Record cold expected.
The Al Gore effect as well as the testimony on Capitol Hill yesterday has caused a massive chunk of Arctic air to descend from Western Canada into the United States. How do temperatures 6o-70F degrees below average sound to folks along the Canadian border? During the next 10-days (or more!), a hemispheric realignment of the large-scale atmospheric circulation will cause a significant decrease in temperatures over North America and Europe. If this regime reinforces itself during the next few weeks, and a negative Arctic Oscillation phase strengthens, the brutally cold temperatures will provide a dramatic reminder that winter is cold regardless of “global warming”. I anticipate plenty of fossil fuel use coming up.
Weather weenie discussion after the break w/maps
With strong anti-cyclones developing over the North Pacific and North Atlantic at the same time, a highly amplified pattern is developing over the Northern Hemisphere. At the permeable barrier separating the troposphere and stratosphere lies the tropopause. On the tropopause, which is often identified by a constant potential vorticity (PV) surface of 2-PV units, one can plot the potential temperature (Θ) to identify upper-level synoptic phenomena such as the jet stream, Rossby-wave breaking, anticyclones, and cut-off lows. From these so-called “dynamic-tropopause” maps, it is relatively easy to see what’s going on.
The warmer potential temperatures ( Θ ) on the tropopause mean it is higher in the atmosphere since Θ increases with height, unlike regular temperature which decreases through the troposphere (before increasing in stratosphere due to ozone absorption of UV). Thus, tropical and subtropical origin air has much higher dynamic tropopause Θ than the Arctic vortex air which is signified by the gray and purple colors on the map above. Often the difference is well over 100-120 degrees Kelvin.
The sharp gradients of dynamic tropopause Θ are typically where the planet’s jet streams are located. During the 180-hour forecast period, the subtropical jet stream is easily identified over the central United States in conjunction with a powerful storm system. The counter-clockwise turning of the Θ represents cyclonic circulations while the opposite, clockwise circulations are associated with anti-cyclonic circulations or ridges.
The flow for the next week comes straight out of the Arctic over North America. Temperatures will easily sink below zero in many places and a hard freeze is likely for a lot of the US. Europe does not escape the bitter onslaught, either. I provide a couple maps below from my FSU website that show the temperatures for the next 180-hours, and the deviations from climatology.
All of this discussion is on the synoptic scale or days to a week time scale. Forecasts longer than this are not particularly skillful, so it is not clear how the La Nina will evolve over the next month. Furthermore, no two La Ninas act the same so averaging together previous events is not particularly skillful either. Main point: the atmosphere rarely matches the “mean state”. Perhaps Heidi Cullen can explain it better than I — after all she was on the Weather Channel.
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Too bad it isn’t a dry cold. However, at least the snow blanket will protect the ground a bit. If it gets much lower, especially in the daytime, freezing pipes are not the only concern. Frozen sewer pipes are much worse to deal with.
I guess I am a little slow being now classified as a senior citizen. What is all this fuss about. It is winter people and we that live in the north are missing our snow and cold. It is not that cold, I mean the polar bears in Hudson Bay, poor things, don’t even have ice to go out on. This arctic air mass, often called an Alberta Clipper, why I have no idea, is now giving Calgary its first real snow of the winter. About time I say. Had those cross country skies ready to go for weeks now. Anyway this is how I remember it from my youth. You know when I trudged through Wisconsin snow, waist deep all way to and from school, up hill in both directions mind you.
Lets hear it for temperatures about – 20 C is best for flooding the ice skating rink you know.
All this cold just in time for Cancun where the temps will hover around 80 degrees F (27 d celcius) and showers for the next 2 weeks. As the eco elite wine and dine their way to global warming bureaucracy heaven most of the world will freeze.
Time to fire up the ice auger and go after those 14 inch perch
Winter is Coming.
Cant wait for it to hit the great divide…
It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas….
Yarmy says:
November 18, 2010 at 1:40 pm
What’s the prognosis for the UK? Meteogroup and Accuweather seem to be forecasting central Europe to bear the brunt, but Blighty will be spared.
Yes, also Bastardi thinks south and central Europe will get it worst – but we in the north-west will be spared any extreme cold, and I think he means the long term winter forecast, not just the coming week:
http://www.accuweather.com/video/677466324001/hey-europe-the-arctic-hound-is-getting-ready-to-howl.asp?channel=vbbastaj
That said winter has already started in Scotland; we’ve had hard frosts in October and November, various roads have been blocked with snow a few times, and the Cairngorm ski centre opened a month earlier than normal.
Benjamin P. says:
November 18, 2010 at 3:21 pm
“This just in: It gets cold in in the northern latitudes in the winter months.”
Try telling the warmistas that – they are in denial.
So, we’re going to have an arctic outbreak, eh? BFD. The 8-14 day has above normal temps (11/26 out…) for the northwest and below normal for the northeast and southeast. But 40 below normal? Here in the NW where we get it first, temps look to be about 20 below normal, but this is nothing weird for this time of year. Weather happens.
Fascinating presentation, Ryan. Thank you. Keep up the good work.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Just a little south, like Vancouver, WA and all that cold would scoot right past and give you a miss. It’ll all be gone by T-day from the looks of it on weather.com, but weatherunderground seems to think it’ll linger about that long. No record breaking forecast for MT yet.
Bulldust send some heat over sydney we have ad the heater on all day with the power bills going up because of our carbon tax we know some people who have fired up the old wood fire and cooking outside on a wood fire .and it feels good to go back to the old days thanks too our greeny govt
Oh dear, a cold winter. I have already put a heating unit in my birdbath to keep the water liquid in the coldest part of winter. An important consideration for those of you who love birds. If all is ice the birds cannot drink. I am frantically trying to figure out a way to keep a warm area around my birdfeeder so the seed doesn’t freeze together stopping the birds from feeding.
And these fools go to Cancun. They would be better off taking care of the birds in their backyard.
Ski hills from Whistler to Banff are opening early with good winter snow storms and the freezing level already at the mountain base … if you want to go skiing at 20 below C … But it will warm to close to the freezing level by late next week.
In a gratuitous self-plug and temporally displaced fashion (for you gals and guys in the US at least) I shall don my “Bulldust” shirt and head to my local (Aussie) pub to celebrate this anniversary of the dubbing of ClimateGate:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/19/breaking-news-story-hadley-cru-has-apparently-been-hacked-hundreds-of-files-released/
Bulldust says: November 19, 2009 at 3:52 pm
“Hmmm how long before this is dubbed ClimateGate?”
I can’t believe it has only been a year, but what a year! Cause for celebration I think.
I nearly died laughing as I was scrolling down the main page and the pic came up
hahahahahahahahhahahaha
Argh… mean temperatures of the last 30 days where I live are already 1.1 C below the “normal” (of the relatively cold 1961-90 period….), and the next two weeks we seem to get at least 5 C below normal.
“Often the difference is well over 100-120 degrees Kelvin.”
I know I’m being pedantic – this is a science article, after all – but ‘degrees’ has not been used with the Kelvin temperature scale for decades. Thus, 100-200 kelvin (lowercase ‘k’).
See http://www.bipm.org/en/si/si_brochure/chapter2/2-1/kelvin.html for details.
And on the anniversary of the “stolen” CRU e-mails, here in Sydney, Aus, it’s STILL a cool end to late spring. Dec 1st, fist day of summer, apparently, but (As I predicted last summer) it will be cool again. I am liking the lack of flying bugs however. But this coolness is being reported as normal weather, onshore winds etc etc blah blah blah, soon as there is a “hot” day, it’ll be proof of AGW, CAGW, CC and/or CD. Well, we now know what Cancun is all about. So weather it be, cold, hot, wet, dry, snowy, rainy…won’t matter. The real fix is in.
hi guys
I am picking up the 4×4 next week, bought in anticiaption of the cold a coming (thanks to all on this website as I took note of their predictions and prepared for the winter, logs and coal are also in), thing is I haven’t got it yet, oh well, will pick up said Yeti after a long drive up North next week. ideal conditions to test it out, hurrah.
Ryan!
How good is your computer graphic interface into looking at past hourly data, could you assemble subsequent hourly patterns of past data back as far as 1979?
If you took these maps and sequenced them into a movie with each frame one every hourly map until you had 27.32 days, then tile a second coordinated 27.32 day set to the right of the first until the progression is back to the start of the cycle again, keep adding tiled stacks so you can view the maps that are in phase by the North to South declination of the moon. You should be able after four set after starting the fifth tile it should look much like the first as the whole lot changes in synchrony every hourly maps simultaneous progression.
The other way to visualize the same effects to be to superimpose a small white circle, upon the maps as they progress in a single stack (instead of multiples) centered on the long/lat of the overhead position of the moon, so the movement of the tidal effects could be visually understood. You should be able to observe the atmospheric tidal bulges following the daily advance in the hourly position as well as the longer 27.32 day declinational effects.
The moon crossed the Equator on the 16th and is now in the end of what I call a western Canadian cycle, this Alberta clipper should become a shift to the pacific air mass invasion regime at Maximum North LD on the 23rd.
If you could produce the same format of lunar circle viewing of periods of tornado or hurricane production, the resultant interactive drive and storm generation should be easily seen, no fudged data, just a clear picture of reality. If you could derive such a movie from stored data it will teach you a lot about storm genesis timing and impact strength, if you look at the same pattern 6558 days earlier, those two shifting frames should be almost twins.
What I wouldn’t do to have access to data and programs to view what I wanted in the formats I would like to present, to see the QBO just add a yellow circle for the spot the sun is on the zenith. 28 cycles of the 27.32 day declinational pattern, when the lunar phase and the declination syncs up again ~765 days.
You will be able to watch the shifts in the trade winds as the phase shift between them changes the drive harmonics over the 18.6 year pattern, the PDO as the declination plays with the winds in the lee of the Himalaya mountain obstructions, that splits the zonal flow across the Pacific that allows the trades to come and go in the partial vacuum driven by the lunar tides interactions giving rise to the SOI and ENSO effects. These patterns will be modified by the interactions of the outer planets, including them in the process will help to define their parts in the tornado, hurricane, and typhoon cyclonic genesis.
Just thinking out loud, if you get a chance to look I would be interested what you thought………
Richard Holle
[ryanm: daily gridded atmospheric fields do exist, and are easily analyzed using the GrADS software…]
I think this winter will be very mild in the Europe!
James Sexton says:
November 18, 2010 at 1:35 pm
Kinda makes me whimsically wish the warmistas were right. I hate the cold!
I know it was said in jest, but seriously: NEVER wish for that. I’d exchange the current tyranny for an ice age ANY day (and no, I don’t underestimate the power of an ice age).
AGW, ACC, CAGW….
Every time I manage to memorise the acronym and what it means, the b….dy warmistas just change the thing and I have to start all over again and with my low intelligence, lack of memory and brain cell depletion to the the rise of CO2, its very hard for me to understand and remember things.
It seems that the only anthropogenic change happening is in the acronyms themselves……it’s just catastrophic for me. What next? Any guesses?
Sth eastern Aus, cold! the days have been ok this week but the nights are well below the norm. I have never! had the fire lit after august before, but this year, I have, in Nov? in Aus..wow.