Deniers can no longer claim Climate science is a subject restricted to east and west coastal elites. It has become today’s news in the Heartland.
A new study is one of several that have received wide attention, questioning the effect climate change has on the circulation patterns that we expect to create our “normal” weather. According to this paper, lower ice cover in certain regions of the Arctic “preferentially induces a negative phase of Arctic Oscillation at the surface, resulting in low temperatures in mid-latitudes.”
Above, Dr. Ricky Rood, formerly of NASA, now at the University of Michigan, addressed this “Arctic Oscillation” for me earlier in the year.
What many of us in North America have noticed this summer, is that last winter’s atmospheric configuration, cool east, – hot, dry west, has recurred and persisted thru recent months. Weather wonks, weigh in.
On the heels of one July polar invasion, yet another major cooldown is here to wrap up July.
A large southward dip in the jet stream, also known as a trough, pumped in cool air from Canada into much of the central and eastern U.S. High temperatures were more than 20 degrees below average for this time of year in some areas, and most of the region saw at least one or two days with temperatures 5 to 10 degrees below average — a noticeable difference at a time of year when many of us spend the most time outdoors.
What was notable about this cooldown is not just the fact that it took place in mid-summer, but that it resulted from a pattern that seemed to be frequently repeating.
The same jet stream pattern this week showed up not only in mid-July, but during much of the January-June time frame as well. As a result, much of the country east of the Rockies was much cooler than average for the first half of 2014, while the West was unusually warm.
Remember the polar vortex, the term some used last winter to mean the huge mass of Arctic air that can plunge much of the U.S. into the deep freeze? You might have to get used to it
A new study says that as the world gets warmer, parts of North America, Europe and Asia could see more frequent and stronger visits of that cold air.
Researchers said that’s because of shrinkage in ice in the seas off Russia.
Less ice would let more energy go from the ocean into the air, and that would weaken the atmospheric forces that usually keep cold air trapped in the Arctic.
Normally, the polar vortex is penned in the Arctic. But at times it escapes and wanders south, bringing with it a bit of Arctic super chill.
That can happen for several reasons, and the new study suggests that one of them occurs when ice in northern seas shrinks, leaving more water uncovered.
Normally, sea ice keeps heat energy from escaping the ocean and entering the atmosphere. When there’s less ice, more energy gets into the atmosphere and weakens the jet stream, the high-altitude river of air that usually keeps Arctic air from wandering south, said study co-author Jin-Ho Yoon of the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Wash. So the cold air escapes instead.
That happened relatively infrequently in the 1990s, but since 2000 it has happened nearly every year, according to a study published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications
A team of scientists from South Korea and United States found that many such cold outbreaks happened a few months after unusually low sea ice levels in the Barents and Kara seas, off Russia.
The study observed historical data and then conducted computer simulations. Both approaches showed the same strong link between shrinking sea ice and cold outbreaks, according to lead author Baek-Min Kim, a research scientist at the Korea Polar Research Institute. A large portion of sea ice melting is driven by man-made climate change from the burning of fossil fuels, Kim wrote in an email.
Sea ice in the Arctic usually hits its low mark in September and that’s the crucial time point in terms of this study, said Mark Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado. Levels reached a record low in 2012 and are slightly up this year, but only temporarily, with minimum ice extent still about 40 percent below 1970s levels, he said.
Yoon said that although his study focused on shrinking sea ice, something else was evidently responsible for last year’s chilly visit from the polar vortex.
In the study, published Tuesday in Nature Communications, scientists from South Korea and United States found that many such cold outbreaks happened a few months after unusually low sea ice levels off Russia. The study saw the same link using historical data and computer simulations, according to lead author Baek-Min Kim of the Korea Polar Research Institute. Sea ice in the Arctic reached a record low in 2012; it’s slightly up this year.
In the past several years, many studies have looked at the accelerated warming in the Arctic and whether it is connected to extreme weather farther south, from heatwaves to Superstorm Sandy. This Arctic-extremes connection is “cutting edge” science that is hotly debated by mainstream climate scientists, Serreze said. Scientists are meeting this week in Seattle to look at the issue even more closely.
Kevin Trenberth, climate analysis chief at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, is skeptical about such connections and said he doesn’t agree with Yoon’s study. His research points more to the Pacific than the Arctic for changes in the jet stream and polar vortex behavior, and he said Yoon’s study puts too much stock in an unusual 2012.
But the study was praised by several other scientists who said it does more than show that sea ice melt affects worldwide weather, but demonstrates how it happens, with a specific mechanism.
Katharine Hayhoe, a Texas Tech climate scientist in Lubbock, said the study “provides important insight into the cascading nature of the effects human activities are having on the planet.”
Below, my take on the California drought – and it’s mirror image – the Polar Vortex that froze the US east last winter. A similar pattern of cool east and hot/dry west and northwest has persisted thru the summer. The video explores reasons why.
If you have not seen this, do take the time now.
There is only three tiny problems with this story filled with junk science. The Arctic ice when the polar cold came down was back to average and as of this August was well above average for this time of year. It has been low for several years and no polar cold in the years before that. The other tiny problem is this same weather pattern occurred in the past, nobody was claiming the end of the world than only normal weather variation. Finally, the idea the world is warming is not what the science says. The IPCC admits the world climate has not warmed since 1998. A recent study out in july notes the claimed warming trend in the troposphere lower and mid has not occurred in 55 years. NOAA temperature graph shows a slight downward trend in the US average since 1998 and that the highest temperature since 1895 in the US was in 1936, 78 years ago four years before the hiatus in warming stopped for forty years. Apparently lies and distortions are normal to the eco freaks looking for our money in the form of carbon taxes even if CO2 level changes in the past 800000 years never caused a climate change.
Wow, mbe11, your post is like a denialist sampler. Pity it’s all rubbish. The Arctic sea ice area (SIA) did not return to average values this summer, in fact the Arctic SIA hasn’t been average or above since 2004, according to Cryosphere Today (http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere), and is currently more than 1M km2 below average.
Second, whether this sort of ridging has occurred in the past is irrelevant to the question of whether today’s weather is the result of our dumping gigatons of GHGs into the atmosphere. You’d have to deny the entire body of science underlying AGW to believe that there aren’t consequences to our using the atmosphere as a sewer. The polar vortex is just one.
And finally, the Earth has warmed and continues to warm. Did you miss the news from the Koch-funded BEST project that we’ve recorded about 0.8C in global warming since record keeping began? Or the news that 2014 is on track to be one of the globally warmest years ever? It is very entertaining that you tried to use short-term regional weather here in the US to refute AGW when the point of this post is that AGW is the cause of the short-term weather we’ve been seeing.
So every point in your post is either incorrect or a logical fallacy. Bravo!
H-e-e-e-‘s b–a-a-a-c-k! Mobeeleven the denier troll. Ignore his BS.
Wow indeed!
No prizes to readers for guessing where you get your ‘information’ from. But maybe YOU could be on for one for the highest level of myths and junk in one post. It’s certainly impressive.
“…The Sea ice extent in August 2014 averaged 6.22 million square kilometers (2.40 million square miles). This is 1.00 million square kilometers (386,000 square miles) below the 1981 to 2010 August average…”
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
This is from The National Snow and Ice Data Centre – arguably the best source for Artic ice information in the world – it is updated daily via data from state-of-the-art satellites and is freely available 24 hours a day every day of the year to anyone with a computer and an internet connection
This means you.
Instead you choose to allow yourself to be duped by David Rose, a third rate denialist op-ed hack and proven serial liar who works for one of Murdochs worst tabloids, the UK Daily Mail and who is the orginator of this absurdist junk story about the ‘Arctic recovery’.
he pulled the same stunt last year and was roundly shredded by just about every Arctic expert there is – but of course he doesn’t give a damn about the truth or the science and he has simply regurgitated the same vacuous inanity again this year.
I don’t know which is the more tragic – that Rose gets away with printing this nonsense on the first place or that so many gullible dupes then parrot it on climate comments threads all over the net.
This means you.
The Arctic has lost over 70% of its Ice Volume since 1979. This is a simple observable measurable fact.
If you would like to see just how much the Arctic ice recovered in 2013 (2014 looks likely to be about the same – the melt season isn’t even over yet) then spend 30 seconds of your time watching this video.
Then come back, confirm that you’ve watched it and then tell us that the Arctic is ‘above average’ again.
The rest of your litany of parrotted ‘climate change denial for beginers’ rubbish isn’t worth my time.
If my understanding is correct, the increased “wandering” of the jet stream is due in part to the fact that the difference in temperature between the polar regions and the tropics is being reduced by AGW. The main driver of the winds on Earth (and indeed, most planets) is this temperature difference. Taking this principal to its extremes, if the poles and the equator had the same air temperatures, there would hardly be any wind on the planet.
We can look elsewhere in the solar system to see how this might play out…
Venus, which has a severe greenhouse effect: the polar regions of Venus and the equatorial regions show almost no difference in temperature. Consequently, down on the surface of Venus, there is hardly any wind. There ARE severe winds higher up in the atmosphere, where the greenhouse is much reduced and air temperatures between the poles and the equator are very different.
There is also hardly any difference in temperatures between the night side of Venus and the day side, despite the fact that a Venusian day is 243 Earth days.
Mars has a very thin atmosphere and very little greenhouse effect. Consequently, we see huge differences in temperatures between the poles and the equator, and the night side vs the day side. And not surprisingly, it’s a very windy place, with dust storms that sometimes envelop the entire planet.
Getting back to Earth: If more AGW means less wind, one consequence of this is that it could be bad news for wind power. That might only be a problem in the very long term, but it’s one more thing to think about in this complex topic.
See just how much the Arctic Ice recovered in 2013 here.
My apologies to the 99% of people who have already seen the above video – just thought mbe11 could do with learning a few basic facts.
Well – a LOT of basic facts really.
That’s a good video for mobeeleven to watch. Here’s another that’s a bit longer but more dramatic (and with a great sound track)
http://youtu.be/qUO23Y179pU
HAC-Robust Trend Comparisons Among Climate Series With Possible Level Shifts.” It was published in Environmetrics, July 2014, go look up that study. If correct all your models are bogus including all the conclusion that come from those models. If you go to NOAA and click on the seasonal ice low measurement you can see where the average comes from and the current and past ice measurements. All else is bogus at worst or mistaken.
The comments below are copied over from the concurrent thread on Anthony Watts. They are pertinent here also. M Fellion is wasting our time with nonsense. “Go look up that study and IF IT’S CORRECT yada-yada”? WHAT? And YET ANOTHER non sequitur—-The “HAC etc” study has NOTHING to do with ice measurements. Either M Fellion is a fool or he takes us to be fools. IMO, he should be given a one-way ticket to the land where Stonehead and daveburton dwell.
greenman3610 Says: September 6, 2014 at 3:01 pm
the history of climate denier’s citation of “studies” suggests that, unless you are providing a link to the actual paper, we can safely assume that you have not read it, would not understand it if you had, do not know what it says, but instead are cutting and pasting a bogus “reference” you found at a denialist website.
simply asserting something does not make it so.
We’re all ready to discuss here, but you have to cite something real and checkable.
dumboldguy Says: September 6, 2014 at 4:15 pm
Peter’s first paragraph says it all. I’ve looked at the “actual paper”, and it is the work of (guess who?) Ross McKitrick—-and another economist cum amateur climate scientist named Tim Vogelsang. They seem to claim that errors made in documenting temperatures in the tropical troposphere as measured by weather balloons over 55 years pretty much invalidate the ENTIRE body of evidence for AGW.
It’s “checkable” but doesn’t appear to be very “real”. It’s probably easier to look at McIntyre’s recap on climateaudit and Watts’ on WUWT—-they are both actually “guest columns” by McKitrick—just google McKitrick-Vogelsang-McIntyre. Many citations to other bits of denier horsepucky are included.
And MF closes with yet ANOTHER non sequitur—-“While this study may be faulty unless that is shown the faulty people are the 97 percenters”, he says. Has he no shame? McKitrick, McIntyre, and Watts apparently don’t.
I posted a comment but it didn’t take. I suggest everyone take a look at what Peter and I had to say about this “study” and M Fellion’s foolishness on the concurrent Crock thread about Anthony Watts.
The “STUDY” MF mentions is about aie temperatures and weather balloons and has NOTHING to do with ice. This whole comment of MF’s is yet another non sequitur—–he wastes our time.
(“air”)