost exactly one year ago, and it too had a name but I forgot it) was predicted to hammer New York City and didn’t? Climate science deniers and other morons went apoplectic over that. But what really happened is that a storm larger than most countries arrived as predicted, dropped about the amount of precip as predicted, but was about 10% offset to the North, sparing the greater New York City area, with it’s New York Ideals and all, from any major snowfall. In other words, that storm was actually very accurately predicted, but because one tiny bit of the landscape that happened to be occupied by 20 million people got several inches less than expected, the science of meteorology was declared dead by the usual nefarious anti-science yahoos. (See this for an account of that.)

Paul Douglas, who is my go-to source for sane commentary about big storms like this, suggests that there will be more rain and mixed precip east of I-95, and more snow west of I-95, and that travel and power and such are likely to be affected. This storm, like most Nor’easters, will be windy, and that may be the biggest problem for may in its path. That wind could also be a problem in coastal areas where winds can cause flooding.

The heaviest snow may fall north and west of DC and Baltimore, and there may be some places, here and there, that will have something close to 24 inches. New York City and Boston could get decent snowfalls as well, with New York likely to get more, Boston being spared more than the usual annoying few inches. But, again, the exact distribution of snow depends on the highly unpredictable mixture of moist air coming off the ocean and cold continental air turning rain to white matter.

So, if you live in Virgina, West Virgina, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, near New York City or the Southern Tier, keep an eye on the weather, you might anywhere from just under a foot to much more. This is all going to happen from Friday into the weekend.

It is not clear that Senator “Science is a hoax” Inhofe will have ready access to Global Warming Alarmist Killing Snowballs this time around.

UPDATE:

As Jonas T. Storm approaches, weather forecasters are tightening up their predictions. There is now a blizzard watch (not warning, watch, not as certain as a warning) for Washington DC. This is the first blizzard watch for that location since 1986.

The 1-2 foot snowstorm region at present, according to well accepted models, now includes Washington DC and Philadelphia. It is possible that this amount of snowfall will extend to New York City. The heaviest snowfall may be in DC for Friday evening rush hour. Meanwhile, Boston is not likely to receive too much snow.

From Friday night through much of the day Sunday you might expect transportation systems including by air and by land to be seriously impacted in that region.

It is still the case that the most snow will likely fall west of the I-95 corridor, with perhaps 3 feet in areas on the Piedmont in western Virginia. But, again, these things are very hard to predict. If you live anywhere from a triangle running from Louisville/Cincinnati to New York and down to Asheville/Knoxville you are likely to see snowfall ranging from several inches to a foot or so, and in some areas more, according to NOAA.

Multiple models are putting more than 20 inches right on DC with more than 30 inches along the Virginia/West Virginia border. Again, your actual mileage will vary.

Meanwhile, the wind predictions are still indicating severe conditions, with winds over 35 mph all along the coast from the Chesapeake up through Gloucester, and a concentration of 50 mph winds offshore of Long Island and on the Delmarva coast.

But again, if you are on the edge of the predicted Great Blob of Snow and not much happens at your house, realize that this is a rough prediction, and don’t come complaining. Just be happy you dodged the bullet.

The biggest uncertainty is probably how far north (up to and beyond New York City) significant snow will fall. Also, all the areas near water, such as DC, New York, and Boston are probably harder to predict because interactions with the ocean may cause warmer conditions, more rain or wet snow instead of fluffy snow, etc.

The sea surface temperatures in the Atlantic are very high, and this is contributing significantly to the amount of precipitation this storm will bring. Notice the very high temps right where extra warm water would be feeding into this storm (hat tip, Paul Douglas):

Screen Shot 2016-01-20 at 12.04.01 PM

The sea surface temperatures in the Atlantic have been very high in this region for a long time now, since before El Niño started, though it is likely that El Niño has contributed to this a bit.

Weather, Climate Change, and Related Matters in 2015

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I had considered writing an accounting of all the outlandish weather events of 2015, but that project quickly became a tl:dr list of untoward happenings which is both alarming and a bit boring, since it is so long. So, I decided to generate something less comprehensive, focusing more on the context and meaning of the diverse and impressive set of outcomes of anthropogenic global warming, an historically strong El Niño, and, well, weather which is already a pretty whacky thing.

See: Highlights of Climate Change Research in 2015

It should be noted right away that 2015 is the last year in which any human alive will see CO2 levels dip below 400 parts per million.

What is the biggest single weather related news of 2015?

Floods, probably. Around the world, there were a lot of floods, and a lot of them were very damaging and deadly. Also, many of these floods appeared with little warning, even in places like Texas, where the meteorology is pretty good. Those Texas floods were of special note, as were the floods in the Carolinas. But outside the US there were major floods in Asia, especially Vietnam and Myanmar, as well as Yemen. Alaska, Oklahoma, Atacama in South America, also saw severe floods.

Why were there so many floods?

I’m pretty sure it is accurate to say that there was more flooding, and more severe flooding, than typical for, say, 20th century climatology. We had many 1,000 year flood events, too many to assume that these events remain as 1,000 year events.

See: Global Warming Changing Weather in the US Northeast

There are probably two or three reasons for increased flooding, which of course is caused by increased and concentrated rainfall along with other factors such as land use changes that cause rainfall to result in more flooding. One is the simple fact that a warmer atmosphere, due to global warming, contains more water, and thus, we get more rain. How much more? Not a lot, but enough to make a difference. If you put together a bunch of weather data and plot the annual precipitation rate over the last century or so, and fit a line to the data, the line will look flat. It isn’t really flat, and in fact, a properly fitted line on good data will show a statistically significant upslope. But still, the total amount of extra precipitation is a small percentage of the usual amount of precipitation, so the slope is not impressive unless you draw it out using heavy-handed graphing methods.

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A few other places are doing end of year reviews. Inside Climate is doing a series of 2015 retrospectives. Skeptical Science has an overview of the year. Environmental health news has a wish list pivoting on 2015 and a year in review. And Then There’s Physics summarizes 2015. Critical Angle takes a critical look at 2015 here. If you see any more out there in the wild, let me know. Media Matters has “The 15 Most Ridiculous Things Conservative Media Said About Climate Change In 2015.” Media Matters also has 5 New Year’s Resolutions For Reporting On Climate Change. HotWhopper has The Fake Sceptic Awards for 2015 here.
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A second factor is a set of changes in how, when, and where the rain falls. Normally, in the temperate regions, rain storms move along with trade winds, guided or influenced by jet streams, fairly quickly. But if the jet streams slow down, the storms slow down, so we may see 4 inches of rain fall in one place that normally would have been spread out over a larger area, never exceeding half (or less) of that amount in any given area. The jet streams have slowed down and also become curvier, which both increases the amount of rain that falls in a give area but also may transfer moisture from and to places that are normally not involved as much in such a process. For example, the storm we are expecting today in the upper Midwest and Plains is not a typical Canadian Clipper, but rather a Gulf Coast storm related to the deadly blizzards and tornado swarms we’ve seen over the last few days to the south.

See: Does global warming destroy your house in a flood?

This clumping of rain in smaller areas also means that other areas that would normally have received some rain don’t, causing what my colleague Paul Douglas refers to as “flash droughts.” These are dry periods that don’t last long enough, and are not severe enough, to register on any official drought-o-meter, but nonetheless stress local water systems (such as farming) enough to be a nuisance.

A third factor is sea surface temperature. This really relates to, and is probably one of the main causes, of the first factor (increased precip overall), and feeds into the second factor (clumping of rain) but deserves its own consideration. Elevated sea surface temperatures in the Atlantic off the US coast last winter caused a lot more moisture than normal to feed into nor’easter storms, which in turn have become more common (because of increased sea surface temperatures and other factors), thus dumping large quantities of snow in the US Northeast. The same thing dumped lots of extra snow in a region that normally gets very little snow, the US Southeast, the winter before.

See: A selection of books on climate change

These changes have been happening for decades, and are due to global warming. The warming caused by the human release of extra greenhouse gasses, and other human effects, increase the warmth, thus the evaporation, thus the precipitation. Part of this warming trend involved increasing the warmth of the Arctic at a much higher rate than most of the rest of the planet. This, in turn, seems to have caused the jet stream to become wavy and slow down. The jet streams and trade winds are ultimately caused and controlled by the Earth spinning, which has not changed, and the temperature differential between the warm equator and the cold poles, which has changed quite a bit.


See: Weather Whiplash Is Like My Old Broken Sprinkler

But what about El Niño?

Didn’t El Niño cause these changes, and thus, aren’t these weather events unrelated to global warming?

No, and for two reasons.

First, many of these events happened during the first half of the year, before the start of the current El Niño, which is in fact the strongest El Niño so far observed directly, and possibly the strongest El Niño in millennia.

The second reason is that the heat released by the El Niño (the release of heat stored in the Pacific Ocean is what an El Niño is, in functional terms) is added to an already warmed world. It may even be that the extra severity of this year’s El Niño is upscaled by anthropogenic global warming. In any event, any records we set during the current El Niño exceed earlier El Niño years because the El Niños we experience are shorter term warming events on top of a steadily increasing global warming phenomenon.

We had a lot of fires

Last year and this year, or really, the last few years, have seen excessive, above normal rates of forest and brush fires in various regions. We have seen major fires in Australia, North America, and Southeast Asia during this period, with North America breaking several recent records this year.

See: Forest fires in Indonesia choke much of south-east Asia

These fires are caused by a combination of factors, but ultimately heat increasing evaporation, prior rainy years increasing available fuel, and warm winters increasing tree death to parasites (thus increasing fuel), all have contributed.

North America, in the old days, had much more fire-heavy years than anything recent because we were busy cutting down the forest, piling up “slash” (left over tree parts) and running sparky old fashioned coal-driven railroad engines up and down between the slash piles, catching them on fire. In addition, just burning the slash on purpose contributed to the overall amount of fire, especially when the slash fires got out of control.

We also saw some pretty impressive fires a couple of decades ago because of what we now know were bad fire management practices, which had actually grown out of those earlier decades of logging related fires. In other words, the frequency and distribution of forest and brush fires is complex. During aridification, probably global warming related, in Africa during the 70s and 80s, vast areas started to burn more regularly than usual. In those days, I would fly at night over Libya, Chad and the Sudan a couple of times a year, and could observe the entire region was burning all the time, easily visible from 26,000 feet.

The bottom line: The frequency and extent of fires is variable and chaotic, but anthropogenic global warming seems to have contributed significantly to us having more of them.

Were there more storms in 2015?

Record breaking tropical storms occurred in 2015. All of the tropical cyclone/hurricane basins saw interesting activity, with the Atlantic being the most quiet, and the Eastern Pacific, possibly, being the strangest.

There were 22 Category 4 or 5 storms this year in the Northern Hemisphere, a record number. The last record year was recent, 2004. Studies have shown overall that the total energy that forms up in tropical cyclones has increased with global warming, though the actual total number of storms is highly variable.

It is reasonable to expect an increase in the frequency and severity of tropical storms with global warming, while at the same time, in some areas, smaller storms may become less common. This is partly because smaller storms are more readily abated by some of the global-warming related changes in weather systems such as increased wind shear and increased dust in the tropical atmosphere. At the same time, extremely high sea surface temperatures, and also, high water temperatures as depth (100–200 meters) increase the potential strength of storms that do get past that initial formation.

Hurricane Patricia, in the Eastern Pacific (landfall in Mexico) was an especially important storm. It was a physically small storm, but had more powerful winds than ever seen in a tropical storm. The storm went from nothing to a full hurricane in several hours (instead of several days).

The significance of this can not be underestimated. We have a situation where the conditions that might cause a hurricane to form are extreme, because of global warming (and this year, more so because of El Niño). So, when when these conditions are in place, a hurricane can form faster, and get more powerful, than normal. Consider the prospect of a land falling Category 5+ storm forming offshore from an area with low lying terrain (not like where Patricia struck land) with a high population density (not like where Patricia struck land) and moving on shore immediately. Like for instance, an Atlantic or Gulf of Mexico version of Patricia making landfall near Miami or NOLA.

Most of the really large hurricanes of this year were in the Pacific basin, distributed across the entire region, but Hurricane Joaquin, which was a very large and powerful storm in the Atlantic, did have us on the edge of our seats for a while when some of the better weather predicting models suggested it might make landfall. Also, nearly unprecedented tropical storms formed near the Arabian Pennensula.

This was a hot year

Other than February, which was merely hot rather than really hot, globally, every month so far this year has broken or nearly broken one or more records, depending on which database one uses. The running 12-month average of surface temperatures started to break records before El Niño kicked in, and continued to do so since. This will continue for several more months, even if the El Niño phenomenon itself stops soon, because it takes several months for surface temperatures to show the El Niño effect.

More specifically, there were killer heat waves in the Western Cape of South Africa, South Asia, and the Middle East. Australia recorded its hottest day ever. North America experienced numerous record breaking days, in the US and Canada. Cherry trees thought it was spring and bloomed last week in Washington. I saw birds building a nest outside my house in Minnesota two weeks ago, and our lawn was green(ish) through last weekend.

Ocean Oddness and Other Events

Let us not forget the Great Blob of Hot Water in the northern Pacific. This non El Niño phenomenon, which has been going for a couple of years no, has had El Niño like effects in the region, and probably relates to the non normal weather in along the western coast of North America, including record breaking heat in Alaska, major storms in or near Alaska, and of course, the California Drought.

A Haboob-Nado in China involved some of the strongest winds ever seen in the region, and may have, very unusually, contained an embedded tornado. We had a mild tornado season in the US, in Tornado Alley, until a few days ago when a not-very-seasonal tornado season sprung up and killed close to 50 people in just a few days. The American southeast does get winter tornadoes, but Michigan does not. But this year, there was a first ever recorded December tornado in that state.

The Arctic Sea ice has been diminishing in its minimum extent for a few decades now, and this year we saw the third lowest amount. The volume of Arctic sea ice continues to shrink.

You all know about the Syrian Refugee crisis. This is the latest chapter in the collapse of the Syrian state, which in turn happened because of long term drought in that country killing off the agricultural system and forcing farmers into the cities, where many became involved in the Syrian Civil War, which opened up the opportunity for the Islamic State to take a large amount of territory in the region. And so on. The Syrian refugee crisis is likely to be an early version of more of the same to come over future decades. And, I quickly point out, this is not likely to have been the first climate refugee situation, just much worse than prior events related to the spread of deserts in North Africa and drying out in West Asia.

Research on Climate Change

This year saw some interesting research in climate change.

One team studies major oscillations in climate that relate to oceans (of which El Niño is a shorter-term smaller part). This research suggests that the last couple of decades have seen less warming than we might expect over the long term, and further suggests that an uptick in the rate of warming is in our medium term future.

Related research also shows that accelerated melting of northern glaciers, especially Greenland, could alter Atlantic currents, so while the Earth generally warms due to increased greenhouse gasses, weather may change to a colder regime in Europe, some time over the next few dedades.

We are seeing an increased rate at which climate and weather experts are attributing bad weather to global warming. This is partly a shift in thinking and methods among the experts, and partly because of an actual increase in such events.

There has been interesting research in the Antarctic. We are seeing increased concern about, and evidence for, destabilization of huge inland glaciers that could start to fall apart and contribute to sea level rise at any time in the next several years. At the same time we saw one study that seemed to suggest that Antarctic is gaining ice, rather than losing it. If that is true, than recent decades of sea level rise are partly unexplained. Alternatively, the research, which has some known flaws, may simply be wrong. Look for some interesting results related to Antarctic glacier during 2016.

The famous #FauxPause in global warming, claimed by many climate change deniers to be a real thing (no warming in X years, etc.) was already known to be Faux, but this year saw several independent nails being driven into that coffin. Rather than a pause that disproves global warming, we have a better understood series of changed in the long term warming in the planet’s surface temperature.

See: In a blind test, economists reject the notion of a global warming pause

Sea floor biotic diversity was shown to be threatened by warming, coral bleaching is more likely and in fact happening at a higher rate, and probably mostly due to El Niño, there has been some odd ocean animal migrations.

The planting zones, the gardening and agricultural zones we use to decide which crops to plant and when, have over the last several years shifted in most places in North America by one or two zones. This year, the people who make the zone maps came out with a new one.

Sea levels continue to rise, and the rate of rise is rising. Rare nuisance flooding in coastal areas, most famously but not only Miami, have become regular events. Sales in waterproof shoes are expected to increase.

Communication and Politics

Across meteorology we see the graph and chart makers scrambling to find new colors for their maps showing heat. Y-axes are being stretched everywhere. We seem to be stuck with a five level category system for tropical cyclones/hurricanes, but we are seeing so many storms that are way stronger, bigger, more destructive than earlier Category 5 storms that talk of adding a category is no longer being responded to with angry mobs of pitchfork wielding weather forecasters who came of age with the older system.

See: How to not look like an idiot

There has been a great deal of significant climate change related activism, and COP happened, with a strong message to address the human causes of climate change sooner than later. Climate change has actually become an issue in US elections. For the first time a major world leader, President Obama, has faced off with the deniers and told them to STFU. Major news outlets such as the Washington Post and the Guardian have started to take climate change seriously. The idea that reporters must give equal weight to the “two sides of the story” (science is real, vs. science is not real) is disappearing.

Denial of climate change and climate change science reached its high water mark over the last 12 months. It will now fade away.

And that is a short and incomplete summary of weather and climate in 2015.

A note for my regular readers: Yes, I chose the burning Earth graphic to annoy the denialist. Check the comments below to see if that annoyed anyone.

What happened to the Blizzard of 2015?

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What happened to the Blizzard of 2015? Well, it happened. Despite breathless complaining about how the forecasters got it all wrong, they didn’t. As the storm was predicted, there should have been close to about two feet of snow in the New York City metropolitan area, but as it turns out, there was between 8 and 12 inches. That means that New York City experienced a typical winter month’s worth of snow in one day. Also, most snow that falls on The City falls a few inches at a time and melts more or less instantly, as few cities can match New York in its heat island effect. So, 8-12 inches of snow all at once is a meaningful, crippling snow storm. Two feet would have been much worse, but it is not like The City did not experience a memorable weather event.

More importantly, the forecast was for a huge blizzard with up to three feet of snow across a blob shaped region of the Northeast approximately 475 miles along its longest dimension (see graphic above). The blob ended up being off, on the southwest end, by about 40 or 50 miles. So the spatial extent of the storm was misestimated, days in advance, by about 10%. An object the size of a country was off by the distance a healthy adult can walk in a long day. That was, ladies and gentleman, an excellent, accurate prediction.

nyt-march-29-1976But, since the storm’s outcome was different than predicted in the world’s most inward looking city (you’ve seen the self-effacing maps produced now and then by the New Yorker magazine), it is assumed by many that the forecast was bad, that forecasting was bad, that weather models are bad, and so on.

As meteorologist Paul Douglass told me yesterday when I asked him if he was going to be kneeling on any carpets today over the difference between prediction and reality, “No kneeling, Greg. Just because we tap supercomputers and Doppler radar doesn’t mean we can predict snowfall down to the inch. Models are good and getting better, but they’re not perfect and never will be. People expect perfection in an imperfect world. Boston picked up 20-30” snow, Long Island saw 15-23”, so did much of Connecticut. There was an 8 foot storm surge on Cape Cod where winds gusted to 78 mph.”

Paul also told me something he shared later that day on the Ed Show. “Over 30 years I’ve worked with a series of anchormen in the Twin Cities and Chicago. When they invariably gave me a hard time for busting a forecast I reminded them that a monkey in a sport coat could report on what happened yesterday. Look at the trends and predict tomorrow’s news headlines!” He indicated that when sportscasters started to routinely predict tomorrow’s scores rather than report today’s scores, they would be on a level playing field with the meteorologists.

Here is that Ed Show piece:

The Blizzard of 2015 was in some ways comparable to the Blizzard of 1978, which was one of the first storms of the modern era of increased storminess. The snowfall totals may have been greater for 2015, but coastal winds were greater for 1978. But, in 1978 over 100 people died, and most of them died of exposure because they were caught in the snow. So, in terms of cost of human lives, the two storms are very comparable despite the differences in winds.

ComparingBlizzards_1978_2015

Why did over 100 people die in New England’s 1978 storm, but either zero or one person died (depending on attribution of a single sledding accident related death to the storm) in 2015?

Weather forecasting. It got better because the science and technology behind it got better. And, frankly, that is partly a result of storms like the ’78 storm and various hurricanes, which prompted an interest in advancing this technology, which includes on one hand satellites producing piles of data and on the other hand advanced computer and software producing powerful models.

You should buy your local meteorologist a beer.

The image comparing 1978 and 2015 is a chimera of images that come from NOAA and the Boston Globe.

The Hottest Year: 2014

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NOAA will announce today that 2014 was the warmest year during the instrumental record, which begins in 1880. The announcement, which addresses findings of both NOAA and NASA, will be made today at 11:00 Eastern. Below is the press release from NOAA.

I talked about this and other climate matters in a radio interview at Green Divas:

Michael Mann has made the following statements regarding this news:

2014 Was Earth’s Warmest Year On Record
Three major climate organizations (JMA, NASA, and NOAA) have now released their official estimates for the 2014 Global Mean Surface Temperature. Both JMA and NOAA conclude that 2014 was substantially higher, i.e. outside the margin of error, of previous contenders (1998, 2005, and 2010) while NASA finds 2014 to be warmest, but within the margin of error of 2005 and 2010 (i.e. a “statistical tie”).

Based on the collective reports, it is therefore fair to declare 2014 the warmest year on record. This is significant for a number of reasons. Unlike past record years, 2014 broke the record without the “assist” of a large El Niño event. There was only the weakest semblance of an El Niño and tropical Pacific warmth contributed only moderately to the record 2014 global temperatures. Viewed in context, the record temperatures underscore the undeniable fact that we are witnessing, before our eyes, the effects of human-caused climate change. It is exceptionally unlikely that we would be seeing a record year, during a record warm decade, during a multidecadal period of warmth that appears to be unrivaled over at least the past millennium, were it not for the rising levels of planet-warming gases produced by fossil fuel burning.

The record temperatures *should* put to rest the absurd notion of a “pause” (what I refer to as the “Faux Pause” in Scientific American in global warming. There is a solid body of research now showing that any apparent slow-down of warming during the past decade was likely due to natural short-term factors (like small changes in solar output and volcanic activity) and internal fluctuations related to e.g. the El Nino phenomenon. The record 2014 temperatures underscore the fact that global warming and associated climate changes continue unabated as we continue to raise the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

See also:

  • this post by Laurence Lewis
    • <li><a href="http://www.carbonbrief.org/blog/2015/01/explainer-how-do-scientists-measure-global-temperature/">Explainer: How do scientists measure global temperature?</a></li>

<li><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2015/jan/16/global-warming-made-2014-record-hot-year">Global warming made 2014 a record hot year – in animated graphics</a></li>

<li><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weather-gang/wp/2015/01/16/scientists-react-to-warmest-year-2014-underscores-undeniable-fact-of-human-caused-climate-change/">Scientists react to warmest year: 2014 underscores ‘undeniable fact’ of human-caused climate change</a></li>

<li><a href="http://mashable.com/2015/01/16/2014-earth-warmest-year-not-random/">There is less than a 1-in-27 million chance that Earth's record hot streak is natural</a></li>

<li><a href="http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/01/16/3612351/noaa-nasa-2014-hottest-year-on-record/">NOAA, NASA: 2014 Is Officially Hottest Year On Record, Driven By Global Warming</a>

    <li><a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/16/2014-hottest-year-on-record_n_6479896.html">2014 Was The Hottest Year Since At Least 1880, Government Finds</a></li>

<li><a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2014-hottest-year-on-record/">Interesting graphic at Bloomberg</a></li>

<li><a href="http://blog.ucsusa.org/born-after-1976-you-have-lived-your-entire-life-on-a-hotter-planet-784">Born after 1976? You’ve Lived Your Entire Life on a Hotter Planet</a></li>

<li><a href="http://www.ucsusa.org/news/press_release/2014-hottest-on-record-0459#.VLlDH4rF-6Z">2014 a Record Hot Year</a></li>

<li><a href="http://www.onearth.org/earthwire/2014-hottest-year">2014: ONE FOR THE RECORD BOOKS</a></li>

<li><a href="http://climatecrocks.com/2015/01/16/its-official-2014-hottest-year/">It’s Official, 2014 Hottest Year</a></li>

    The Press Release

    NOAA: 2014 was Earth’s warmest year on record
    December 2014 record warm; Global oceans also record warm for 2014

    The globally averaged temperature over land and ocean surfaces for 2014 was the highest among all years since record keeping began in 1880, according to NOAA scientists. The December combined global land and ocean average surface temperature was also the highest on record.

    This summary from NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center is part of the suite of climate services NOAA provides to government, business, academia and the public to support informed decision-making.

    In an independent analysis of the data also released today, NASA scientists also found 2014 to be the warmest on record.

    2014

        <li>During 2014, the average temperature across global land and ocean surfaces was 1.24°F (0.69°C) above the 20th century average. This was the highest among all years in the 1880-2014 record, surpassing the previous records of 2005 and 2010 by 0.07°F (0.04°C).</li>

    <li>Record warmth was spread around the world, including Far East Russia into western Alaska, the western United States, parts of interior South America most of Europe stretching into northern Africa, parts of eastern and western coastal Australia, much of the northeastern Pacific around the Gulf of Alaska, the central to western equatorial Pacific, large swaths of northwestern and southeastern Atlantic, most of the Norwegian Sea, and parts of the central to southern Indian Ocean.</li>

    <li>During 2014, the globally-averaged land surface temperature was 1.80°F (1.00°C) above the 20th century average. This was the fourth highest among all years in the 1880-2014 record.</li>

    <li>During 2014, the globally-averaged sea surface temperature was 1.03°F (0.57°C) above the 20th century average. This was the highest among all years in the 1880-2014 record, surpassing the previous records of 1998 and 2003 by 0.09°F (0.05°C).</li>

    <li>Looking above Earth’s surface at certain layers of the atmosphere, two different analyses examined NOAA satellite-based data records for the lower and middle troposphere and the lower stratosphere.</li>

    <ul>
<li>The 2014 temperature for the lower troposphere (roughly the lowest five miles of the atmosphere) was third highest in the 1979-2014 record, at 0.50°F (0.28°C) above the 1981–2010 average, as analyzed by the University of Alabama Huntsville (UAH), and sixth highest on record, at 0.29°F (0.16°C) above the 1981–2010 average, as analyzed by Remote Sensing Systems (RSS).</li>


            <li><li>The 2014 temperature for the mid-troposphere (roughly two miles to six miles above the surface) was third highest in the 1979-2014 record, at 0.32°F (0.18°C) above the 1981–2010 average, as analyzed by UAH, and sixth highest on record, at 0.25°F (0.14°C) above the 1981–2010 average, as analyzed by RSS.</li>


            <li><li>The temperature for the lower stratosphere (roughly 10 miles to 13 miles above the surface) was 13th lowest in the 1979-2014 record, at 0.56°F (0.31°C) below the 1981–2010 average, as analyzed by UAH, and also 13th lowest on record, at 0.41°F (0.23°C) below the 1981–2010 average, as analyzed by RSS.  The stratospheric temperature is decreasing on average while the lower and middle troposphere temperatures are increasing on average, consistent with expectations in a greenhouse-warmed world.</li></ul>

    According to data from NOAA analyzed by the Rutgers Global Snow Lab, the average annual Northern Hemisphere snow cover extent during 2014 was 24.95 million square miles, and near the middle of the historical record. The first half of 2014 saw generally below-normal snow cover extent, with above-average coverage later in the year.

    Recent polar sea ice extent trends continued in 2014. The average annual sea ice extent in the Arctic was 10.99 million square miles, the sixth smallest annual value of the 36-year period of record. The annual Antarctic sea ice extent was record large for the second consecutive year, at 13.08 million square miles.

    December 2014

        <li>During December, the average temperature across global land and ocean surfaces was 1.39°F (0.77°C) above the 20th century average. This was the highest for December in the 1880-2014 record, surpassing the previous record of 2006 by 0.04°F (0.02°C).</li>

    <li>During December, the globally-averaged land surface temperature was 2.45°F (1.36°C) above the 20th century average. This was the third highest for December in the 1880-2014 record.  </li>

    <li>During December, the globally-averaged sea surface temperature was 0.99°F (0.55°C) above the 20th century average. This was also the third highest for December in the 1880-2014 record.</li>

    <li>The average Arctic sea ice extent for December was 210,000 square miles (4.1 percent) below the 1981-2010 average. This was the ninth smallest December extent since records began in 1979, according to analysis by the National Snow and Ice Data Center based on data from NOAA and NASA.</li>

    <li>Antarctic sea ice during December was 430,000 square miles (9.9 percent) above the 1981-2010 average. This was the fourth largest December Antarctic sea ice extent on record.</li>

    <li>According to data from NOAA analyzed by the Rutgers Global Snow Lab, the Northern Hemisphere snow cover extent during December was 130,000 square miles below the 1981-2010. This was the 20th smallest December Northern Hemisphere snow cover extent in the 49-year period of record.</li>

    A more complete summary of climate conditions and events can be found at: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/2014/13

    Typhoon Hagupit (Ruby): Update and what you can do to help

    Uncategorized, , , , , , ,

    The outer reaches of Typhoon Hagupit are already affecting the target region in the Philippines. Hundreds of thousands of people have fled the areas most under the gun, but the potential for serious problems covers a very large area. The storm has gone through quite a few changes over the last couple of days, but is probably strengthening somewhat right now. No matter what happens, it is going to hit the Philippines as a very serious storm.

    Jeff Masters has an update here.

    This is the same area that was hit with Typhoon Haiyan last year. Haiyan was a bigger storm. But, Haiyan was also one of the biggest typhoons ever observed (I think people are still arguing over whether it was the biggest, second biggest, etc.). There is potential for very high storm surges, serious winds, very heavy rains (over two feet in some places) which could cause devastating mudslides and flooding.

    When this sort of storm hits people often want to know what they can do to help. I’ve learned about a recent project that you may be interested in. This is by Direct Relief. As background, let’s look at a relatively objective source of information about Direct Relief, Wikipedia:

    Direct Relief (formerly known as Direct Relief International) is a private humanitarian nonprofit organization based in Santa Barbara, California, with a mission to “improve the health and lives of people affected by poverty or emergency situations by mobilizing and providing essential medical resources needed for their care.”[1] Founded in 1948 by Estonian immigrant William D. Zimdin, the organization is headed by President and CEO Thomas Tighe and a 31-member Board of Directors.[5] Direct Relief has received a 100% fundraising efficiency rating by Forbes,[6] been ranked by the Chronicle of Philanthropy as California’s largest international relief organization,[7] and topped Charity Navigator’s 2014 list of “10 of the Best Charities Everyone’s Heard Of.[8]” Direct Relief is the first nonprofit organization in the United States to be designated by The National Association of Boards of Pharmacy (NABP) as a Verified-Accredited Wholesale Distributor licensed to distribute pharmaceutical medicines to all 50 U.S. States and Washington, D.C.[9]

    So it is an experienced organization, gets the money you give it out into the field efficiently, and is secular. All things I’m sure you want to see in an organization you make a donation to.

    But the Hagupit situation offers an additional opportunity because Direct Relief has a new project in the field there, which looks promising. I was planning on talking to someone at Direct Relief about it, to find out more, but I think he got stuck in a meeting at the UN or something, so we’ll probably talk later (and I’ll report on that to you). Meanwhile, check this out:

    Direct Relief’s Emergency Response Team is monitoring Typhoon Hagupit (locally known as Ruby), as it approaches the Philippines. On its current trajectory, the typhoon is expected to make landfall in the Eastern Visayas in the next 72 hours and could affect 4.5 million people.

    Direct Relief already has staff on the ground ready to respond in the event of a disaster and has reached out to local partners and health officials located in high-risk regions 5, 6, 7 and 8.

    There are also three strategically pre-positioned typhoon modules ready to be rapidly utilized in the event of an emergency. These modules contain enough medicines and supplies supplies to treat 5,000 people for a month following a disaster.

    Philippine authorities are currently in the process of evacuating vulnerable communities. Vice Mayor of Tacloban city, Jerry Yaokasin, stated that “we will now strictly enforce forced evacuation.” Yaokasin said that “we have no more excuses, we have gone through Yolanda, and to lose that many lives, it’s beyond our conscience already.”

    Direct Relief’s staff on the ground will be maintaining contact with partners and monitoring the situation as it develops in the next 72 hours.

    There are three things you will find at Direct Relief’s web site.

    <li>First, there is <a href="http://www.directrelief.org/hpp/?extent=99.1924,-1.6963,144.8076,27.1137">a monitor of the storm's path</a>, an interactive googly mappy think which is very cool.</li>


<li>Second, there is more information about <a href="http://www.directrelief.org/2014/12/monitoring-typhoon-hagupit-approaches-philippines/">Direct Relief and the situation in the Philippines</a>; they have one of the better organized web sites for disaster relief non profits. </li>


<li>Third, and most importantly, <a href="https://secure2.convio.net/dri/site/Donation2?df_id=2105&2105.donation=form1&_ga=1.168290657.1168894472.1417733221">there is a way to donate money</a>. </li>

    When donating, frankly, I’d suggest the “wherever it is needed most” or “disaster relief” options. They are already there, on the ground; they will be relieving people as it happens. I have a feeling they know best where to spend the money.

    How scientists unraveled the El Niño mystery

    Uncategorized, , , , , , , ,

    The Road to Paris is a web site created by the ICSU, “…a non-governmental organization representing a global membership that includes both national scientific bodies (121 National Members representing 141 countries) and International Scientific Unions (30 Members),” founded in 1931. If the ICSU had not existed when the UN was formed, the UN would have formed it. Think of the ICSU as the UN of Science. More or less.

    (Follow Road to Paris on Twitter.)

    Anyway, Road to Paris refers to the 2015 international meetings on climate change, and the purpose of the web site is to provide excellent information about climate change, up to date, so those engaged in that process, either as direct participants or as onlookers, will be well informed.

    “Fishing in pink waters: How scientists unraveled the El Niño mystery” is an amazing piece of work written by Daniel Gross (I made minuscule contributions), looking at the history of the science of the El Nino Southern Oscillation, which is one of the most important climate or weather related things on this planet. This is timely, because we are expecting an El Niño to form over the winter. Maybe. Well, eventually we will have an El Niño. (It has been an unusually long time since the last strong one.)

    Please visit this web page, read it, enjoy it (it is highly interactive), and spread it around.

    The Polar Vortex Is Dead. But that does not mean it isn't cold out

    Uncategorized, , , , , ,

    The term “Polar Vortex” was thrown around a lot last year, in reference to the persistent mass of very cold air that enveloped much of southern Canada and the US. As you will remember, Rush Limbaugh accused climate scientists and librul meteorologists of making up the polar vortex to scare everyone into thinking climate change is real. You may also remember Al Roker pointing out on national TV and on Twitter that the term “polar vortex” has been in meteorology textbooks for decades.

    This year, with a new wave of cold air arriving unseasonably in the upper middle part of the US, the term is being used again. I was amused to see the term being used on accuweather such that it was placed on each of several graphics used to show that this year’s cold snap is not actually the polar vortex, unlike last year.

    It turns out that while the polar vortex is a real thing, it really is not the correct term to apply to either last year’s cold incursion or the current cold spell. The polar vortex is a thing that gets going in a big way during the norther Winter, and swirls around all vortexy at high altitude over the pole. It can become more or less compact, more or less well defined, and it certainly has a relationship to the weather. But the proper term for a huge bundle of cold air heading south and freezing us out would not be “polar vortex” but rather, something like “cross-polar flow with low-level winds advecting frigid air southward from polar regions” (see this for a great discussion of what the polar vortex is and isn’t). At least in some cases; other descriptions may apply in other cases.

    The unseasonable cold air is potentially important, especially if large scale bending of the jet streams that can cause these “troughs” of cold air to move farther south than typical are more common because of global warming (see this).

    Anyway, I was wondering exactly how the term was originally introduced into the conversation last winter, so I used google to narrow down its occurrence and found these:

    AP, on January 3rd 2014:

    Temperature records will likely be broken during the short, yet forceful deep freeze that will begin in many places on Sunday and extend into early next week. That’s thanks to a perfect combination of the jet stream, cold surface temperatures and the polar vortex — a counterclockwise-rotating pool of cold, dense air, said Ryan Maue, of Tallahassee, Fla., a meteorologist for Weather Bell.

    “All the ingredients are there for a near-record or historic cold outbreak,” he said. “If you’re under 40 (years old), you’ve not seen this stuff before.”

    New York Mag, January 4th, 2014:

    … there’s something happening in the country called a “polar vortex” or, as Weather Bell meteorologist Ryan Maue called it, a “frigid air blanket.”

    Maue said the cold air system is caused by a “counterclockwise-rotating pool of cold, dense air, once piled up at the North Pole, and pushed down to the U.S.” It’s expected to arrive Sunday.

    Huffington Post, January 3rd, 2014:

    Temperature records will likely be broken during the short, yet forceful deep freeze that will begin in many places on Sunday and extend into early next week. That’s thanks to a perfect combination of the jet stream, cold surface temperatures and the polar vortex — a counterclockwise-rotating pool of cold, dense air, said Ryan Maue, of Tallahassee, Fla., a meteorologist for Weather Bell.

    “All the ingredients are there for a near-record or historic cold outbreak,” he said. “If you’re under 40 (years old), you’ve not seen this stuff before.”

    So, the common ingredient in the misuse of the term “polar vortex” is a meteorologist Ryan Maue, of Weather Bell. He’s the one that screwed this up originally and the press kind of took off with it.

    You can’t totally blame the press. Given the choice between “polar vortex” and “advecting cross polar flow yadayada” it isn’t a hard choice. If they were both right, and they just didn’t know.

    Ryan Maue, by the way, is a climate change science denier. I checked my twitter list of climate change deniers and he is on it. That means he annoyed me on twitter with his climate change science denial yammering. So a science denier came up with this bone headed misuse of a term and the press more or less blindly went along with it.

    As my friend Paul Douglas notes, in speaking of the polar vortex problem vis-a-vis our current cold snap “For me the bigger question is will it last? What made last winter’s polar displacement so unusual was its persistence. The bitter blob all but stalled for the better part of 3 months.”

    Long term predictions for this winter suggest an average winter, but for many parts of the US a bit warmer than average. So far the weather is not cooperating with the prediction. I predict that the prediction will be wrong because I suspect the models used to make these predictions don’t properly account for the increased frequency of formerly rare phenomena related to the jet streams. But, on the other hand, eventually there is supposed to be a shift to official El Nino conditions. (The Pacific is already El Nino warm, just not acting El Nino-ish in other ways). So, really, I’m predicting a warmer than average winter in the Northern Hemisphere but with the 5% or so of that hemisphere occupied by the largest concentration of climate science deniers, Americans, colder than average. It is like Climate Change doesn’t want to be believed in by Americans. It wears an invisibility cloak.

    Official Prediction of US Winter

    Uncategorized, , , ,

    The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has released its official prediction of what this winter is going to be like.

    And yes, it is in ALL CAPS!!! I’ve pasted it below, but first a summary of the relevant points.

    According to NOAA

    El Nino

    <li>There will be a weak El Nino, late Autumn or Winter.</li>

<li>Or, there could be a moderate EL Nino.</li>

<li>Or, there could just be this thing that might someday be an El Nino but doesn't quite do that for an indefinate period of time.</li>

    November, December, January Temps

  • Warmer along the West and Northwest, all the Northern State and New England, and the Atlantic Seaboard.
  • Colder than average in places that are usually warm (from E. New Mexico to the Western Gulf States.

    • November, December, Janurary Precipitation

  • Mostly, pretty near average.
  • More rain than average from California east and pretty much everywhere but the Pacific Northwest, Great Lakes and Ohio Valley (which will be slightly below normal)

    • Temperature Outlook Graphic

    Outlook_map_temp2014F

    Precipitation Outlook Graphic

    Outlook_map_Precip_214F

    The Movie

    The actual findings in ALL CAPS

    PROGNOSTIC DISCUSSION FOR LONG-LEAD SEASONAL OUTLOOKS
    NWS CLIMATE PREDICTION CENTER COLLEGE PARK MD
    830AM EDT THURSDAY OCT 16 2014

    SUMMARY OF THE OUTLOOK FOR NON-TECHNICAL USERS

    THE MAIN FACTORS THAT USUALLY INFLUENCE THE SEASONAL CLIMATE OUTLOOK INCLUDE:
    1) EL NINO AND LA NINA – WHICH TOGETHER COMPRISE EL NINO/SOUTHERN OSCILLATION
    OR ENSO. IMPACTS OF THESE EVENTS ARE SUMMARIZED BY SEPARATING 3-MONTH
    OBSERVATIONS FROM 3 OR MORE DECADES INTO EL NINO, NEUTRAL, AND LA NINA SETS,
    AVERAGING EACH SEPARATELY, AND THEN COMPUTING ANOMALIES. THESE ARE CALLED “ENSO
    COMPOSITES”, WHICH ARE USED AT TIMES TO SUBJECTIVELY MODIFY THE FORECAST.
    2) TRENDS – APPROXIMATED BY THE OCN TOOL AS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE MOST
    RECENT 10-YEAR MEAN OF TEMPERATURE OR 15-YEAR MEAN OF PRECIPITATION FOR A GIVEN
    LOCATION AND TIME OF YEAR AND THE 30-YEAR CLIMATOLOGICAL PERIOD (1981-2010).
    3) THE MADDEN-JULIAN OSCILLATION (MJO) – AFFECTS CLIMATE VARIABILITY WITHIN
    SEASONS.
    4) THE NORTH ATLANTIC OSCILLATION (NAO) AND THE PACIFIC – NORTH AMERICAN (PNA)
    PATTERNS – WHICH AFFECT ANOMALY PATTERNS ESPECIALLY DURING THE COLD SEASONS.
    THESE PHENOMENA ARE CONSIDERABLY LESS PREDICTABLE ON A SEASONAL TIMESCALE THAN
    ENSO.
    5) THE PACIFIC DECADAL OSCILLATION (PDO) – AN ENSO-LIKE PATTERN OF CLIMATE
    VARIABILITY AFFECTING THE TROPICS AND THE NORTH PACIFIC AND NORTH AMERICAN
    REGIONS, BUT WHICH VARIES ON A MUCH LONGER TIMESCALE THAN ENSO.
    6) PERSISTENTLY DRY OR WET SOILS IN THE SPRING AND SUMMER AND SNOW AND ICE
    COVER ANOMALIES IN THE WINTER. THESE FACTORS TEND TO PERSIST FOR LONG PERIODS
    AND ACT AS A KIND OF MEMORY IN THE CLIMATE SYSTEM.
    7) STATISTICAL FORECAST TOOLS – CANONICAL CORRELATION ANALYSIS (CCA), SCREENING
    MULTIPLE LINEAR REGRESSION (SMLR), CONSTRUCTED ANALOGUE (CA) AND ENSEMBLE CCA
    (ECCA).
    8) DYNAMICAL FORECAST MODELS – INCLUDING THE NCEP CLIMATE FORECAST SYSTEM
    (CFS). AN EXPERIMENTAL MODEL FORECAST SYSTEM, THE NORTH AMERICAN MULTI-MODEL
    ENSEMBLE, COMPRISED OF SEVERAL MODELS AND DESIGNATED NMME, MAY ALSO BE USED
    EXPERIMENTALLY AND SUBJECTIVELY UNTIL IT IS INCLUDED INTO THE CONSOLIDATION. AN
    INTERNATIONAL MULTI-MODEL ENSEMBLE DESIGNATED IMME IS ALSO AVAILABLE.
    9) CONSOLIDATION (CON) – AN OBJECTIVE, SKILL-WEIGHTED COMBINATION OF THE OCN,
    CCA, SMLR, ECCA, AND CFS FORECASTS IS USED AS A FIRST GUESS IN PREPARING THE
    FORECAST MAPS. THIS TECHNIQUE MAKES OPTIMUM USE OF THE KNOWN SKILL OF FORECAST
    TOOLS.

    CURRENT ATMOSPHERIC AND OCEANIC OBSERVATIONS ARE CONSISTENT WITH ENSO-NEUTRAL
    CONDITIONS WITH A STILL FAVORED TRANSITION TO EL NINO CONDITIONS IN LATE AUTUMN
    AND WINTER. A WEAK EL NINO EVENT IS MOST PROBABLE, HOWEVER THERE REMAINS A
    CHANCE OF EITHER A LOW-END MODERATE EVENT OR CONTINUED ENSO-NEUTRAL CONDITIONS
    DURING THE UPCOMING OUTLOOK PERIOD.

    THE TEMPERATURE OUTLOOK FOR NOVEMBER-DECEMBER-JANUARY (NDJ) 2014-15 INDICATES
    ELEVATED PROBABILITIES OF ABOVE-NORMAL MEAN TEMPERATURES FOR ALASKA, THE FAR
    WEST, ALONG THE NORTHERN TIER OF THE CONTINENTAL U.S. EASTWARD TO INCLUDE PARTS
    OF THE NORTHEAST AND MID-ATLANTIC. BELOW-NORMAL MEAN TEMPERATURES ARE MOST
    LIKELY OVER AREAS FROM EASTERN NEW MEXICO TO THE WESTERN GULF COAST STATES.

    THE NDJ 2014-15 PRECIPITATION OUTLOOK INDICATES ENHANCED PROBABILITIES OF
    BELOW-MEDIAN PRECIPITATION FOR PARTS OF THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST, NORTHERN
    ROCKIES, GREAT LAKES AND OHIO VALLEY. INCREASED PROBABILITIES FOR ABOVE-MEDIAN
    PRECIPITATION AMOUNTS ARE FORECAST FROM SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA EASTWARD ACROSS THE
    SOUTHWEST, SOUTHERN PLAINS, AND ALONG THE GULF AND SOUTHERN ATLANTIC COASTS
    NORTHWARD TO INCLUDE THE EASTERN SEABOARD TO SOUTHERN NEW ENGLAND. THE
    PROBABILITIES FOR ABOVE-MEDIAN PRECIPITATION ARE ALSO ENHANCED OVER PARTS OF
    SOUTHERN ALASKA.

    IN AREAS WHERE THE LIKELIHOODS OF SEASONAL MEAN TEMPERATURES AND SEASONAL
    ACCUMULATED PRECIPITATION AMOUNTS ARE SIMILAR TO CLIMATOLOGICAL PROBABILITIES,
    EQUAL CHANCES (EC) IS INDICATED.

    BASIS AND SUMMARY OF THE CURRENT LONG-LEAD OUTLOOKS
    NOTE: FOR GRAPHICAL DISPLAYS OF THE FORECAST TOOLS DISCUSSED BELOW SEE:
    HTTP://WWW.CPC.NCEP.NOAA.GOV/PRODUCTS/PREDICTIONS/90DAY/TOOLS/BRIEFING

    CURRENT ATMOSPHERIC AND OCEANIC CONDITIONS

    ATMOSPHERIC AND OCEANIC CONDITIONS IN THE TROPICAL PACIFIC REMAIN MOST
    CONSISTENT WITH AN ENSO-NEUTRAL STATE, WHILE CONTINUING TO SHOW SOME INDICATORS
    FOR POTENTIAL DEVELOPMENT OF AN EL NINO. OBSERVATIONS DURING THE SECOND WEEK OF
    OCTOBER SHOW POSITIVE SST DEPARTURES ACROSS THE ENTIRE EQUATORIAL PACIFIC
    BASIN, WITH GREATER THAN +0.5C ANOMALIES IN THE EAST-CENTRAL PACIFIC AND FAR
    WESTERN PACIFIC. WITHIN THESE AREAS THERE ARE ANOMALIES GREATER THAN +1.0C. THE
    NINO3.4 REGION CONTINUES TO HOVER NEAR +0.4C WITH VALUES OF +0.5C FOR NINO4,
    +0.6C IN NINO3, AND +0.6C IN NINO1+2. SST ANOMALIES INCREASED IN THE
    EAST-CENTRAL PACIFIC DURING THE LAST MONTH. OCEAN SUBSURFACE TEMPERATURE
    ANOMALIES CONTINUE TO SHOW POSITIVE VALUES RANGING FROM +1.0C TO +3.0C FROM THE
    SURFACE TO A DEPTH OF ABOUT 125 METERS ACROSS THE EAST-CENTRAL PACIFIC.
    MOREOVER, POSITIVE ANOMALIES ARE ALSO EVIDENT AT A DEPTH FROM 100 – 200 METERS
    NEAR AND JUST WEST OF THE DATE LINE.

    MONTHLY AVERAGED OLR ANOMALIES REMAIN MIXED ACROSS THE EQUATORIAL PACIFIC WITH
    THE GREATEST ANOMALIES AWAY FROM THE DATE LINE WITH TWO AREAS OFF OF THE
    EQUATOR SHOWING ENHANCED CONVECTION OVER THE FAR WESTERN PACIFIC. MONTHLY
    AVERAGED LOW- AND UPPER-LEVEL WINDS REMAIN NEAR AVERAGE, INDICATING THAT THE
    ATMOSPHERE CONTINUES TO STRUGGLE TO RESPOND OVER THE PACIFIC TO ABOVE AVERAGE
    SSTS.

    PERSISTENT, STRONGLY POSITIVE SST ANOMALIES WERE OBSERVED IN THE NORTH PACIFIC,
    ALONG THE PACIFIC COAST OF NORTH AMERICA, AND WESTWARD ACROSS THE SUBTROPICAL
    PACIFIC OCEAN. THIS SST PATTERN PROJECTS WEAKLY ONTO A POSITIVE PDO. POSITIVE
    SST ANOMALIES WERE ALSO OBSERVED ALONG THE ATLANTIC COAST. IN ADDITION,
    ANOMALOUS SNOW COVER EXTENT HAS ALSO INCREASED IN RECENT WEEKS ACROSS PORTIONS
    OF EURASIA AND IS BEING MONITORED.

    PROGNOSTIC DISCUSSION OF SST FORECASTS

    MOST STATISTICAL AND DYNAMICAL MODELS CONTINUE TO PREDICT THAT AN EL NINO EVENT
    WILL DEVELOP WITHIN AUTUMN AND PEAK (AS DEFINED BY NINO3.4 ANOMALIES) AS A WEAK
    EVENT DURING THE WINTER IN MANY FORECASTS AND ALSO ON AVERAGE. THE SPREAD
    REMAINS SOMEWHAT LARGE AS SOME TOOLS PREDICT CONTINUATION OF NINO3.4 ANOMALIES
    BELOW +0.5C WHILE SOME DYNAMICAL MODELS CONTINUE TO INDICATE A MODERATE EVENT
    WITH FORECAST ANOMALIES OF GREATER +1.0C. OVERALL THIS MONTH CONTINUES THE
    SLIGHT TREND SEEN OVER THE PAST FEW MONTHS OF DECREASING NINO3.4 POSITIVE
    ANOMALIES IN THE MODEL GUIDANCE. AN INTERESTING POINT THIS MONTH IS ALSO THAT
    THE DYNAMICAL MODELS PEAK ANY EL NINO EVENT LATER IN THE WINTER, WHICH WOULD BE
    SOMEWHAT UNUSUAL. WHILE FEW ENSO EVENTS HAVE DEVELOPED AT THIS TIME OF YEAR, IT
    IS NOT UNPRECEDENTED, AND CONSIDERED TOGETHER, MODEL FORECASTS AND CURRENT
    OBSERVATIONS CONTINUE TO SUPPORT THE CONSENSUS ENSO FORECAST INDICATING A
    60-65% CHANCE OF EL NINO DEVELOPMENT IN LATE AUTUMN OR WINTER AND THE OFFICIAL
    TEMPERATURE AND PRECIPITATION OUTLOOKS CONTINUE TO CONSIDER EL NINO IMPACTS AT
    THIS TIME.

    POSITIVE NORTH PACIFIC AND WESTERN ATLANTIC SST ANOMALIES ARE FORECAST TO
    PERSIST IN SEASONAL AVERAGES THROUGH THE BOREAL WINTER BY MANY DYNAMICAL MODELS
    INCLUDING THE NMME AND IMME, ALONG WITH THE FORECAST OF EL NINO DEVELOPMENT.
    THESE SUB-TROPICAL AND HIGHER LATITUDE SST ANOMALIES ARE ALSO CONSIDERED IN THE
    OUTLOOK AND LIKELY TO IMPACT THE CLIMATE OF NORTH AMERICA IN THE NEXT SEVERAL
    SEASONS.

    PROGNOSTIC TOOLS USED FOR U.S. TEMPERATURE AND PRECIPITATION OUTLOOKS

    THE TEMPERATURE AND PRECIPITATION OUTLOOKS CONTINUE TO BE INFLUENCED BY
    POTENTIAL IMPACTS OF A WEAK EL NINO BEGINNING WITH NDJ 2014-15 AND CONTINUING
    PRIMARILY THROUGH FMA 2015, ALTHOUGH LESS SO THAN PREVIOUS OUTLOOKS FOR SOME
    AREAS IN THE TEMPERATURE OUTLOOKS. SST ANOMALIES IN OTHER AREAS OUTSIDE THE
    EQUATORIAL PACIFIC WERE UTILIZED OR CONSIDERED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
    COASTAL AREAS NEAR THE WEST COAST, IN PROXIMITY TO ALASKA AND AREAS ALONG THE
    U.S. EAST COAST.

    THE CONSTRUCTED ANALOG FORECAST FOR TEMPERATURE AND PRECIPITATION BASED ON
    GLOBAL SST PATTERNS WAS ALSO UTILIZED IN THE OUTLOOKS AS WAS INFORMATION FROM A
    LARGE VARIETY OF DYNAMICAL MODEL GUIDANCE, INCLUDING THE CFS, THE NMME AND IMME
    AND THEIR PARTICIPANT MODELS, WITH ADJUSTMENTS MADE FOR POTENTIAL MODEL BIASES.
    THE SHIFT IN PROBABILITIES RELATED TO POSITIVE NINO3.4 ANOMALIES IN THE RANGE
    OF 0.5C TO 1.0C WERE CONSIDERED. ALTHOUGH CHANGES AND EXTENT OF SNOW COVER
    ACROSS EURASIA AND ANY ASSOCIATED TELECONNECTIONS GENERALLY REQUIRE COMPLETION
    OF THE MONTH OF OCTOBER, IT WAS CONSIDERED IN FORMULATING THE OUTLOOK.

    FOR OUTLOOKS FROM AMJ THROUGH OND 2015, DECADAL TRENDS DUE TO CHANGES IN THE
    CLIMATE BASE STATE AND THE CON (HEAVILY INFLUENCED BY TRENDS) ARE THE PRIMARY
    SOURCE OF TEMPERATURE AND PRECIPITATION SIGNALS.

    PROGNOSTIC DISCUSSION OF OUTLOOKS – NDJ 2014 TO NDJ 2015

    TEMPERATURE

    THE SET OF OUTLOOKS THIS MONTH DEPICT A SOMEWHAT COOLER SCENARIO FOR THE FIRST
    FEW LEADS (THROUGH FMA 2015) AS COMPARED TO THE PREVIOUS SET OF OUTLOOKS. MORE
    SPECIFICALLY AND BETTER STATED, COVERAGE AND PROBABILITIES FOR ABOVE NORMAL
    TEMPERATURES WERE REDUCED OR REMOVED ACROSS NORTHERN AREAS OF THE EASTERN CONUS
    AND PROBABILITIES FOR BELOW NORMAL TEMPERATURES INCREASED IN COVERAGE FOR
    PORTIONS OF THE LOWER-TO-CENTRAL MISSISSIPPI VALLEY, TENNESSEE VALLEY,
    SOUTHEAST AND LOWER MID-ATLANTIC. THIS IS BASED ON AN INCREASED LIKELIHOOD OF
    ANY EL NINO EVENT BEING OF WEAK MAGNITUDE, CONSIDERABLE CHANGE IN MUCH OF THE
    DYNAMICAL MODEL GUIDANCE (OTHER THAN THE CFS) AND INDICATIONS IN SOME TOOLS AND
    INFORMATION FOR A POTENTIAL TENDENCY TOWARD A NEGATIVE AO AND NAO DURING THE
    WINTER MONTHS.

    POTENTIAL EL NINO CONDITIONS CONTRIBUTE TO THE OUTLOOKS PRIMARILY THROUGH FMA
    2015. FOR NDJ AND DJF 2014-15, ABOVE NORMAL TEMPERATURES ARE FAVORED ACROSS
    ALASKA, THE FAR WEST AND ALONG THE NORTHERN TIER OF THE CONUS EASTWARD TO
    INCLUDE PARTS OF THE NORTHEAST AND MID-ATLANTIC (NDJ ONLY). THE PROBABILITIES
    FOR ABOVE-NORMAL TEMPERATURES ARE REDUCED AND SHIFTED SOMEWHAT NORTHWARD IN DJF
    FOR BOTH THE GREAT LAKES AND NORTHEAST. THE HIGHEST ODDS ARE FOR COASTAL AREAS
    ALONG THE WEST COAST AND PARTS OF SOUTHERN ALASKA WHERE SST ANOMALIES ARE
    CONSIDERABLY ABOVE AVERAGE AND LIKELY WILL INFLUENCE TEMPERATURES FOR NDJ
    2014-15. ABOVE-NORMAL TEMPERATURES FAVORED ACROSS PARTS OF THE NORTHERN PLAINS
    AND GREAT LAKES IN THE PREVIOUS OUTLOOK FOR JFM AND FMA 2015 WAS REPLACED WITH
    EC IN THIS SET OF OUTLOOKS. BELOW NORMAL TEMPERATURES ARE FAVORED DURING NDJ
    2014-15 FROM NEW MEXICO EASTWARD TO THE WESTERN GULF COAST STATES INCLUDING
    AREAS OF THE SOUTHERN PLAINS. THE HIGHLIGHTED REGION OF BELOW NORMAL
    TEMPERATURES IS EXPANDED EASTWARD AND SOMEWHAT NORTHWARD TO INCLUDE THE
    LOWER-TO-CENTRAL MISSISSIPPI VALLEY, TENNESSEE VALLEY, SOUTHEAST AND LOWER
    MID-ATLANTIC THROUGH JFM 2015 WITH A SLIGHT DECREASE IN COVERAGE IN FMA 2015.

    THE EVOLUTION IN THE TEMPERATURE OUTLOOKS FOR THE FIRST FOUR LEADS DEPICTED IS
    FURTHER SUPPORTED BY 500-HPA HEIGHT AND TEMPERATURE FORECASTS FROM THE
    CONSTRUCTED ANALOG DERIVED FROM GLOBAL SSTS ALONG WITH A DECREASE OR REMOVAL OF
    ABOVE NORMAL MEAN TEMPERATURE PROBABILITIES FROM MANY OF THE NMME AND IMME
    PARTICIPANT MODELS.

    ABOVE NORMAL TEMPERATURES ARE FAVORED FOR ALASKA AND THIS IS SUPPORTED BY
    DYNAMICAL MODEL GUIDANCE AND ANOMALOUSLY WARM WATERS IN PROXIMITY TO THE STATE.
    ABOVE NORMAL TEMPERATURES ARE ALSO FAVORED FOR NEW ENGLAND THROUGHOUT THE
    WINTER BASED ON THE CONSTRUCTED ANALOG TEMPERATURE FORECAST, NEARBY OCEAN
    TEMPERATURES AND MODESTLY HIGH PROBABILITIES FOR ABOVE NORMAL TEMPERATURES FROM
    THE NMME AND IMME GUIDANCE.

    THE OUTLOOK MAPS FROM AMJ 2015 AND BEYOND REMAINED LARGELY UNCHANGED FROM THE
    PREVIOUS OUTLOOKS. ENHANCED PROBABILITIES OF ABOVE-NORMAL TEMPERATURES ARE
    FORECAST FOR NORTHERN ALASKA THROUGH NDJ 2015-16. THE ANOMALOUS DELAY IN ARCTIC
    OCEAN AND BERING SEA SEA-ICE COVER FOR OCTOBER AND NOVEMBER IN THE LAST DECADE
    RELATIVE TO THE 1981-2010 CLIMATOLOGY PERIOD RESULTS IN GREATLY ENHANCED
    PROBABILITIES OF ABOVE-NORMAL TEMPERATURES FOR PARTS OF NORTHERN AND
    NORTHWESTERN ALASKA FROM ASO – OND 2015.

    PRECIPITATION

    THE PRECIPITATION OUTLOOK MAPS THROUGH FMA 2015 WERE PRIMARILY BASED ON
    POTENTIAL EL NINO CONDITIONS, DYNAMICAL MODEL FORECAST GUIDANCE FROM THE NMME
    AND IMME AND THEIR PARTICIPANT MODELS. PRECIPITATION FORECASTS FROM THE GLOBAL
    SST BASED CONSTRUCTED ANALOG TOOL WAS ALSO CONSIDERED. DYNAMICAL MODEL GUIDANCE
    TENDED TO INDICATE INCREASED WETNESS IN MANY AREAS OF THE CONUS AS COMPARED TO
    GUIDANCE LAST MONTH.

    ABOVE AVERAGE PRECIPITATION IS FAVORED FROM SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA ACROSS THE
    SOUTHWEST, SOUTHERN PLAINS AND SOUTHEAST CONUS FROM NDJ 2014-15 THROUGH FMA
    2015. THIS IS CONSISTENT WITH EL NINO CONDITIONS AND GENERALLY SUPPORTED BY
    MODEL GUIDANCE. EL NINO COMPOSITES ALSO WEAKLY SUPPORT AN INCREASE IN THE ODDS
    FOR ABOVE AVERAGE PRECIPITATION NORTHWARD ALONG THE EASTERN SEABOARD TO
    SOUTHERN NEW ENGLAND AND THIS ALONG WITH CONSIDERABLE SIGNALS IN THE NMME AND
    IMME MODEL GUIDANCE SUPPORT ADDING THIS REGION TO BOTH THE NDJ AND DJF 2014-15
    PRECIPITATION OUTLOOKS. BOTH EL NINO CONSIDERATIONS AND MODEL GUIDANCE ALSO
    SUPPORT AN EXPANSION OF THE FAVORED ABOVE AVERAGE PRECIPITATION FOR THE CENTRAL
    ROCKIES AND CENTRAL HIGH PLAINS DURING JFM AND FMA 2015.

    ENHANCED PROBABILITIES FOR BELOW-MEDIAN PRECIPITATION ARE INDICATED FOR THE
    PACIFIC NORTHWEST THROUGH MAM 2015, AND FROM THE CENTRAL MISSISSIPPI VALLEY
    INTO THE GREAT LAKES REGION FROM NDJ 2014-15 THROUGH MAM 2015. A LESS ROBUST
    SIGNAL THIS MONTH IN DYNAMICAL MODEL GUIDANCE IN THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST WAS THE
    BASIS FOR THE SLIGHT REDUCTION IN COVERAGE AND PROBABILITIES OF BELOW MEDIAN
    PRECIPITATION IN NDJ AND DJF 2014-15 IN THIS AREA WHEN COMPARED TO PREVIOUSLY
    ISSUED FORECASTS FOR THESE SEASONS. PROBABILITIES OF ABOVE-MEDIAN PRECIPITATION
    ARE ENHANCED FOR PARTS OF SOUTHERN ALASKA THROUGH FMA 2015.

    PROBABILITIES OF BELOW-MEDIAN PRECIPITATION ARE ENHANCED FOR PARTS OF THE
    SOUTHWEST DURING AMJ AND MJJ 2015 AND FOR THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST IN THE JAS AND
    ASO 2015 SEASONS DUE TO DECADAL TRENDS.

    FORECASTER: JON GOTTSCHALCK

    THE CLIMATIC NORMALS ARE BASED ON CONDITIONS BETWEEN 1981 AND 2010, FOLLOWING
    THE WORLD METEROLOGICAL ORGANIZATION CONVENTION OF USING THE MOST RECENT 3
    COMPLETE DECADES AS THE CLIMATIC REFERENCE PERIOD. THE PROBABILITY ANOMALIES
    FOR TEMPERATURE AND PRECIPITATION BASED ON THESE NEW NORMALS BETTER REPRESENT
    SHORTER TERM CLIMATIC ANOMALIES THAN THE FORECASTS BASED ON OLDER NORMALS.

    FOR A DESCRIPTION OF OF THE STANDARD FORECAST TOOLS – THEIR SKILL- AND THE
    FORECAST FORMAT PLEASE SEE OUR WEB PAGE AT
    HTTP:/WWW.CPC.NCEP.NOAA.GOV/PRODUCTS/PREDICTIONS/90DAY/DISC.HTML
    (USE LOWER CASE LETTERS)
    INFORMATION ON THE FORMATION OF SKILL OF THE CAS FORECASTS MAY BE FOUND AT:
    HTTP://WWW.CPC.NCEP.NOAA.GOV/SOILMST/FORECASTS.HTML (USE LOWERCASE LETTERS)
    NOTES – THESE CLIMATE OUTLOOKS ARE INTENDED FOR USE PRIOR TO THE START OF THEIR
    VALID PERIOD. WITHIN ANY GIVEN VALID PERIOD OBSERVATIONS AND SHORT AND MEDIUM
    RANGE FORECASTS SHOULD BE CONSULTED.

    THIS SET OF OUTLOOKS WILL BE SUPERSEDED BY THE ISSUANCE OF THE NEW SET NEXT
    MONTH ON NOV 20 2014

    1981-2010 BASE PERIOD MEANS WERE IMPLEMENTED EFFECTIVE WITH THE MAY 19, 2011
    FORECAST RELEASE.
    $$

    Antarctic Sea Ice and Global Warming

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    Did you ever leave your freezer door slightly open on a humid day only to find chunks of new ice formed at the gap? When that happens, did you conclude “Oh, my freezer is colder than usual, I wonder how that happened?” No. You concluded that you had left the door slightly open, some cold got out, and vapor froze on your gasket.

    Sea ice is hard to make. The sea is salt water, so it has a lower freezing point than fresh water. The sea has potentially large waves and lots of currents. This is just not a situation where ice can easily form. Yet, it does form on the oceans near the Earth’s poles because it is really cold there. But even within that context, more or less ice can form because of important details like how much fresh water is mixing in with the cold salt water, and exactly where currents of warmer or colder water are going. The formation of sea ice at the ends of the Earth is probably somewhat more complicated than the formation of frost and rind on your refrigerator.

    (A quick note: Sea ice is ice that sits on, and therefore, essentially, in the sea. It is not glacial ice. Those are two very different things. I’m sure you knew that but just in case this is a good moment to point it out.)

    In recent years, the amount of sea ice forming around Antarctica has bee going up. Global warming causes local warming but it also causes local cooling (like when the Arctic Vortex got knocked off center last winter and visited the middle of North America, an event that still causes a sense of fear and loathing among those of us who experienced it). So when we hear about expanding sea ice in the Antarctic, knowing that anthropogenic global warming is a real thing, we might assume that this is just one of those phenomena that runs counter to expectations but that is still part of the overall process of warming-driving climate change resulting from the addition of greenhouse gasses to the atmosphere.

    And that is essentially correct, though the reasons may be a bit unclear and require further study.

    So, thinking about our freezer, and the overall problem of making sea ice, there seem to be three things that can cause more of this ice. One might be the addition of fresh water to the system. That seems likely if the Antarctic glaciers are melting (which they are). Depending on where the fresh water goes, that could allow the formation of sea ice. Also, if precipitation increased in the area, that would add fresh water.

    Second, the area where the sea ice is forming could be colder. That seems backwards in on a warming planet, but actually, that can happen too. Antarctica is, to a larger extent than the Arctic, a semi-closed system of air and sea currents, because it is a roundish continent surrounded by sea at one end of the planet. This means that cold air might be retained over the continent rather coherently. At the North Pole, “Winter (January) temperatures … can range from about ?43 °C (?45 °F) to ?26 °C (?15 °F), perhaps averaging around ?34 °C (?29 °F),” while at the South Pole, “In winter, the average temperature remains steady at around ?58 °C (?72 °F).” (source: Google). The north pole is sea, the south pole is land, and the south pole is at a higher elevation, but those differences are partly why the south pole is colder. Anyway, with all this cold air on the Southern Continent, perhaps one only needs to have air currents change a little to move that cold air over the sea a bit more to add to the chances of freezing water and making sea ice.

    Third is the possibility that the disruptive effects of storms, waves, or surface currents could change, making for a calmer environment, allowing more ice formation.

    Have any of these things happened?

    Yes. Yes, they have.

    Joe Romm has a writeup on some recent research that helps to explain the increase in Antarctic Sea ice (NOAA: Record Antarctic Sea Ice Growth Linked To Its Staggering Loss Of Land Ice).

    The National Snow and Ice Data Center notes:

    …sea ice surrounding the Antarctic continent reached its maximum extent on September 22 at 20.11 million square kilometers (7.76 million square miles). This is 1.54 million square kilometers (595,000 square miles) above the 1981 to 2010 average extent, which is nearly four standard deviations above average. Antarctic sea ice averaged 20.0 million square kilometers (7.72 million square miles) for the month of September. This new record extent follows consecutive record winter maximum extents in 2012 and 2013. The reasons for this recent rapid growth are not clear. Sea ice in Antarctica has remained at satellite-era record high daily levels for most of 2014.

    “What we’re learning is, we have more to learn,” said Ted Scambos, lead scientist at NSIDC.

    The unusual sea ice growth in Antarctica might be caused by changing wind patterns or recent ice sheet melt from warmer, deep ocean water reaching the coastline, according to scientists at NSIDC. The melt water freshens and cools the deep ocean layer, and it contributes to a cold surface layer surrounding Antarctica, creating conditions that favor ice growth.

    From Skeptical Science:

    The most common misconception regarding Antarctic sea ice is that sea ice is increasing because it’s cooling around Antarctica. The reality is the Southern Ocean surrounding Antarctica has shown strong warming over the same period that sea ice has been increasing. Globally from 1955 to 1995, oceans have been warming at 0.1°C per decade. In contrast, the Southern Ocean (specifically the region where Antarctic sea ice forms) has been warming at 0.17°C per decade. Not only is the Southern Ocean warming, it’s warming faster than the global trend. This warming trend is apparent in satellite measurements of temperature trends over Antarctica…

    And, from NOAA:

    Much of this year’s sea ice growth occurred late in the winter season, and weather records indicate that strong southerly winds blew over the Weddell Sea in mid-September 2014. Antarctica is a continent surrounded by open ocean. So unlike the Arctic, where surrounding landmasses constrain how much sea ice can expand, Antarctic sea ice can spread out over a bigger area. Winds blowing from the land toward the ocean encourage ice growth in the waters north of the continent.

    Winds probably did not act alone to spur so much sea ice growth; melting land ice may have played a role. Most of Antarctica’s ice lies in the ice sheets that cover the continent, and in recent decades, that ice has been melting. Along the coastline, ice shelves float on the ocean surface, and much of the recent melt may be driven by warm water from the deep ocean rising and making contact with ice shelf undersides.

    How does the melting of land ice matter to sea ice formation? The resulting meltwater is fresher than the seawater. As it mixes with the seawater, the meltwater makes the nearby seawater slightly less dense, and slightly closer to the freezing point than the ocean water below. This less dense seawater spreads out across the ocean surface surrounding the continent, forming a stable pool of surface water that is close to the freezing point, and close to the ice onto which it could freeze.

    Added cold seems to be a factor. Added fresh water seems to be a factor. Changes in where cold air and relatively fresh water goes seems to be a factor. I don’t know about storminess and currents at the outer edge of ice formation.

    The dramatic and steady increase in Antarctic Sea Ice is yet another example of the effects of climate change.

    How Melty Was The Arctic Sea This Year?

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    The Arctic Sea is covered with ice during the winter, and some of it melts off every summer. Over recent years the amount of melt has been increasing. This is the time of year we may want to look at Arctic Sea ice because by late September it has reached its annual minimum and is starting to reform.

    Looking at JUST surface area, which is one indicator of how warm the Arctic has become with Global Warming, we can see (above) that this years march of melting has been extreme, hugging the two standard deviation limit for all of the data from 1979 to 2010 (almost the present).

    Here you can see that 2014 is distinctly different, with much more surface area loss, than the first ten years of this data set, from here.
    Screen Shot 2014-09-28 at 2.42.54 PM
    And here you can see that 2014 is pretty much in the middle of the range for the “new normal” as represented by the most recent ten years:

    Screen Shot 2014-09-28 at 2.43.33 PM

    So, in answer to the question above, 2014 was a very melty year in the Arctic, though over very recent years there have been worse years. This year is about the sixth lowest minimum extent since 1979 or before.

    BP/DOE's Koonin: Anthropogenic Global Warming is Real, Important, and Must Be Addressed

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    In a recent Wall Street Journal article, Steven Koonin, former Department of Energy Undersecretary and BP scientist makes the case that global warming is caused by humans, important, that we must do something about it, and that further research on key topics is necessary to help guide policy.

    He states,

    The crucial scientific question for policy isn’t whether the climate is changing. That is a settled matter … We know, for instance, that during the 20th century the Earth’s global average surface temperature rose 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit.

    Nor is the crucial question whether humans are influencing the climate. That is no hoax: There is little doubt in the scientific community that continually growing amounts of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, due largely to carbon-dioxide emissions from the conventional use of fossil fuels, are influencing the climate. There is also little doubt that the carbon dioxide will persist in the atmosphere for several centuries.

    Unfortunately, Koonin also argues that climate science is largely at sea, and that we know so little about climate change that, he implies strongly, we really don’t know what to do about it. He seems to be suggesting that we should do nothing.

    He states that the amount of anthropogenic change in global temperature is a fraction of natural change, but this is wrong. The amount of change over the industrial era caused by humans is far more than expected from natural change, and is all in the same direction. He states that estimates of projected “climate sensitivity,” the eventual change in surface temperature given a certain increase in added CO2, have not changed in 30 years. This is utterly false. The total range of sensitivity has, actually, stayed about the same but recent work has indicated that most climate scientists are more comfortable narrowing down the sensitivity to something like “Two. Or more. But I hope not. Maybe five.” More importantly, the issue of climate sensitivity has moved from being an “unkown unkown” to a “known unknown” over this time.

    Koonin badly botches his discussion of models and how they work, confusing and conflating scales of time and space, and overall mischaracterizes what climate models do and how well they work. They actually work pretty well. He deosn’t seem to know that.

    Koonin’s piece is well characterized by the title of a responding blog post at Climate Science Watch: “On eve of climate march, Wall Street Journal published call to wait and do nothing”

    I’d like to write more about it now but I have to shut down the computer for an unseasonal severe storm about to sweep over us. Bye for now.

    Media Matters addresses the Wall Street Journal’s coverage of climate here.

    What will this winter be like in North America?

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    The Polar Vortex hurt. We who lived in it, through it, with it, are like farm animals that got zapped by the electric fence a couple of times … notice all that long grass growing by the fence. Stay away. It hurt! So we are worried that this will happen again.

    It is a reasonable worry, from a scientific point of view. The Polar Vortex visitation last winter was the result of changes to trade winds and jet streams that has characterized our weather for the last few years. One of the big questions on my mind is this: Are wavy jet streams and corresponding changes in the distribution of excessive rainfall and drought likely to become spatially patterned? In other words, is it likely that when the Polar Vortex wanders that it will tend to wander to the same small set of locations, like Siberia or North America? So far this seems to be at least partly true. The drought in California has not been maintained because of a lack of rainfall at that latitude, but rather, a lack of certain seasonal precipitation (winter snows) at that longitude, because of the oft-cited “ridiculously resilient ridge” which is actually one of several standing waves in the polar jet stream that shunts wet air around California, to places the Midwest. It is conceivable that the Polar Vortex, as part of the climate change induced “new normal,” will wanter off-pole and onto a landmass (either Eurasia or North America) often-ish, from now on, or until continued global warming results in some other pattern which we’ll probably call “New Normal 2.0”.

    This is a question I’ve asked various scientists who are working on this problem. The answer I’ve gotten so far has been, paraphrased, “Yeah, I don’t know, maybe, we’re thinking about that. Get back to you later.”

    But there is hope. I’ve put links to three places you can go for more discussion and information below. Here’s the tl;dr. The National Weather Service does a very good job of predicting what winter will be like in North America, but the accuracy of that prediction, unsurprisingly, drops off month by month. So the current prediction is probably pretty good for November/December, but as January and February come along, what is predicted now may be off. With that caveat, these are the salient predictions:

    1) There will not be a Polar Vortex excursion into North America. Probably. The thing is, if this is a recent phenomenon and increasing in likelihood, the predictions may be off, but there are good reasons to believe they are not. Don’t assume the Polar Vortex will visit us, but don’t sell your wool pants at that last garage sale of the year.

    2) California may actually get some rasonable precipitation this winter. It is hard to say if it will be drought-breaking rain, but it may help.

    3) Although winter seems to be starting early this year (with many inches of snow having fallen or about to fall on the Front Range, the Dakotas, etc.) the overall prediction is a somewhat warmer than average winter for most of North America.

    4) The Southwest, California, Texas, North-Central Mexico will have a bit more moisture than average, but other than Pacific coastal Mexico, not a lot more. That won’t translate into huge snowfalls except at high elevations. The middle of the country, from Montana to western Ohio and Michigan, south to a line running from southern Idaho across to Florida, including the Southeast, will have average precip. So, Minnesotans may see early snow if it remains cool, but this will not be an exceptionally snowy winter. Less than usual moisture is predicted for Kentucky, Ohio, western Pensylvaina, parts of New York and most of New England. But, this is only a small amount, so don’t sell your snow blower at that garage sale.

    Parts of the Pacific Northwest and inland across to western Montana may be a bit dryer than usual.

    Overall, temperature wise, no region is expected to be especially cold, mostly somewhat warm. The regions of Canada and Alaska along the Arctic Circle will be very warm (relatively … so many degrees below zero instead of many more degrees below zero) as we would expect with “Arctic Amplification.” Moisture levels, overall, are not going to be extreme in either direction anywhere, though the dry in the Northwest may be noticeable.

    In other words, the average person’s perception of weather, which varies from reality a great deal, will include the actual realized variation, if the predictions hold up.

    The NWS predictions can be found via this page.

    Eric Holthaus has a discussion of the coming winter here.

    Paul Douglas of Weather Nation has more here, with a lot of other info relevant to Minnesota.

    Odile, Polo, and the Eastern Pacific Hurricane Season 2014

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    Odile was the strongest hurricane to strike the Baja Peninsula during the period of available data, roughly similar to Hurrican Olivia (1967). The storm reached Category 4 strength but was then weakened because of interaction with the effects of a prior hurricane in the area (Norbert). At the moment, Odile is a tropical storm and still in the Baja. There was flooding, and two fatalities, including a lightning strike and a nine year old boy taken by floodwaters. Several building in Acapulco were damaged. There has been a lot of damage and disruption in the Baja region.

    Tropical Storm Polo is currently south of Mexico and is expected to stay away from the coast, and it is not clear that it will reach Hurricane strength. If so, only for a brief time.

    Hurricane Iselle was the strongest tropical cyclone to hit Hawaii (the big island).

    Hurricane Marie was the first Category 5 Pacific hurricane in the region in four years.

    Hurricane Genevieve was the first hurricane to pass through all three defined Pacific hurricane basins since 2003.

    Including Polo, there have been 17 named storms in the Eastern Pacific so far this year. Eleven have been hurricanes. The average Eastern Pacific hurricane season has 15.4 (range 7-25) storms with 8.4 hurricanes (range 3-16). Officially the season ends on November 30th. So, this is clearly an exceptional year.

    More Research Linking Global Warming To Bad Weather Events

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    A new paper advances our understanding of the link between anthropogenic global warming and the apparent uptick in severe weather events we’ve been experiencing. Let’s have a look at the phenomenon and the new research.

    Climate Change: The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly.

    It is mostly bad. Sometimes it is ugly. I was looking at crop reports from the USDA and noticed an interesting phenomenon in Minnesota, that is repeated across much of the US this year: Fewer acres are in crops but among those acres that are planted there is a high expected per-acre yield. The higher yield will make up for the lost acreage this year. Unfortunately, that is about as good as it gets.

    The lost acreage, at least in Minnesota as I understand it, comes from a late spring followed by a wet early summer. And holy crap was it wet, and fairly cool. My own tomatoes were utterly confused. One plant produced a single tomato that ripened a month and a half early, then waited for weeks to make its next move. I think organisms do that sometimes; when they think they are about to die they reproduce desperately, which for a tomato plant, is producing one premature tomato and then trying to not be noticed for a while. In any event, many Minnesota farmers live with an interesting conflict. There are parts of their farms they can’t plant in a given year because it stays too wet too long, and that varies from year to year. The rest of the farm is irrigated much of the summer. This year, it seems that there has been enough extra rain to increase productivity of the irrigation season, but acreage was lost between the encore of a sort of Polar Vortex mimic and a lot of rain.

    The extra productivity was a lucky break, and is limited in its effects. The same weather phenomenon that made June nearly the wettest month ever in the upper plains has contributed significantly to a longer term drought in California, which is on the verge of ruining agriculture there. Severe flooding or extreme dry can do much more damage to agriculture than is accounted for by minor increases in productivity because of the extra water vapor provided by Anthropogenic Global Warming.

    And the floods can be downright dangerous. I was talking to my friend and former student Rusty several months ago about the flooding in Colorado. I asked her about how her husband was doing (they both happen to be climate scientists by the way).

    “Oh he’s probably fine but I’ve not heard from him in three days. His cell phone battery is probably out. I imagine he’s clinging to some high ground up on the Front Range about now.”

    He is a volunteer first responder and had headed up into the canyons year boulder during the big floods there. Which were like the big floods in Calgary. And Central Europe. And the UK. And that rainy June here. And the flooding that just happened in several parts of the US.

    All of it, all of those floods, and some significant drought, and the Polar Vortex that hit the middle of North America last winter, all caused, almost certainly, by the same phenomenon.

    Wildfires are probably enhanced by recent weather phenomenon as well, with extreme rains causing the build up of fuel, followed by extreme dry providing the conditions for larger and more frequent fires.

    On the more extreme end of effects for severe weather is the Arab Spring phenomenon. It is one thing to have a bad year for corn because of a wet spring. It is worse to have a multi year drought that could seriously affect our ability to buy almonds, avocados and romaine from California. But what happens when an agricultural system fails for several years in a row, the farmer abandon the land and move to the cities where they become indigent, a civil war breaks out, and next think you know a Caliphate is formed, in part on the wreckage of one or two failed regimes, failed in large part because of severe weather conditions caused by human induced climate change?

    I’ve discussed this at length before. (See: Linking Weather Extremes to Global Warming and Global Warming and Extreme Weather) The relationship is pretty simple, to know how it works all you have to do is remember one word:

    AGWAAQRaRWaWW. Rhymes with “It’s stuck in my craw, paw!”

    Let me parse that out for you.

    AGW -> AA -> QR-RW -> WW

    AGW – Anthropogenic Global Warming

    Anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is caused mainly by added CO2 in the atmosphere from burning fossil fuel. By definition, the burning of fossil fuels is the release of energy by separation of carbon previously attached to other atoms by biological processes typically a long time ago, and over a long period of time. We humans are spending a century or two releasing tens and tens of millions of slow storage of Carbon, all at once in geological time, causing the chemistry of our atmosphere to resemble something we’ve not seen in tens of millions of years.

    AA – Arctic Amplification

    The CO2 by itself would warm the Earth to a certain degree, but it also produces what are called positive feedbacks. Which are not positive in a good way. For example, added CO2 means there is more water vapor in the atmosphere (because of more evaporation and ability for the atmosphere to hold water). Water vapor is, like CO2, a greenhouse gas. So we get even more warming. In the Arctic, there are a number of additional positive feedbacks that have to do with ice. The Arctic, with its additional positive feedbacks, warms more than other parts of the planet. This is called Arctic Amplification.

    QR-RW – Quasi-resonant Rossby waves

    Jet Stream Cross Section
    Cross section of the atmosphere of the Northern Hemisphere. The Jet Streams form at the highly energetic boundary between major circulating cells which contain the trade winds near the top of the Troposphere.
    Normally, heat from the equator makes its way towards the poles via air and sea. Giant currents of air are set up by a combination of extra equatorial heat and the rotation of the earth. Part of this system is the so-called “trade winds” (winds that typically blow in a typical direction) and the jet streams.

    What the jet stream is supposed to look like.
    What the jet stream is supposed to look like.
    The jet streams occur at high altitude between major bands of trade winds that encircle the earth. The trade-wind/jet stream systems are typically straight rings that encircle the earth (a bit like the bands on the major gas planets) and the jet streams move, normally, pretty straight and pretty fast. But, with the warming of the Arctic, the differential between the equator and the poles is reduced, so all sorts of strange things happen, and one of those things is the formation of quasi-resonant Rossby waves.

    A Rossby wave is simply a big giant meander in the jet stream. Quasi-resonant means “almost resonant” and resonant means that instead of the meanders meandering around, they sit in one place (almost).

    What the jet stream looks like when it is all messed up.
    What the jet stream looks like when it is all messed up.
    It appears that Quasi-resonant Rossby waves set up when there is a certain number (roughly a half dozen) of these big meanders. When this happens, the jet stream slows down. The big bends in the jet streams block or stall weather patterns, and the slow moving nature of the jet stream contributes to the formation of either flash droughts (as Paul Douglas calls them) where several weeks of nearly zero rain menace a region, or extensive and intensive rainfall, like all the events mentioned above.

    WW – Weather Whiplash

    That’s the term that refers to dramatic shifts between the extreme weather events created by Quasi-resonant Rossby Waves, the result of Arctic Amplification, caused by Anthropogenic Global Warming.

    And that’s how you get yer AGWAAQRaRWaWW. Rhymes with “It’s stuck in my craw, paw!”

    Quasi-resonant circulation regimes and hemispheric synchronization of extreme weather in boreal summer

    Which brings us to Quasi-resonant circulation regimes and hemispheric synchronization of extreme weather in boreal summer. This is the title of a paper by Dim Coumou, Vladimir Petoukhov, Stefan Rahmstorf, Stefan Petri, and Hans Joachim Schellnhuber. Here is the “for the people” abstract of the paper:

    The recent decade has seen an exceptional number of boreal summer weather extremes, some causing massive damage to society. There is a strong scientific debate about the underlying causes of these events. We show that high-amplitude quasi- stationary Rossby waves, associated with resonance circulation regimes, lead to persistent surface weather conditions and therefore to midlatitude synchronization of extreme heat and rainfall events. Since the onset of rapid Arctic amplification around 2000, a cluster of resonance circulation regimes is ob- served involving wave numbers 7 and 8. This has resulted in a statistically significant increase in the frequency of high- amplitude quasi-stationary waves with these wave numbers. Our findings provide important new insights regarding the link between Arctic changes and midlatitude extremes.

    The effects of climate change have occurred (and will occur) on a number of time scales. Over a century we’ve had a foot of sea level rise, which is showing its effects now. Storminess, in the form of changes in tornado regimes and tropical storms, has probably been with us for a few decades. But Agwaaqrarwaww has probably only been with us since about the beginning of the present century.

    I blogged about this before. In “Global Warming And Extreme Weather” I described an earlier paper produced by the same research team, in which they presented this graphic:

    QRRossbyWavePaper

    Followed by this graphic, which I made, with the intention of more clearly showing the trend in QR events:
    QR_conditions_over_time_based_on_Petoukhov_et_al

    I sent that to one of the authors, which may have inspired the production of a different graphic but showing the same trend, for the current paper:

    BvBgV8hIIAEBVDY

    Look how recent this phenomenon is. It is now, current, happening at sub-climate time scales. We don’t know enough about it, and we need to address it.

    I asked Stefan Rahmstorf, one of the paper’s author and the scientists I was exchanging graphics with, to elaborate on the signficance of this recent study and to explain why it is important. He told me, “Previous studies have failed to find trends linked to global warming which could explain the recent spate of unusual extreme events. For example they have looked at trends in the occurrence of blocking or in the speed of the jet stream. But you need to know what you are looking for in order to find it. The planetary wave equation reveals what the resonance conditions are which make the waves grow really big, causing extreme weather. So we knew what trends to look for.”

    I also asked him if severe weather events post dating the end of his study period conform to expectations as Rossby Wave events. “I can’t say for sure because we have not done the analysis for the very latest data yet – studies like this take time,” he told me. “But I suspect there have been more resonance events. They are not necessarily constrained to July and August either. The record flooding in May/June 2013 in Germany of the Danube and Elbe rivers, for example, was associated with large planetary wave amplitudes. Dim Coumou has assembled a young research team now that will work on further data analysis.”

    Damian Carrington has written up this research at the Guardian, and notes:

    Prof Ted Shepherd, a climate scientist at the University of Reading, UK, but not involved in the work, said the link between blocking patterns and extreme weather was very well established. He added that the increasing frequency shown in the new work indicated climate change could bring rapid and dramatic changes to weather, on top of a gradual heating of the planet. “Circulation changes can have much more non-linear effects. They may do nothing for a while, then there might be some kind of regime change.”

    Shepherd said linking the rise in blocking events to Arctic warming remained “a bit speculative” at this stage, in particular because the difference between temperatures at the poles and equator is most pronounced in winter, not summer. But he noted that the succession of storms that caused England’s wettest winter in 250 years was a “very good example” of blocking patterns causing extreme weather during the coldest season. “The jet stream was stuck in one position for a long period, so a whole series of storms passed over England,” he said.

    I’m not convinced that the seasonality of Arctic Amplification matter much here, and I note that we’ve not looked closely at the Antarctic. Also, “blocking patterns” and QR waves are not really the same exact thing. They may be different features of the same overall phenomenon, but QR Rossby Waves are a more general phenomenon, and a “blocking” is something that happens, probably, when that phenomenon interacts with certain kinds of storms.

    It occurs to me that there is a huge difference between Agwaaqrarwaww happening randomly in space vs. blocking and steering waves setting up for long periods of time over the same place, and appearing in those places typically. Like Godzilla. We know that over time Godzilla will usually destroy Tokyo and not London, because Godzialla, while sometimes random, is usually geographically consistant. Can we expect Rossby Waves to usually causae drought in California, flooding on the Front Range or Rockies, and drenching rains in the Upper Midwest and Great Lakes Region, for example? I asked Stefan about that as well.

    “We have not looked at this aspect yet, but the recent paper by Screen and Simmonds has indeed found such a preference of the wave troughs and crests to sit in certain locations.

    Ruh Roh.