In the last month, the Arctic Oscillation Index (AO) has gone strongly negative. You can see that it headed to its negative peak right about the time the Copenhagen Climate Conference started, so it is no wonder that they ironically experienced cold and snow there. It is also a setup for the record snow and cold Canada and the USA has seen recently.
Source: NOAA Climate Predication Center Daily AO Index
With this change happening, the setup for an increased Arctic Sea Ice Maximum is enhanced this year, likely to happen sometime around March 1st, 2010.
NSIDC has an interesting writeup and graphic on the AO:
From NSIDC:
The Arctic Oscillation refers to opposing atmospheric pressure patterns in northern middle and high latitudes.
The oscillation exhibits a “negative phase” with relatively high pressure over the polar region and low pressure at midlatitudes (about 45 degrees North), and a “positive phase” in which the pattern is reversed. In the positive phase, higher pressure at midlatitudes drives ocean storms farther north, and changes in the circulation pattern bring wetter weather to Alaska, Scotland and Scandinavia, as well as drier conditions to the western United States and the Mediterranean. In the positive phase, frigid winter air does not extend as far into the middle of North America as it would during the negative phase of the oscillation. This keeps much of the United States east of the Rocky Mountains warmer than normal, but leaves Greenland and Newfoundland colder than usual. Weather patterns in the negative phase are in general “opposite” to those of the positive phase, as illustrated below.
Over most of the past century, the Arctic Oscillation alternated between its positive and negative phases. Starting in the 1970s, however, the oscillation has tended to stay in the positive phase, causing lower than normal arctic air pressure and higher than normal temperatures in much of the United States and northern Eurasia.
As we see in this graph below, we’ve seen more red (positive) than blue (negative) phases of the AO in the last 30–40 years. Whether this is short period negative excursion or the start of a longer trend is unknown.
Source: NOAA Climate Prediction Center
There are other indicators recently of a flip in patterns, notable is the Pacific Decadal Oscillation which changed last year, but we also see the North Atlantic Oscillation in a negative phase as well. Whether it will remain negative or not we’ll soon know, but note that it has been negative the majority of time since August 31st.
Source: NOAA Climate Prediction Center
Since 2000, it has seen a fair amount of negative time also:
Source: NOAA Climate Prediction Center
The climate change seems to be changing now.
h/t to Werner Weber
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Thanks Pamela. Couldn’t find the interrelationship when searching Arctic Oscillator and huricanes.
That diagram above is great, you can see and feel the increased westward pressure when in positive mode. We all know the huricane tracks will always be somewhat chaotic. But as you said, this increased pressure would tend to straighten their path to the west, more or less aiming them more toward the gulf and away from the Atlantic as they curve to the north. But just a tendency. In negative mode the decreased pressure would let them wander. Make sense?
The french carbon tax is roughly compensated for by some tax cuts according to this article:
http://www.ansamed.info/en/top/ME12.XAM20003.html
Germany – where i live – has a similar tax, colloquially called Ökosteuer (eco tax) as an extra tax on fuel for several years now. And some more shackles on the economy.
http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/20091217/climate-change-cost-me-look-germany-tax-cop15.htm
For Americans this must all seem pretty horrendous.
JonesII (06:47:55) :
“vukcevic (06:16:13) : I was asking for an interpretation from you of this big hot spot in the middle of southern seas:
http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sst_anom.gif
Any guesses if you put it on your magnetic field charts?”
Nothing magnetic, just a simple hydrodynamics. The ‘hot spots’ are created at a convergence of two currents of different salinity over a plunge in the ocean floor. As currents move their strength and direction the ‘hot spots’ appear, gain in strength and eventually disappear. Here is a good graphic explanation of the Iceland-Greenland one (which I was following during last month or so):
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/OCM.gif
Eve,
“Step 6: Radiative forcing x climate sensitivity is a significant number
. . . . . We can estimate this independently using the changes in ocean heat content over the last decade or so (roughly equal to the current radiative imbalance). . . ”
Here is what they projected consistent with OHC and their global warming theory.
GISS PROJECTED GLOBAL OCEAN HEAT ACCUMULATION
2003 ~10.532*10**22 Joules
2004 ~11.512*10**22 Joules
2005 ~12.492*10**22 Joules
2006 ~13.472*10**22 Joules
2007 ~14.452*10**22 Joules
2008 ~15.432*10**22 Joules
2009 ~16.412*10**22 Joules
According to Pielke and also the Argos Bouys, there has been no increase in OHC (ocean heat content) in the last 10 years.
The observations reported in Lyman et al indicate
“We observe a net loss of 3.2 (± 1.1) X 10**22 J of heat from the upper ocean between 2003 and 2005.” [3.2 X 10**22 Joules = 0.32 X 10 **23 Joules]
There were no net increases whatsoever. And it can’t possibly happen short of a planetary catastrophe in the next two years.
Eve, here is the link to show the graph comparing GISS predictions against observed data.
http://i33.tinypic.com/5d6rg4.png
stephen richards (12:05:27) :
Ron
Is that right? 2009 12 -0.99900E+34
Dec 2009 -0.999 to the power of +34
No. . . . they use that annotation when the results are not yet complete. There are 3 more days of data to collect for December 2009.
geo (20:05:53): asks about natural variability …
It’s was a tough nut, geo. After years of painstaking research I have finally discovered the answer. Remarkably, the answer is exactly the same as Al Gore’s IQ ………………… 42.
DirkH (12:33:11) : What is silly is to cut emissions, like oneself emissions: We all exhale CO2 and that’s impossible to cut. So I am in favour of paying anything as long as they stop meddling in our private lives to sell us stupid gadgets like windmills, eco-electricity from conveniently transformed eco-cows’ farting or their new-age-post-modern-leftist-ideologies.
That’s the deal!
radun (12:35:00) : Thanks for the explanation. It is good to stir waters once in a while ☺. However, following the socratic mayeutic method I must ask: are those currents above caused by winds?…and those winds, as the pacific counter clockwise anticyclone, caused by what? and so on…
Since december is now all but over, and the anomoly calculations are now days away. I have read all of the weather is not climate articles this month as I have for as long as Mr Watts has been printing them. The anomoly for december will be no less than +0.5. This month will also be proclaimed to be within the top 10 warmest since the surface of the earth was molten 4.5 billion years ago. The warmth will mostly come from high anomolies from places where people don’t live such as siberia, antarctica, and austrailia.
geo (20:05:53) :
“Would this be a good thread to note that “natural variation” as an explanation is something I still find unsatisfying, even if accurate? To me, it still is just hiding another deeper level of detailed processes that we still don’t understand.”
Outside the IPCC cabal of climate scientists, a small group of people do understand what drives of weather/climate system – deterministic chaos. This means that looking for simple linear processes and using linear statistical measures gives us no insight into what is going on now, or what will happen in the future. At best it can give us knowledge about climate history, but that’s not much use to political policy makers.
We do not have sufficient knowledge yet about how the total system operates. Only by doing pure research on this hard problem will progress be made, but currently it seems the powers that be want CO2 to be accepted as the only driver of change.
Science is about facts, and producing rules which lead the way to discovery. The CAGW hypothesis provides none of these, and the measured results continuously profound and falsify this ludicrous theory.
It is possible we will understand this one day, but I don’t think it will happen in our lifetimes.
JonesII (13:31:30) :
“radun (12:35:00) : Thanks for the explanation. It is good to stir waters once in a while ☺. However, following the socratic mayeutic method I must ask: are those currents above caused by winds?…and those winds, as the pacific counter clockwise anticyclone, caused by what? and so on…”
My knowledge of matters of the concern is limited one, or to paraphrase one of the greatest exponents of the western diplomacy, from the early years of this century:
Currents? they are ‘known knowns’; caused by winds? these are ‘known unknowns’ ; counter clockwise anticyclones? these, to myself, are unknown unknowns.
I whish you a HNY.
I was interested to read that among the places ‘where people don’t live’ was my own country/continentof Australia. I wonder what everybody has been doing here for the past 60,000 years the place has had people?
JeffK (06:07:06) ” http://sd-www.jhuapl.edu/TIMED/WWW/science/meetings/2005_SWG_04_12/General_Science/Mayr_SolarCycle.pdf “
article: “QBO is driven by waves, and solar cycle “modifies” QBO from above like steering an ocean liner.”
Effective translation (into laymanese).
article: “Quasi-decadal oscillations, generated internally by QBO, may interfere with or aid SC effect.”
I’m not so sure they are “internal”.
Speculation:
(11.86630899*164.888325)/(164.888325-11.86630899)=12.78649873
(12.78649873*2)/(12.78649873-2)=2.370833957
Factor of 2 relates to symmetry/asymmetry.
http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/QBOperiod.PNG
http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/QBO_fGLAAM_fLOD.png
Maybe 2 & 2.5 are (usual) bounds determined by integer effects. I suggest everyone see pp.23-25 – stimulating …even if they are wrong.
article: “Monkey Wrench
Beat periods between 9 and 11 years generated by QBO interacting with:
–Annual oscillation (AO): 12 months, hemispherically anti-symmetric
–Semi-annual oscillation (SAO): 6 months, hemisphericallysymmetric like QBO”
Clarification for readers: AO in this WUWT article refers to Arctic Oscillation, but AO in JeffK’s link refers to Annual Oscillation.
Related:
http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/I_IOD_Period.PNG
(IOD = Indian Ocean Dipole)
http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/CumuSumAO70.png
1948+ QBO series:
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/data/correlation/qbo.data
Arthur Glass (07:57:46) “Could someone sit me down and explain, patiently and slowly, the basics of Atmospheric Angular Momentum? My spiritual serenity would be greatly torqued.”
In one word: WIND.
(“How windy it is globally” is a longer translation into laymanese.)
http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/CumuSumGLAAM.png
http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/CumuSumPDO(76,88,98).png
Btw: Accumulated QBO shows same pattern when window-integrated with bandwidth determined by:
http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/QBOperiod.PNG
tallbloke (05:13:38) “The sea normally warms the land in winter by giving heat to the air which then passes over land, but because the trade winds are weak, and the air is less humid, this isn’t helping as much as before, and the interiors of the N.H. continents are getting mighty cold.”
Are you suggesting the giant stir-stick is
taking a vacation? [ :
Tenuc (13:46:34) “deterministic chaos […] […] simple linear […] no insight into […] future. […] It is possible we will understand this one day, but I don’t think it will happen in our lifetimes.”
It’s not all chaos. Once the conditioning is understood, look at what Piers Corbyn is doing, for one example.
Eventually we may be left with chaos after we have exhausted conditioning, but we have TONS upon tons upon tons of work left on that front, so operational optimism is more-than warranted (…particularly if we can pry the funding floodgate-controls away from the distortion-artists!)
“Considering the above-discussed characteristics and importance of the wave forcing, which controls the equatorial oscillations, we shall delineate for diagnostic purposes the NCEP data in terms of their hemispherically symmetric and anti-symmetric components. For this purpose, the data (D) at a particular (and the same) latitude in the northern (n) and southern (s) hemispheres, Dn, Ds, respectively are split up into the symmetric (S) and anti-symmetric (A) elements by computing respectively DS = (Dn + Ds)/2 and DAn = (Dn – Ds)/2, DAs = (Ds – Dn)/2. The original data in the two hemispheres are then reproduced by the addition of the symmetric and antisymmetric components, i.e., Dn = DS + DAn and Ds = DS + DAs. As discussed above, DS would then describe primarily the QBO and SA0 that characterize the nearly symmetric atmospheric oscillations around the equator, while DAn = – DAs would represent to fust order the dominant 12-month A0 with opposite phase in the two hemispheres.
Employing different data samples, the hemispherically symmetric and anti-symmetric components are spectrally analyzed to describe the AO, QBO and long-term variations. The important spectral features are then synthesized to reveal, for comparison, the different oscillations embedded in the data.” (Mayr et al. 2007a&b)
“Solar Cycle influence at high latitudes originates around the equator, where wave interactions amplify the effect.” “Possible Monkey Wrench: Quasi-decadal Oscillations with beat periods 5 to 12 years generated by QBO interacting with seasonal variations –to interfere with or aid Solar Cycle effect.” “Constant 10-year solar cycle, with maximum during solstice, synchronizes solar variability and seasonal variations.” (Mayr et al. 2006)
Blue sky (08:06:29) [re: Juraj V. (02:32:16)] on Europe “I think our climate is driven by AMO and sometimes influenced by ENSO.”
The interannual component of AMO very often relates to the rate of change of ENSO. The phase-relations aren’t always tight, but they are categorically not random.
I was able to locate an AO plot showing the actual points below (-4) going back to 1899
http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/daily_ao_index/ao.mrf.gif
and using an eyeball of the plot on the right and came up with an arithmetic average for a December AO of 3.04 with two days to go which would make it the all time low AOI reading going back to 1899 with the previous being December 1935 of 2.73.
Here is the AOI plot for 1899 to 2002.
http://jisao.washington.edu/ao/#analyses
Stephan (23:46:31) : “Timothy Also this ice extent probably more reliable as it updated daily AMSR/CT takes their time and might do some adjusting to suit AGW agenda who knows? Note since October 1 most ice extent data not reliable probably been adjusted down to suit the agenda but even with this they cannot prevent showing that ice will (probably) go ‘over’ anomaly”
Not exactly. Since September, much heat has been transferred to the Arctic from North America, China, and Europe, driving temperatures down in the NH, but keeping Arctic temperatures “high” (i.e., 5 to 10°C above “normal.”) This has suppressed the Arctic freeze-up, but has also resulted in some extra heat lost to space. Between increased albedo, the lowered NH temperatures, and that extra heat loss, we should see a long, harsh winter with many broken records.
Wayne, makes perfect sense. Don’t know if that is the answer but it’s a damn good hypothesis with a proposed mechanism.
The Austrailia crack was just a joke, I love the land of the Tim-Tam
Ron (17:44:08) “AO plot showing the […] below (-4) […] http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/daily_ao_index/ao.mrf.gif “
Thanks for the link. Other interesting stuff in that directory:
Vertical AO structure:
http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/daily_ao_index/hgt.aao_body.html
Noteworthy USA spatial correlations:
Temperature AO- FMA (February-March-April) :
http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/research_papers/ncep_cpc_atlas/8/figures/temp/FMA.temp.ao.gif
Temperature AO+&- DJF:
http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/research_papers/ncep_cpc_atlas/8/figures/temp/DJF.temp.ao.gif
Precipitation AO- ASO (Aug-Sep-Oct):
http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/research_papers/ncep_cpc_atlas/8/figures/precip/ASO.precip.ao.gif
Data:
Monthly AO 1950+:
Table:
http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/daily_ao_index/monthly.ao.index.b50.current.ascii.table
Column:
http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/daily_ao_index/monthly.ao.index.b50.current.ascii
Correction:
Vertical AO Structure:
http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/daily_ao_index/hgt_body.html
[The other link is for AAO (Antarctic).]
Monthly AO derived from SLP (1899-2002) (both raw & anomaly) via KNMI:
http://climexp.knmi.nl/selectindex.cgi?someone@somewhere
Paul Vaughan (16:27:07) :
Fascinating stuff, Paul, as always. Thank you.
I hope you teach classes. If you do, I would sign up for the course in no time.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Paul Vaughan “…so operational optimism is more-than warranted (…particularly if we can pry the funding floodgate-controls away from the distortion-artists!)”
YES. Let’s do it!!!
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Useful correlation maps here:
“Surface air temperature and precipitation variability characterized by the trends and regressions onto AO, PNA, ENSO, PDO, and G indices”:
http://jisao.washington.edu/analyses0500/
savethesharks (22:28:07) “YES. Let’s do it!!!”
Step one is to divert very large streams of sufficient, stable, secure public funding to Piers Corbyn & his team. When it becomes clear that the streams are unquestionably reliable, it will be safe for Dr. Corbyn to begin a phase of scientific benevolence. This will both stimulate & accelerate multiple natural variation research tracks.