Post by Dr. Ryan N. Maue
Throughout history, the term Russian Winter has come to explain the multitude of military failures of various invading forces into European Russia. The effects of weather and short-term climate on warfare has been recognized and studied for generations. One such campaign involved Napoleon’s march across western Russia toward Moscow in 1812. Yet, with what records survive, the winter of 1812-1813 was apparently relatively mild. Move ahead to the winter of 2010-2011, which has been relatively mild over most of Eastern Europe and Western Russia, including Moscow where the cold blasts have been short-lived. However, during this week and the next ten-days, a brutal Arctic blast is poised to engulf Scandinavia and Eastern Europe, and become even colder as it pushes eastward — crossing the Urals through Russia — beneath a powerful dome of high pressure. Daily temperature anomalies will range from 15° to 35°C below normal, which is already very cold in February. In familiar Fahrenheit: Moscow will likely see near -30°F with surrounding areas -40° to -50°F. Eastward in Central Russia and Siberia during the next several days, temperatures will likely test the -60°F range. Elsewhere, the ECMWF deterministic model is predicting a total of 5-tropical cyclones in the Southern Hemisphere during the next 10-days with a powerful one impacting parched Western Australia and another monster in the South Pacific passing just west of Fiji.
Maps Follow…
Link to Global Temperature Anomalies, every 6-hours for the next 192 hours…
A plot of the 8-day averaged Temperature Anomalies from the United States NCEP GFS forecast model shows a very large area of purple over Western Russia in the 15°-20°C below climatology range. Overall, the global temperature anomaly of -0.16°C remains below the previous 30-year mean as the planet cooling effects of La Nina have finally settled in. This is quite the difference to last February when the global anomaly was nearly +0.4°C.
What’s the forecast coldest temperature that each locale on Earth can expect during the next 7.5 days? Well, the coldest temps should reach into the -60°s especially over Siberia and Greenland. But, the zero degree °F shading which is the transition from light purple to green, shows that almost all of Northern Hemisphere landmasses north of 45°N will see sub-zero temperatures sometime during the next week. The grayish shading is -30°F and below.
Note, these maps update every 6-hours as the NCEP GFS model generates a new forecast cycle. Save to disk if you wish to keep them…
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And, this is the obligatory comment describing the forecast of Russia’s worst winter in 1,000 years…
http://rt.com/news/prime-time/coldest-winter-emergency-measures/
Before month end, GISS will either show this month as .4 degrees warmer than average or declare that the record cold is consistent with their AGW forecasts.
Ryan Maue says: February 15, 2011 at 12:29 am
“And, this is the obligatory comment describing the forecast of Russia’s worst winter in 1,000 years…
http://rt.com/news/prime-time/coldest-winter-emergency-measures/“
Quote link: “The change is reportedly connected with the speed of the Gulf Stream,”
These kinds of reports belong to the alien abduction and Elvis spottings.
If the mythical “Gulf stream” affected anyone, it would be us in Scotland – particularly us on the West coast of Scotland. Yes we had a really nice spell of snow in December, but otherwise this winter has been pretty typical.
And in any case they aren’t talking about the “Gulf stream” which is the current coming out the Gulf of Mexico. They can’t be talking about the North Atlantic drift which is driven by winds and the spin of the earth and so has nothing to do with “global warming”. What they are talking about is the couple of orders of magnitude smaller Arctic current which takes a small amount of warm water north of the Shetland-Iceland line. But again, no reports to my knowledge suggest unusual cold on the East of Scotland.
The winter of 1812 was indeed not the cause of Napoleans demise,but the effects of a prior summer heat,malaria and typhus.
eg Charles Minards wonderful graph.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Minard.png
Laki 1783-1784 produced similar climatology as 2010-2011 ie extreme summer t and cold winters eg Thordarson and Self 2003
http://www.agu.org/journals/ABS/2003/2001JD002042.shtml
Both the BBC and Met Office categorically state that the Gulf Stream is not slowing down so it must be true.
This makes me think of a song from Mark Knopfler — Google Knopfler Berlin ‘done with Bonaparte’ Oddly enough the little corporal reminds me of someone, and I bet there are a few scientists around the world, especially East Anglia, who would join in the chorus.
JF
I can see the picture now: ‘Mann’s Retreat from Moscow’.) And, BTW, ‘decimated’ means cut down by ten percent – one in ten killed — but Napoleon did much better than that. It’s always been a mystery to me that people still admire the little lunatic.
Expect to hear “it would have been colder if it was not for global warming” or “the cold in Russia is caused by global warming” and I am not kidding either.
I thought the Gulf Stream was found to have speeded up a little.
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2010/2010GL042372.shtml
And they tell us the science is settled. Bollocks!
Aha – yet another piece of evidence of global warming….
And, this is the obligatory comment describing the forecast of Russia’s worst winter in 1,000 years…
http://rt.com/news/prime-time/coldest-winter-emergency-measures/
While the Russians were preparing for the cold the west was implementing global warming policies. I wonder if the roads, airports and other services will stop in Russia like they did in the west!
But, the zero degree °F shading which is the transition from light purple to green, shows that almost all of Northern Hemisphere landmasses north of 45°N will see sub-zero temperatures sometime during the next week.
As a European, could someone in the US explain to me what they mean by a “sub-zero temperature”? Most of the world takes this to mean freezing, but I get the impression that the term is ambiguous for native Fahrenheit speakers.
The long range forecast (not Met Office) for where I live in the UK has cold arriving in 9 days time on 24th Feb. Is this cold expected to reach western Europe?
And nobody even bothered to invade Russia in 2010. Such a good freeze is going to waste. 🙁
The Gulf Stream and North Atlantic Drift may not be slowing down, but the origination point around Florida and the Gulf of Mexico is nowhere near as warm as normal. There was quite a hard frost in Central Florida yesterday.
http://weather.unisys.com/archive/sst/sst_anom-110213.gif
Ryan,
Have you noticed the media is still under reporting the brutally cold winter we have had so far?
When climate science strictly focuses on temperatrure to the exclusion of physical evidence, they are going to be in for a rude awakening.
I have currently been looking into another area missed by climate science in focused lensing of the atmosphere with the sun.
[ryanm: the media has not been told by the climate establishment how to blame cold Arctic high pressure on climate change, yet]
Here in Sweden and the other Nordic countries we have a nice cold spell right now.
Temperatures below or close to -40 C last two nights in north Sweden and i guess Norway, Finland and Russia had the same.
http://www.thelocal.se/32046/20110215/
I have been noticing this strange weather/climate phenomenon: Temperatures crashing to record lows in many places around the globe, no record warmth anywhere registered, (except maybe where no thermometers exist) BUT the global average temperature keeps rising. Are we living in two overlapping universes or what?
Joe Lalonde says: February 15, 2011 at 3:11 am
The quite extreme December weather in the UK was described on the BBC the other day as a “cold snap”.
And they weren’t joking.
They obviously think their audience has the memory span of a fruit fly.
Steeptown says:
February 15, 2011 at 2:08 am
The long range forecast (not Met Office) for where I live in the UK has cold arriving in 9 days time on 24th Feb. Is this cold expected to reach western Europe?
The UK is western Europe.
They actually keep falling.
http://climexp.knmi.nl/data/ihadcrut3_gl_2002:2011a.png
http://www.coaps.fsu.edu/~maue/jra25/global_temperature_anomalies.jpg
‘Parched Western Australia’?
Recent months have been unusually wet across most of Western Australia.
As this 3 month rainfall anomaly map shows.
http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/awap/rain/index.jsp?colour=colour&time=latest&step=0&map=anomaly&period=3month&area=nat
Note the central interior and down toward the south coast showing dry on the above map has had heavy rains in the last week.
As the month to date rainfall shows
http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/awap/rain/index.jsp?colour=colour&time=latest&step=0&map=anomaly&period=cmonth&area=nat
Note rainfall measurements are very sparse in the Western Australian interior, with stations as much as 500 kilometers apart, so the maps show quite a lot of extrapolation.
No implied criticism here Dr Maue. Just be cautious of the memes peddled by the media and vested interests.
The ECMWF seems to regularly overpredict tropical cyclogenesis :/
steveta_uk
0 degrees Fahrenheit = -17.8 degrees Celsius
It’s OK – the media in New Zealand has already declared February to be the hottest month ever (notwithstanding that it’s only half way through).
Maybe it’s Trenberth’s missing heat (he is from NZ) compensating for the entire Northern Hemisphere.
All the best.
“almost all of Northern Hemisphere landmasses north of 45°N will see sub-zero temperatures sometime during the next week.”
Winnipeg colder than Oklahoma City? Well, guess I’d better enjoy 40F today. Getting a new super-duper furnace this AM. Not before time.
cold everywhere but global temperature rising:
welcome to the world of nakedly faked data.