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.
Six inches of snow overnight with winds building drifts across roadways here in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Cold too. My wife reoprted from Vancouver Island that they had the first snow of the season down on the lowlands, that’s almost unheard of for this time of year, at least in the last 30 years or so. Luckily for her, it will melt, here in Winnipeg, its just the start of a long cold winter, they don’t call it Winterpeg for nothing.
“How do temperatures 6o-70F degrees below average sound to folks along the Canadian border?”
As extreme cacophony, nails on the chalkboard. I see I should expect single digits +/- which would be some small number of weeks early.
Looks like the real shock is for points well south.
http://radar.weather.gov/Conus/full.php
Is it just me, or do a lot of the little events showing up on the above center on urban areas? Is it just ground clutter, or is it “UHI effect” precipitation?
Is it true that in Winnipeg you can watch your dog run away for three days?
It has to be ground clutter. They really center on radars, as can be seen by the artifact in Lake Michigan, if you needed proof.
– Emily Latella.
Dennis Nikols, P. Geol. says:
November 18, 2010 at 5:57 pm
The the ‘alberta clipper’ is not just the cold air although that does arrive with it. I believe it to be a secondary low which forms in the ‘warm’ sea off vancouver and deepens rapidly while pushing in_land at great speed. It travels along the isobars and therefore close to the jet stream. This combination can makes it a vicious storm. Relatively high sea temps, high humidity, with very low temps to the north of the perturbation and warm air to the south equals violence.
Dennis
In europe will call it a polar low and they can also be nasty affairs but not like the clipper; a sailing boat, of course, which rides on the wind just like the low pressure clipper.
So … winter is coming?
Love the tongue-in-cheek, especially the cause and effect.
“”””” Pete says:
November 19, 2010 at 2:58 am
“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’). “””””
I don’t know where you got that; BUT (k) is the standard symbol for “kilo” meaning 1,000 in the SI units system; and then (k) is also universally “Boltzmann’s Constant”.
And in the SI system of units all units that are proper names (of scientifically historic figures) use capital letters; and Kelvin most certainly is a proper name; and is also the accepted unit for Absolute Temperature. That is the Temperature in Kelvins, always refers to the Temperature relative to the absolute zero of Temperature; so there are NO degrees Kelvin.
Three degrees Kelvin other than being improper usage refers to a Temperature that is extremely cold; not to the amount that it may have warmed since sunrise this morning. Degrees celcius, are identical in magnitude to Kelvins, but have their zero point at 273.15 Kelvins. One Kelvin is 1/273.16 of the Triple point Temperature of water. (0.01 deg C).
No rotten baby ice at the Antarctic either
http://notrickszone.com/2010/11/19/antarctic-ice-explosion/
Well I see that the BIPM has gone totally nutz and demoted all the great scientists to just nouns.
I’m happy to use their units; even though I know as a good American that the “metric system” is just a communist plot to wreck America; but they can go to hell, before I will use lower case letters for the proper name scientific units.
Hey even the Germans have the good sense to put caps on all nouns. So now I’m going to get roasted and told that habit went away with the umlauts. Isn’t anything sacred any more.
To me it is just daft; and very typical of the French, to use the same unit for Boltzmann’s Constant as is used for Thermodynamic Temperature. So what are we supposed to do when they both occur in the same formula.
So now Planck’s Constant and Inductance are the same thing; simply wunnerful ! And femtoFarads is now simply ff
would this be a good time to watch “An Inconvienent Truth” we must be reminded that when it gets cold it isn’t really getting cold, the planet is getting warmer… remember?
Improve that photo shop by changing Al baby’s face to a GREENER one (and more convenient color).
I now consider my new thermal underwear purchase to be somewhat of an investment.
A taste of what’s to come in the following years ?
Time will tell.
Good luck to all AGW alarmists in trying to convince the masses that the earth is heating up whilst scraping the ice off of their windshields in unprecidented bitterly cold temps.
Somebody pass the popcorn.
This is gonna be good.
Great, wonderful, and all that jazz. On top of this inflation has been showing its ugly head so it could be a cold and expensive blast.
Wrong.
A cold event of this duration and magnitude cannot be happening. AGW and all that evil CO2 in the atmosphere, placed there by man’s irresponsible actions, is warming the winters.
The consensus of learned scientists say this.
Therefore, it is just not possible for an unusual cold event to occur – the CO2 is on guard against it. The little CO2 molecules bombard the Earth with tiny rays of heat energy, and those tiny rays make more water evaporate into the air, which absorb even more heat – this then warms the Earth like a blanket. Thus, extreme winter cold events will not happen. The science on all this is settled, as everyone knows.
Please. Disregard the evidence provided by your lying eyes.
Also, if you are exposed to the bitter cold, disregard the evidence provided by your lying skin. And hands. And toes. And nose. And ears. None of that is to be credited as true.
Have a short memory. Remember the warm and hot events, and all the heat waves, and notice the sea level rising and encroaching on the shore, and note the sudden drop in coastal property values. Remember that the science is settled, and climate scientists were exonerated from any wrongdoing.
The scientists have spoken. So be it.
Me? I’m believing my eyes and senses. We’re expecting FOUR FEET of snow this weekend at Lake Tahoe and surrounding areas. Normal for the entire month of November is 16 inches of snow (1914 – 2006 average) – per the Western Regional Climate Center – Desert Research Institute.
Roger Sowell said:
In AGW world 1 foot = 4 inches, so that’s OK then 🙂
Here’s one, from yesterday:
@roger Sowell — my friend in your area just posted on Facebook:
“INTENSE STORM DUMPS 1/2 FOOT OF SNOW IN 2 HOURS AT LAKE LEVEL.”
A ski day tomorrow for him, I assume. 🙂
The local weather channel is showing temps in Vanc. BC running 6-8°C (12°F) below normal for the next week. Snow on the ground; kind of nice, sometimes we go a whole winter without seeing any! And we know it will melt soon — it had better! Vanc. drivers are DEADLY on cold, snowy, or icy roads. Crazed killers …
Thanks for the heads up.
We got 2 cold fronts back-to-back here in NW Ca.
First one came from the Pacific Northwest. No big deal.
2nd one came from the Yukon (so they tell us) and the weather outside is blustery and downright bitter.
The dog doesn’t want to go outside.
Can’t blame her. I don’t either.
Northern Exposure says:
November 19, 2010 at 1:38 pm
Hey, that’s Anthropogenic Global Catastrophe that you’re scraping off the window.
It’s the backfiring from the GoreCruiser that you gotta watch out for.
@ur momisugly Nelly Bly
Here’s a site with webcams of several Lake Tahoe skiiing venues, also Yosemite Valley, showing the snow’s progress.
http://rntl.net/tahoecam.htm
Throw another chair leg on the fire Mother.
Wow. This prediction is laughably wrong.
Low temps in Washington DC today (Nov 22) were predicted in the illustration to be the mid 20’s F. Last night’s low was 42, Tonights is supposed to be 52.
Low Temps in Bozeman Montana were -11 last night, predicted 7 tonight, whereas the illustration predicts -15 F or below.
For Boise Idaho, the map says a low of under 10 F today. Yesterdays’ low? 30, tonight’s predicted? 32.
Just as accurate as the sea ice prediction from August. That is to say, not at all.
Ryan Maue: the map you are looking at is apparently too complicated. See ur next comment…
REPLY: Yep sort of like those Higgs Boson predictions that never materialized, but forecasts require patience. You really should have a look at this forecast:
Source: http://www.weather.gov/forecasts/graphical/sectors/
Quite a bit of cold covering the nation there. Oh and don’t forget where the official temp for Washington DC is taken is UHI compromised, have a look at surrounding stations.