Carinthian's Latest Arctic Reports Thread

[BLAST FROM THE PAST]

hI kw.

Thanks. Record lows were recorded by automatic weather stations on the summit and at the Nord station in the period October. However, it must be remembered that these recording cover a relative small time span due to the advent of such remote recordings. Agree with you that the Atlantic is widely more quite this past summer. The northern block seems to have a strangle hold on our weather for some considerable period now. Maybe we are on track to the 6th winter scenario ?

C

hI jOHN,

Nice to see you posting again on this thread. Classic Northern Block jet flow. We were close last year. Maybe this year.

Ps, Enjoyed your holidaypictures from Co Clare.

Kind Regards.

C

Couple of things

This year was supposed to be THE HURRICANE SEASON, worse than ever...... :blush: Carinth, I am focusing my thoughts and observations now on this cold pool you mention and look forward to updates. I think that a 'shift' occurred winter 04/05 and that this is a longterm shift in pattern.

What is this 6th winter feature you mention Carinth?

P3 A northerly jet, well in summer for heat and stability we want it way north as any depression gets sent up there and we get warmth from the south. Winter that brings murk and very mild, for cold/snow we need southerly jet.

BFTP

Edited August 14, 2006 by BLAST FROM THE PAST

[parmenides3]

Did anyone catch the Radio 4 broadcast at 9, with Ola Johannessen? It was a bit romanticised, but a good listen.

:blush: P

[carinthian]

Hi C,

Glad you liked the photos.

I have been following closely your thread and it really has had a positive feel to it. Great conributions and great to see PM3's posts, a very technical input and even Kold wants to join the chat.

Well done to all and keep it up.

Ah, not long till our winter season

hI John,

A wonderful coastline in that part of the " old country "

Yes, PM3's posts are very testing. He asks a lot of very important questions. KW covers such a wide ground in his posts. Nice to see he come on board with our particular pet subject.

Cheers

C

[BLAST FROM THE PAST]

Did anyone catch the Radio 4 broadcast at 9, with Ola Johannessen? It was a bit romanticised, but a good listen.

:blush: P

P3

Nope, please enlighten us...Sounds like it has potential?

BFTP

[John Cox]

hI John,

A wonderful coastline in that part of the " old country "

Yes, PM3's posts are very testing. He asks a lot of very important questions. KW covers such a wide ground in his posts. Nice to see he come on board with our particular pet subject.

Cheers

C

Yes in this particular region nothing grows. It is entirely limestone rock.

Many years ago Cromwell banished many Irish to this region and thus a famous Irish saying evolved "To hell or to Connaught (The name of this region)

Edited August 14, 2006 by John Cox

[carinthian]

Yes in this particular region nothing grows. It is entirely limestone rock.

May years ago Cromwell banished many Irish to this region and thus a famous Irish saying evolved "To hell or to Connaught (The name of this region)

Yes John , I know what you are on about. You will not see the 40 shades of green there !

C

[parmenides3]

P3

Nope, please enlighten us...Sounds like it has potential?

BFTP

You'll have to catch it on the web, I suspect:

A Life With...

Listen again to this programmeAudio HelpIce

Monday 14 August 2006 21:00-21:30 (Radio 4 FM)

Apparently, he runs the Nansen Institute, which he founded. One of the 'old school'.

Ola Johannesson has spent a life working with and living on the Arctic sea ice. He's a true disciple of the Norwegian scientist and explorer Fridtjof Nansen.

Gabrielle Walker meets Ola in East Greenland, where he looks supremely at home, having spent 50 years working with and living on Arctic sea ice. He was one of the first scientists to notice that the Arctic sea ice was starting to melt - a discovery that turned the attention of the world onto the fragile environment that he loves.

:blush: P

Edited August 14, 2006 by parmenides3

[John Cox]

Nite C and Pm3,

Must try and muster up some arctic thoughts next week when I am finished my hols.

Sprained my ankle today in my favourite green part of Ireland "Glendalough" whils trying to take some photos. Silly me.

[parmenides3]

Nite C and Pm3,

Must try and muster up some arctic thoughts next week when I am finished my hols.

Sprained my ankle today in my favourite green part of Ireland "Glendalough" whils trying to take some photos. Silly me.

Bad luck! enjoy the hol. I remember Donegal, back in '78...

P

[carinthian]

Nite C and Pm3,

Must try and muster up some arctic thoughts next week when I am finished my hols.

Sprained my ankle today in my favourite green part of Ireland "Glendalough" whils trying to take some photos. Silly me.

Bedtime for me john. Lost at dominoes tonight playing for the local pub team. Too many spots and a few pints.

Anyway, a day nearer to our winter feast !

Cheers

c

[parmenides3]

Is it just me, or is this starting to sound like The Waltons?

Night, John-boy.

[oldsnowywizard]

Interesting that if you look on the cyrosphere site, there is a graph which shows ice extent for the different seasons..http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seasonal.extent.updated.jpg In winter it would appear sea ice extent dont really vary too much over the last 100 years or so... i know, iknow, someone will say "well thats beacause it was hard to check levels until today" in any case it looks like something must have happened from 1950, as levels in spring, summer and autumn seem to start nose diving. Any thoughts on this? what happened in the 1950s? was it volcanic erruptions? did the sun get hotter? is it a delayed feedback from the days of "gor blimey govner"?

also from cyrosphere it looks like there is quite a chunk of sea ice around the antarctic..is there more this year? i couldnt find a suitable chart..

[Bottesford]

Isn't the Antarctic gaining rather than loosing ice?

Wonder how the Antartic climate affects our climate. I heard that the Antarctic is fairly self contained and has relatively limited influence on global climate- could be wrong though.

[parmenides3]

There is certainly a greater loss of sea-ice extent in the Spring and Summer than in the Winter, but the long-term Winter trend is also downwards. The loss is probably less because of the amount of compensating precipitation (snow) in the different seasons.

The Arctic was warm in the 1930s-'40s, cooled in the '50s-'60s, and has been in a warm phase since. Although seasonal and interannual variations are high - we can have odd cold and warm seaons and years - there is a stronger multi-decadal pattern which sets the trend for a number of years overall. The shift in the graphs are a reflection of an ongoing warming phase since the '50s, which has almost certainly been exaggerated/accelerated by Global Warming.

Two sites you might find useful, of which the second shows current anomalies in both hemispheres, if you look for the sea ice index link:

http://polar.ncep.noaa.gov/seaice/Analyses.html

http://nsidc.org/sotc/ for a general overview of the cryosphere

hope that helps.

P

Edited August 15, 2006 by parmenides3

[BLAST FROM THE PAST]

The shift in the graphs are a reflection of an ongoing warming phase since the '50s, which has almost certainly been exaggerated/accelerated by Global Warming.

P

Almost certainly? Interesting use of words and I for one would say it is open to question. The 1930s spell was a warmer period than now, the temp increase from the 1880s was steeper than of recent times...YET we have more apparent ice melt/loss now.

BFTP

Edited August 15, 2006 by BLAST FROM THE PAST

[summer blizzard]

The shift in the graphs are a reflection of an ongoing warming phase since the '50s

In association with the Gliessenburg Warm Phase.

While i do not want to get into a debate about global warming, from 1954 to the current day we have been in a Gliessenburg Warm Phase.

[parmenides3]

As we are discussing these issues on another strand, interesting as they are, perhaps it would be better to keep this one 'pure', e.g., stick to discussions of the state of Arctic sea-ice and Carinthian's excellent analyses. Are you happy with that?

P

[carinthian]

Couple of things

This year was supposed to be THE HURRICANE SEASON, worse than ever...... :blink: Carinth, I am focusing my thoughts and observations now on this cold pool you mention and look forward to updates. I think that a 'shift' occurred winter 04/05 and that this is a longterm shift in pattern.

What is this 6th winter feature you mention Carinth?

P3 A northerly jet, well in summer for heat and stability we want it way north as any depression gets sent up there and we get warmth from the south. Winter that brings murk and very mild, for cold/snow we need southerly jet.

BFTP

Hi BFTP,

"The 6th Winter " pure sci--fiction fantasy " ?

A book by Douglas Orgill and Dr John Gribbon which I read on publication way back in 1979 . This story is about the return of the ice age. A must read for climatology.. stunning !

A bit like the " Day after tomorrow " scienario- when ice ages happened rather suddenly in which the ice age cometh quite fast.. not as fast as the day after tomorrow but after "six winters "obviously..in which the albido effect of 6 consecutive severe winters caused so much reflection of solar energy that the cooling tipping point is reached with massive jet stream turbulance and formation of severe cold vortex that spreads out from Northern Siberia.

Pure fiction maybe, but the last ice age 15,000 years ago, sporned very quickly .

Food for thought.

C

[Guest Mike W]

But wasn't later in the late 80's that they realised that alot of the cooling we had in those days was down to anthropogenic emmisions of SO2 which reflected alot of incoming solar rradiation and soot which blocked a fair amount of sunlight aswell which made the increase in CO2 look atrifically slow when it would have otherwise been very quick increasse very much like we have now as a result of the clean air laws which steadly became stricter on these cooling emmisions, while no warming emmisons were added to the act, hence the speed up in CO2 levels.

[kold weather]

Intresting to note everyone we have a decent sized -10C lobe at 850hpa in the Artic circle:

http://www.wetterzentrale.de/archive/2006/...00220060815.png

Now while I know this will have no impact on the upcoming winter its still intresting to look back and compare and this is by far the coldest air in that region of the world in at least 6 years. it's even more intresting to see GFS establishing a polar vortex over the same area as the cold air is now which may well allow even more cold air to build up. What this may mean is that any northerly flow we get in September may have more bite then normal, granted you'd only be looking at a frost at best but nonetheless its a good start.

Edited August 15, 2006 by kold weather

[kippure]

Intresting to note e veryone we have a decent sized -10C lobe at 850hpa in the Artic circle:

http://www.wetterzentrale.de/archive/2006/...00220060815.png

Now while i know this will have no impact on the upcoming winter buts intresting to look back and compare and this is by far the coldest air in that region of the world in at least 6 years. it's even more intresting to see GFS establishing a polar vortex over the same area as the cold air is now which may well allow even more cold air to build up. What this may mean is that any northerly flow we get in September may have more bite then normal, granted you'd only be looking at a frost at best but nonetheless its a good start.

I like the way your thinking :blink:

[Anti-Mild]

Intresting to note e veryone we have a decent sized -10C lobe at 850hpa in the Artic circle:

http://www.wetterzentrale.de/archive/2006/...00220060815.png

Now while i know this will have no impact on the upcoming winter buts intresting to look back and compare and this is by far the coldest air in that region of the world in at least 6 years. it's even more intresting to see GFS establishing a polar vortex over the same area as the cold air is now which may well allow even more cold air to build up. What this may mean is that any northerly flow we get in September may have more bite then normal, granted you'd only be looking at a frost at best but nonetheless its a good start.

I noticed this as well KW. I also believe that the developing cold pool is a bit further east than it has been in recent years :blink: !

[parmenides3]

Intresting to note everyone we have a decent sized -10C lobe at 850hpa in the Artic circle:

http://www.wetterzentrale.de/archive/2006/...00220060815.png

Now while I know this will have no impact on the upcoming winter its still intresting to look back and compare and this is by far the coldest air in that region of the world in at least 6 years. it's even more intresting to see GFS establishing a polar vortex over the same area as the cold air is now which may well allow even more cold air to build up. What this may mean is that any northerly flow we get in September may have more bite then normal, granted you'd only be looking at a frost at best but nonetheless its a good start.

I was looking at the Wz temps run earlier, and they show down to 0C over N. Canada at first, then an extended period of cold over Siberia, for the next week or two. Carinthian will correct me if I am wrong, but I am sure he said that we need to be looking more at the conditions below 80N to see possible impacts for us.

:blink: P

[kold weather]

Indeed the cold pool is somewhat to the east of recent years, seems to me that this cold pool may be a little more solid then the ones of recent years.

The reason I believe this is that in recent years any cold pool has formed over Greenland in response to high pressure forming (Remember how we brew up our own cold HP cell during early Feb this year, its the same process.) however once the jet comes through that region its all gone.

This cold pool seems to have been triggered by a strong polar vortex forming in that region and this will not be shifted quite so easily, and even if it is shfited a new one may well just readily form in a similar place to sustain the cold pool.

This probably going to lead into a quicker ice-up of the eastern half of the Artic this year which is what we want in Europe though a lot of things can change between now and then but if anyone wants a reminder of a good polar vortex over the eastern half of the Artic is like in winter, take a look at this chart and Russia and note just how much cold air is displaced:

http://www.wetterzentrale.de/archive/2006/...00220060119.png

Damn we came close to another 91/87 then.

Edited August 15, 2006 by kold weather

[kippure]

Heres a webcam of the barrow sea. Nice visiual aid to watching the sea ice re-form. :blink:

Click here