Cold and Snowy and Warm and Wet
Cold and Snowy and Warm and Wet
Yes it is, again, a cold and snowy winter in the eastern parts of the U.S. (Master’s Wunderblog) You might recall that it was very cold and snowy in Europe at Christmas time. In the middle of Asia, January was very cold. Of course those whose opinions on global warming are anchored in the political arguments use the cold and snowy winter to substantiate their position that global warming is not real. I do not write to convince you.
Others become sensitized to the weather and start to think about climate and changing climate and what such a cold and snowy winter means.
A lot of scientists start out explaining the cold and snowy winter by making the statement that there are certain weather patterns, for example, the Arctic Oscillation. (see this blog in Washington Post for a different take) These patterns are part of dynamical or internal variability, and when the Arctic oscillation is in one phase of the pattern it is cold and snowy in the eastern U.S. and northern Europe. It should also be warm in Greenland. It’s been cold in central Asia and warm in northern Siberia. (Master’s Wunderblog: Near Record Warmth in Canada and Siberia) Hot-Cold-Hot-Cold = natural variability. It's just part of what we have to live with. All of this is true, accurately stated, but it does not strike me as a terribly intuitive explanation for those who just lost their crops in northern Mexico or central Florida. I am going to try to develop a more broadly intuitive framework to think about a cold and snowy winter in a warming world. I have written a number of previous blogs on this, one of which is reproduced at the end of this one. Also, I just finished lecturing on dynamical variability in class, and I have put those lectures on line - Lecture 11 and Lecture 12. There are a lot of links in these lectures.
An Intuitive Approach to the Cold and Snowy Winter: I will write from the point of view of the gardener or someone who likes to be outdoors and pays attention to the season and the weather.
In the winter the Sun becomes low in the sky because of the tilt of the Earth’s orbit. At polar latitudes, the Sun is below the horizon. There is no solar heating. It is dark at the pole.
During winter at the pole, the Earth continues to emit energy to space. This energy is emitted as infrared radiation. It gets cold.
It is worth remembering that if there is no solar energy to heat the Earth, the Earth will get very, very cold. It would start to approach the background temperature of outer space. At the pole, in the winter, it gets cold, say, – 40 degrees below zero. (The cool thing about 40 degrees below zero is that this is where Fahrenheit and Celsius are equal.)
Here in the U.S. it is intuitive to the gardener that the winter is cold, and dark, and it gets colder and darker the farther north you go. It’s right there on the back of the seed packet.
The atmosphere responds to this cooling at the pole; whenever and wherever there is a hot-cold contrast, a temperature gradient, there is motion. The wind blows.
A fact of the Earth is that it rotates. That rotation strongly determines the winds; the motion of the air aligns with the rotation of the Earth. (Here are two neat movies from MIT’s Climate Modeling Initiative Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory: .mpg format (large ones) non-rotating fluid, … rotating fluid )
Something of a river of air, the polar jet stream, forms around the pole. (perhaps a home boy’s figure) Most outdoor people have gotten pretty familiar with the jet stream, and that the jet stream is sometimes wavier than at other times and that that influences the weather – a lot.
Now here is something that is important, that is not quite as intuitive. The jet stream that forms around the pole largely isolates the air in the polar region from air outside the polar region. Here is how I would develop some intuition, imagine you are next to a rapidly flowing stream and you put a leaf in the stream. Does it flow across the stream to the other side, or is it rapidly carried downstream? It is carried downstream, and therefore, one side of the stream is effectively isolated from the other. The jet stream around the pole, this river of air, effectively isolates the pole. Therefore, not a whole lot of heat is carried to the pole; the sun is down; it gets cold at the pole.
This isolation of the pole during the winter occurs, whether or not there is global warming. The Sun goes down for a long period of time. Without transport of heat to the pole, the pole can get as cold now as it did 50 years. It might take a few days longer, but if it is isolated long enough then it gets just as cold. So we have a store of cold air at high latitudes.
Here is another, perhaps less intuitive fact. For the rotating atmosphere of the Earth, the hot-cold contrast, the temperature gradient, represents a source of energy for atmospheric motion. The atmosphere does not like these gradients. It wants to mix them up. If it as cold at the pole as it used to be, and warmer outside of the pole, then there is MORE energy for that mixing. So when the mixing occurs it is, likely, more vigorous, more energetic.
With this more energetic mixing, then it is possible that when the jet stream is wavy, it is very wavy compared to history. It is possible that the cold polar air goes farther south than it used to go. And more warm middle latitude air finds itself at the pole. Previously isolated polar air is pushed off the pole. It sits over Asia, Europe – North America. For a time in the middle of the winter, it can stay cold for a long time. And up at the pole it is warm. And if that cold polar air is pushed just a little bit farther south than historical, it can be damaging record cold.
And that is what January looked like. Here it is:
Figure 1: Observations of temperature in December of 2010. The temperatures are represented as a difference (anomaly) from a 30 year average. See more from (Master’s Wunderblog: Near Record Warmth in Canada and Siberia)
I don’t know if that helps. I apologize not being able to draw some new figures. There are some things that are worth thinking about for the sake of consistency.
Do we see these episodic record cold temperatures in unusual places in the middle of the winter, when we would have stronger temperature gradients, perhaps more vigorous mixing?
Do we see it taking a little longer for the pole to get cold in the transition from fall to winter?
Does the temperature at the pole bottom out at about the same temperature as it always has, but the temperature in middle latitudes gets a little warmer?
Is spring coming earlier?
Is it possible that midwinter risk to crops at southern middle latitudes increases, at the same time the spring growing season starts earlier?
Is it snowier in the middle of winter, but less snowy in the spring?
What does it mean when the United States is as cold as it has ever been for a month in the middle of winter, but the planet as a whole is still the 17th warmest on record?
r
Relevant Blog from 2010 linked here and repeated below.
Warm Cold Warm Cold
You may remember that early last winter it was cold in the eastern half of the United States. There was a lot of press about what the cold weather implied about global warming. I wrote a series of blogs last year that are:
Cold in a Warm World
Cold in the East
Last Year and This Year
Last Year and This Year – and the Next Big Story?
I have started teaching again. One of things we do in the beginning of the class we talk about what people already know about global warming. Two of the students raised the issue of “what’s in name?” That is, if it is called “global warming,” then people are confused when it is not, always, uniformly warmer all the time. (Might remember this discussion as well.)
As I stand in front of these students prattling on, I am always thinking of ways to explore, challenge, and expose ideas. Early on, we talk about the role of greenhouse gases in the natural climate of the Earth. We have known since, at least, 1800 that water vapor and carbon dioxide are greenhouse gases that make the Earth “warm.” That is, if you take away these gases which act like blankets and hold the Sun’s energy near the surface of the Earth for a while, then the Earth would be MUCH colder – say, about zero degrees Fahrenheit. Restating this, without the atmosphere the surface of the Earth would be cold. (Spencer Weart’s great history) Water is about two thirds of the greenhouse warming.
One could take from this fact, and it is not often I use the word “fact,” – one could take from this fact, that there is a strong physical reason that works to take the Earth towards this “equilibrium” temperature. Think of it this way, suppose you have a pot of boiling fresh organic chicken broth on the stove. Once you get the pot boiling, if you want to keep it boiling then you have to keep adding a little heat to the bottom of the pot. If you turn off the heat, then the pot stops boiling. This loss of energy which works to stop the boiling is always occurring, and you are always adding energy through the burner to counter this loss. For the Earth, the Sun is the burner, the source of energy, and the Earth is always cooling to get rid of this energy. It’s a little like a spring trying to pull the Earth’s temperature to, on the average, about zero degrees Fahrenheit. (A question for the reader: what is the impact of putting a top on the pot?)
If you were to turn off the Sun, then the Earth would get cold fast. That is what happens when winter comes to the poles. In the north, throughout October and November, the North Pole starts to cool. The Earth emits radiation to space. Since the heating from the Sun is totally absent at this time, it can get far colder than that equilibrium temperature of zero degrees Fahrenheit. The atmosphere and the oceans continue to transport heat to the north, but they can’t keep up. This process of cooling at the poles in the winter is a fact of the planet that will continue even as greenhouse gases build up.
This is where weather comes into play. We have this cold air up towards the North Pole. The atmosphere and the ocean have many different types of - I will call them features - features that have characteristic types of motion associated with them. An example of such a feature is a hurricane, which has closed circulation around an eye. The hurricane then moves around, but pretty much no matter how it bounces around for a week or two, after a while the hurricane heads out to the north. Really they head off to the pole, and north or south depends on which hemisphere. What the hurricane does is transport heat from the tropics to the pole, and that is what the atmosphere and oceans do all the time. They are trying to reduce the contrast between warm and cold.
The hurricane is an example of a dynamical feature. There are many more dynamical features and many of them behave like waves. A hurricane behaves more like a spinning top; it’s a vortex. The atmosphere is full of waves, and professors like me torment students of meteorology with mathematical descriptions of these waves. There are many ways that waves come into being, but one way is because of air flowing over mountain ranges. You can imagine, more intuitively, a stream of water flowing over a rock. I have tried to convey this idea of a wave in the figure below.
Figure 1: A schematic picture that represents a wave in temperature. There are hot and cold parts of the wave. Do other climate bloggers draw such compelling figures?
What I have drawn with the dashed line is a “small” wave, perhaps a wave that would form in October. Then I draw, with the solid line, a bigger wave, perhaps a wave of December or January. These waves are always growing and decaying, sometimes moving a little bit to the east and the west. If we label the graph so that the bottom is the south, the top is the north, the left hand side is west and the right hand side is east, then we can imagine North America siting under this wave. If the left hand side is the Pacific Ocean and the right hand side is the Atlantic Ocean, then it sets up the story. If the wave grows in the west, the warm air pushes up to the north towards the pole, and the cold air is displaced south into the United States. This is not some random, made up thing, because 1) there are the Rocky Mountains that help make the wave, 2) the way the Earth rotates makes the air flow from west to east, 3) northern part of North America, we call it Canada here in the South, gets cold because the Sun is down, and 4) the Pacific Ocean starts to look warm as the continent starts to get cold.
If I hear people talking about how cold it is in the east of the U.S., I ask them to, using Wunderground.com of course, to look at what is going on in California and Alaska. If it is cold in the East, then usually it is warm in the West. And if this wave gets big enough, then it pushes up towards to pole, and it looks warm in the north, and the air that is displaced to the South, off the pole, looks cold. And to weak-kneed academics from Florida State University, it might look VERY cold. (What’s going on at Florida State? Must be all of that money that goes to cushy climate scientists.)
Even if there is a lot of carbon dioxide it still gets cold when the Sun goes down at the poles, and that cold air can get pushed down away from the pole, and there is still winter. In fact, if that push of air towards the pole is especially vigorous, then the cold air can get pushed to new places, and we have a record cold. If you are going to play the “record game,” look for new highs that might be paired with the new lows. (Jerry Meehl and colleagues did this recently, many, many more new highs. They concluded that it’s getting warmer.)
OK …. Let’s look at last December. It’s from the usual place the National Climatic Data Center.
Figure 2: Observations of temperature in December of 2009. The temperatures are represented as a difference (anomaly) from a 30 year average.
I recall Boulder, Colorado being really cold in December, as well as a blizzard in Baltimore. The map shows two cold centers over North America and Siberia. It’s pretty warm in Greenland and Alaska, and you can study the map more. Here is a link to the excellent discussion at the National Climatic Data Center. In the northern hemisphere this map shows a distinctive wave pattern. (There are good reasons that these waves appear as 1, 2, or 3 , but I will make you take dynamics on your own.)
I deliberately did this without referring to the Arctic Oscillation. I was driving around this afternoon thinking about that. If the pole has spent the last few years with its cold phase at the pole, and that cold phase was, by historical standards, not so cold, does that mean something? Just thinking on the way to Sprayberry's.
I posed the question at the end of a recent blog about what a record December blizzard in Baltimore might or might not say about climate change. Since then there have been record snow storms all over the northern hemisphere. At a very real level, a set of storms in one winter says NOTHING about global warming. Nothing. It surely does not say that global warming is abated, or of no concern. In fact, as a couple of comments pointed out, if the atmosphere is warmer, and the air is moister, if it is cold enough to snow, then there is a lot of snow. Others say that cold is cold.
There is still cold weather. Fact is, when the entire surface of the globe is considered, December 2009 was a warm month, in a warm year, of the warmest decade we have measured. (see this write up) Prepare in the next week for a bunch of storms to hit California. (Of course, that’s just a model prediction.) I wonder how many people will attribute those storms to El Nino, based on the science, but at the same time dismiss the far more certain science of global warming. I’ll be at the American Meteorological Society Annual Meeting in Atlanta. Our group has eight talks, so there is student stress and faculty worry. More and more climate at the meeting as we start to think about a National Climate Service.
r
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No pumps pretty clever right?
outrageous, inappropriate, and reported
Updated-Original post 2-24-2008
Recently Rosa Compagnucci along with several other Argentine scientist came out in opposition to the alarmist view of anthropological global warming as promoted by the IPCC. Who is Rosa Compagnucci and why is this important? She is the leading researcher at CONICET and a professor in the Department of Atmosphere Sciences at the University of Buenos Aires, as well as a specialist on the "El Niño" phenomenon. Dr. Compagnucci was also a member and author of the IPCC Working Group II on Latin America.The fact that Dr Compagnucci now disagrees with the IPCC’s conclusions is not unique, a number of scientist involved with the IPCC have been critical of the agency. What caught my attention was a statement she made while explaining her reasons.
With all the emphasis on preparing for global warming, she warned, this could leave man unprepared to deal with the possibility of a new ice age. She noted that South America's Southern Cone just went through a brutal, record-breaking winter, which could be repeated in North America. These concerns were expressed this past December 2nd, prior to the onset of this current brutal winter in much of the Northern Hemisphere.
It is interesting to note that a climate scientist unfettered by the need to defend a political position can make such a prophetic observation based solely on her judgment and intuition of current conditions. As regards to a coming ice age she did explain that this could be hundreds of years in the future, but she did expect a downward temperature swing by 2012.
She is not alone in this concern however, several scientist particularly astrophysicists and astronomers such as Dr. Habibullo Abdussamatov at St. Petersburg's Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory have been warning that solar irradiance has begun to fall, which will cause a protracted cooling period beginning in 2012 to 2015. The decline in solar irradiance he projects will last well into mid century and beyond putting Earth into an ever increasing deep freeze into the next century.
Since I originally wrote this many more scientist have expressed concerns about a cooling world. Dr. Pal Brekke a senior advisor to the Norwegian Space Centre in Oslo put it this way
"We could be in for a surprise," he cautions. "It's possible that the sun
plays an even more central role in global warming than we have suspected. Anyone who claims that the debate is over and the conclusions are firm has a
fundamentally unscientific approach to one of the most momentous issues of our
time."
and he added:
There is much evidence that the sun's high-activity cycle is levelling off or abating. If it is true that the sun's activity is of great significance in determining the earth's climate, this reduced solar activity could work in the opposite direction to climate change caused by humans. In that case," contends Dr Brekke, "we could find the temperature levelling off or actually falling in the course of a 50-year period" - an assertion that provokes many climate researchers
.
Obviously if this is true and there really is a danger of man made global warming then the sun's reduced activity counteracting it should be welcomed. But as you can tell from the article any mention of the sun having an impact on the climate is frowned upon by the so called mainstream climate community. This is because they do not recognize the sun having anything but a marginal impact on our climate variations. Anything that does not point to greenhouse gasses as the primary driver of the climate is considered sacrilegious. I'll let the reader decide if given millions of years of Earth's existence this makes sense, considering the short history of the automobile industry.
You might also consider that according to these same mainstream climate gurus the warmest year in the industrial age was 1998, and 2008 is the coolest year since then despite atmospheric carbon dioxide levels increasing at an "alarming rate". So why has it cooled? "There is much evidence that the sun's high-activity cycle is levelling off or abating."
In addition to the sun, as if that wasn't big enough, in April it was announced that we transitioned from a warm PDO phase to a cold phase. What does that mean? Well according to Professor Don Easterbrook of Western Washington University :
The PDO cool mode has replaced the warm mode in the Pacific Ocean, virtually assuring us of about 30 years of global cooling, perhaps much deeper than the global cooling from about 1945 to 1977. Just how much cooler the global climate will be during this cool cycle is uncertain. Recent solar changes suggest that it could be fairly severe, perhaps more like the 1880 to 1915 cool cycle than the more moderate 1945-1977 cool cycle. A more drastic cooling, similar to that during the Dalton and Maunder minimums, could plunge the Earth into another Little Ice Age, but only time will tell if that is likely.
I could point to quite a few scientist in several fields who are either predicting or speculating that this will happen, even scientist who agree with the AGW theory. Since I originally wrote this (prior to the PDO shift) more and more scientist are expressing concern and weighing in on the subject. However that is not the main point I wish to make here.
So often in the Global Warming discussion you hear comments like “What difference does it make if the scientist are wrong, it will be good for the world to cut back on CO2 emissions.”
Believe me when I say I’m all for cutting our dependence on and use of fossil fuels for many reasons, but scientist being wrong about man made global warming is not one of them. Let’s look at just one reason why we should not be in favor of taking actions based on possible faulty conclusions.
First, let us suppose that Dr. Abdussamatov is correct and we begin a prolonged period of global cooling sometime next decade. In point of fact we may have already started, since the globe has shown no warming since 1998, let me say that again in case you did not know. 1998 was the warmest year in the past decade, that means there has been no warming since then, 2008 in case you haven’t noticed doesn’t look like it’s going to threaten the trend, but we will see.
Back to Dr. A, if he is correct, how are you going to feel about climate scientist come the end of next decade? The winters will get worse, food prices will rise even more because growing seasons will shorten rather than lengthen as would happen with global warming. Energy prices will skyrocket even more than now because it cost more to heat than to cool. There will be more deaths because cold related deaths exceed heat related. Believe me when I say everyone will be wishing the scientist were right about global warming because global cooling will be far worse for our world.
But it’s worse than just being upset at the scientist and them loosing credibility. Speaking of which my twenty-two year old daughter has lived her entire life under this ever increasing alarm and threat from global warming. What is it going to do to her generations trust in science if we begin… excuse me continue to cool? But as I said it’s worse than that.
Have you ever been on a trip and gotten on a highway going in the opposite direction than you intended. Suddenly you realize it twenty miles down the road. The worst part is not just the miles you went, it’s also the gas you used and the time you lost and that’s still not all. You have to spend just as much time, go just as many miles and use just as much gas again to get back to where you started. In affect you have lost the equivalent of not the twenty miles but sixty, the twenty gone wrong the twenty return and the twenty more you should have been and you can never get the time and gas back, they are lost.
Let’s look at another way in which this whole global warming hysteria has us going in a direction that could be very painful to return from. First, many countries, the United States now included, are mandating that a percentage of there energy use be replaced by bio-fuels. This is already having a dramatic affect on world food prices and stockpiles. So in the coming years we will be increasingly burning our food supply. As the world population and the demand for agricultural products grow we will be using those needed commodities for fuel instead of for sustenance. If we continue this policy which calls for ever increasing ethanol production it will only exacerbate the problem considerably in a colder world with shorter growing seasons.
It is easy to say that we would just switch back to using the crops for food but the real world does not work that way. Despite the fact that global temperatures have leveled over the past decade, the constant drum beat of climate change has been unrelenting causing world wide changes in energy policies, scientific research, economic planning and priorities.
Do you really believe that the scientist, environmental groups and politicians that have invested so much of their credibility on this theory are suddenly going to say “Oh Gee, we got it wrong, never mind” ? Not to mention that tremendous amounts of capital is being invested in research, development and infrastructures to accommodate this growing industry. I would assume that bio-fuel plants are not cheap. There is also the economic, availability and psychological affect if we are suddenly faced with switching back to using more fossil fuel in order to keep the world from starving. Think about that one for a while.
Like going the wrong way and having to turn around on a trip, tremendous resources are being expended in the wrong direction. Will we really give a hoot about wind farms if we are suffering through -50 degF winters as they just did in Maine, a new record low for all of New England.
While new coal plants are being taken off the table and drilling for oil and natural gas has become anathema to the power elite that control our country, how foolish will we look when we are burning forest and buildings for heat?
If some scientists say that the world is going to heat up and others say it is going to cool down what do you do? Perhaps the best course is to watch and see instead of running in the opposite direction from where you need to go. Making policies and taking steps that will only exacerbate future conditions seems to be a bit extreme. Personally I hope the AGW proponents are correct, the benefits of a warmer world out weigh the negatives, though you seldom hear this side of the discussion.
Dr. Habibullo I. Abdussamatov: Russian Academy of Scientists.Comment: RIA Novosti, August 25, 2006:
“Khabibullo Abdusamatov said he and his colleagues had concluded that a period of global cooling similar to one seen in the late 17th century – when canals froze in the Netherlands and people had to leave their dwellings in Greenland – could start in 2012-2105 and reach its peak in 2055-2060….He said he believed the future climate change would have very serious consequences and that authorities should start preparing for them today….”
January 16,2009
And he is getting more and more support for his view because it would be a real shame if we left our children and grandchildren starving in the cold.
From
A Long Road Home Revisited (2-12-2010)
The Global Warming mythology has infected all aspects of society. Not only is every weather event somehow attributable to man made global warming but as important is the lack of preparedness for what in the past would be considered prudent caution in response to what once was considered natural events. Earlier this year when the UK was hammered with heavy snows and cold temperatures which their MET Office had not forecast, they were left unprepared in many respects, not the least of it being salt:
Ministers have ordered highway authorities across the UK to cut their salt usage
by 25% to manage the pressure on salt supplies caused by the most prolonged spell of cold weather in the UK in almost 30 years.
When Washington DC was about to be hit with its third major snow event of the season 25 percent of its plow fleet was down, having trouble getting replacement parts and they too were running short on salt. Why would a city, our nations Capital which is funded by the Federal Government, not have spare parts for such essential equipment? Granted that the snow in the Mid Atlantic region has been historic this winter, but then again based on popular beliefs perpetrated about our climate who would have prepared for historic cold and snow anyway, what a waste right ?
It is one thing for a city such as Dallas to be unprepared for a record breaking foot of snow, the chances are it will be an anomaly in the long run. However the record breaking snow in DC just edged out the previous record (so far) it certainly is not unprecedented.
Indeed governments around the globe have bought so completely into the global warming myth they are afraid of being accused of negligence for not preparing for and establishing policies to meet rising sea levels in the distant future-not snow levels. But it is the snow and ice which we are faced with now isn't it? And governments find themselves unprepared.
***
Seriously, as long as he abides by the blog commenting rules, he can post what he wants. It's not up to you to set posting standards for anyone.
So you don't like climate change blogs?
:)
Thanks for your kind words NRAamy!!
Honestly, I really don't generally have a problem with JFlorida either. If Cyclonebuster is guilty of anything though, perhaps it's spamming the board. But if someone thinks that's the case, they should flag the comments and let Admin decide. Posts such as the original one in № 153 are tiresome.
Added: And of course, "Ignore" works well too...
Remember they restore all ice. Ice on land and water.
(AFP) – 3 days ago
WASHINGTON — Climate change is not only making the planet warmer, it is also making snowstorms stronger and more frequent, US scientists said on Tuesday.
"Heavy snowstorms are not inconsistent with a warming planet," said scientist Jeff Masters, as part of a conference call with reporters and colleagues convened by the Union of Concern Scientists.
"In fact, as the Earth gets warmer and more moisture gets absorbed into the atmosphere, we are steadily loading the dice in favor of more extreme storms in all seasons, capable of causing greater impacts on society."
Masters said that the northeastern United States has been coated in heavy snowfall from major Category Three storms or larger three times in each of the past two winters, storms that are unparalleled since the winter of 1960-61.
"If the climate continues to warm, we should expect an increase in heavy snow events for a few decades, until the climate grows so warm that we pass the point where it's too warm for it to snow heavily."
Mark Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado, said less sea ice in the Artic translates to more moisture in the atmosphere, and could also cause an atmospheric circulation pattern in polar regions known as Arctic Oscillation.
"It's still cutting-edge research and there's no smoking gun, but there's evidence that with less sea ice, you put a lot of heat from the ocean into the atmosphere, and the circulation of the atmosphere responds to that," Serreze said.
"We've seen a tendency for autumns with low sea ice cover to be followed by a negative Arctic Oscillation."
Even though spring in North America is just around the corner, Masters said more snow is on the way next week in the upper Midwest, and the melting snow pack could spark record floods in Minnesota, South Dakota and North Dakota this spring.
Link
And who says we can't regulate climate change?
Good man send me your resume! LOL!
That would be ok if the power for your freezer came from the kinetic energy in the gulfstream. Agreed?
I think it was 13 trillion joules of energy every 7 seconds.
Dr. Jeff Masters, March 4, 2011
Director of Meteorology, Weather Underground
Greenland's climate in 2010 was marked by record-setting high air temperatures, the greatest ice loss by melting since accurate records began in 1958, and the greatest mass loss of ocean-terminating glaciers on record. One of the largest icebergs in world history calved from the Petermann Glacier, the island's second largest ocean-terminating glacier, on August 4 2010. The 100 square mile ice island four times the size of Manhattan has since broken up into many smaller icebergs.
Link
Changes in the Arctic Are Hitting Closer to Home
It’s a puzzle: How could warmth in the Arctic produce frigid conditions elsewhere?
NOAA scientists may have a clue.
Extremely cold winds have swept down through the Northern Hemisphere recently, reaching as far south as the state of Florida and causing record low temperatures in January. The unusually cold winter of 2009–2010 – which saw massive snowstorms dubbed “Snowpocalypse” and “Snowmageddon” — and the frigid start to 2011 in the eastern United States and Europe have scientists talking about what might be influencing the weather.
Dr. James Overland, a scientist at NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory (PMEL) in Seattle, has been studying the changing conditions in the Arctic for 30 years. He explains why the deterioration of the Polar Vortex could be leading to some of these extreme winter weather events.
“When the Polar Vortex — a ring of winds circling the Arctic — breaks down, this allows cold air to spill south, affecting the eastern United States and other regions,” says Dr. Overland. “This can result in a warmer-than-average Arctic region and colder temperatures that may include severe winter weather events on the North American and European continents.”
Link
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