Note: I want to thank everyone who commented here and elsewhere regarding my last post about GISS that sent everyone into a tizzy. All that is very helpful. Here’s more on GISS and the AO. -Anthony
Effects of the Positive Phase | Effects of the Negative Phase
of the Arctic Oscillation of the Arctic Oscillation
(Figures courtesy of J. Wallace, University of Washington)
By Joseph D’Aleo, CCM
In a recent post to counter the snow and cold in the news that was spoiling the announcement by Dr. Hansen that it was the warmest year on record, NASA GISS authors note for November:
“Northern Europe had negative anomalies of more than 4C, while the Hudson Bay region of Canada had monthly mean anomalies greater than +10C. The extreme warmth in Northeast Canada is undoubtedly related to the fact that Hudson Bay was practically ice free. It is for this reason that some of the largest positive temperature anomalies on the planet occur in the Arctic Ocean as sea ice area has decreased in recent years.
The cold anomaly in Northern Europe in November has continued and strengthened in the first half of December. Combined with the unusual cold winter of 2009-2010 in Northern Hemisphere mid-latitudes, this regional cold spell has caused widespread commentary that global warming has ended. That is hardly the case.”
Bob Tisdale has relevant posts on Watts Up With That that here shows how NASA GISS removed Arctic and Southern Ocean sea surface temperature data and then used 1200km smoothing that uses land stations to refill in the data (resulting in a warming) and here how leftover warm water from a strong El Nino gets spun up into the Kuroshio-Oyashio Extension (KOE) where it continues to release heat to help explain why the ‘global warmth’ has persisted into the early stages of the current La Nina.
See in this Steve Goddard post here how Hansen blamed the cooling in recent years on La Nina but now has decided this El Nino warming is global greenhouse warming.
Even Kevin Trenberth, head of climate analysis at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, admitted here: “We have seen rapid warming recently, but it is an example of natural variation that is associated with changes in the Pacific rather than climate change.”
We have shown how NASA and the other data centers have mined the data for warmth and manipulated the data – new and old – to enhance the apparent warming. This includes a cooling (up to a quarter degree or more celsius) of the pesky warm period from the 1920s to 1950s right up to 1980. This includes the NASA GISS base period for anomalies of 1951 to 1980. Numerous data issues post 1980 have exaggerated the warmth.
The warming NASA remarked about this fall in northeast Canada and Hudson Bay is part of the very strong negative arctic oscillation pattern we have seen the last few years, in part related to the long solar minimum and high latitude volcanoes.
The positive AO state is characterized by an anomalously strong polar vortex that traps cold air in high latitude and more zonal mid-latitude jet stream that allows maritime Pacific air to invade North America and Atlantic air to flood Europe often as far east as the Urals. In the negative mode, high pressure dominates the polar region and North Atlantic, shunting arctic air south in North America and Siberian air west to Western Europe.
The greenhouse models all predict an increase in the frequency and strength of the positive arctic oscillation in time, most (2/3rds) exceeding the 90% range of natural variability.
A positive AO would lead to increasing temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere continents with colder than normal air trapped in the arctic down to the northern parts of Canada and Hudson Bay. The following from Mitchell shows the warmth over Eurasia.
Last winter saw the most negative AO of the record back to 1950.
The global anomalies with a negative winter AO are as follows:
See how well that verified this past winter. No GHG need apply.
As noted, the North Atlantic Oscillation, an important component of the overall arctic oscillation varies with the ocean temperature tripole in the Atlantic, known as the AMO or Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation. When the Atlantic is in the warm positive AMO mode as is currently the case, the NAO and AO tend to be more negative.
When the AMO is positive with warm water in the North Atlantic and in the Tropical Atlantic, the NAO was mainly negative (1960s). When the North and Tropical Atlantic turned cold in the 1980s, the NAO was mainly positive (data in chart above through 1999). Note the AMO flipped positive (warm) in 1995 with a big dip in the NAO. See the inverse relationship with the AO in the graph below. Data for both is averaged for the December through March periods and standardized.
So far this late fall, the AO has been mainly negative and forecast by the model ensembles overnight to reach 5 standard deviations negative the next few days.
This explains not only the brutal cold in Europe and Asia but also the amazing 11F negative anomalies in the southeastern United States.
PDF of this report here.
“It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas, Everywhere I go.”
As so many people have said before “nature will do as it please” and now Trentbreth finally admits it, Joe Romm will blow a gasket for sure!
Yeah it is.
Check out the latest scientific discussion from the Raleigh NWS:
“The very cold Arctic air mass in place over our region is a rare
occurrence this early in the winter season. The winter weather event
expected later tonight and Thursday will also be a rare event. It is
rare to have average temperatures running 10.1 degrees below normal
for an extended period of time – even for the first two weeks of
December at Raleigh-Durham and Greensboro. This makes these first
two weeks of December the coldest ever at both sites.”
Wow. Coldest ever. Of course….that is only 120 or so years. So no big deal, right R Gates?
If it is no big deal on being the coldest “ever” then it is no big deal your stupid alarmist crap about the quote unquote long-term trends in the Arctic.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Shock: scientific colossus and visionary plays the Polar Bear card: …I ventured up to Hudson Bay in mid-November and saw the undernourished polar bears with their cubs…I actually saw climate change unfolding before my eyes. I wonder if the learned one (aka Michael E. Mann) managed to get to Hudson Bay without emitting the dreaded CO2 that is destroying the habitat of the beleaguered bears?
Doesn’t the AGW theory say the Arctic will warm and sea ice may disappear in time? But they also predict mainly positive AO for that period.
As Joe shows, a positive AO traps COLDER than normal air in the Arctic, hardly the stuff to melt ice.
This tells me the alarmist wags have no idea what makes the globes weather systems go around. Everything is based on one thing and one thing only, i.e. “CO2 is a GHG, we know since Arhenius that GHGs trap heat, therefore more CO2 must make the globe warmer.”
But as Joe humourously puts it, “Co2 need not apply.”
Hey Joe, the warm anomaly trapped around Nth West canada and Greenland due to the negative AO can’t stay too warm for too long even if the AO stays negative can it?
It looks very much like a big back door being left open in a house. All that warmth has to go somewhere, that somewhere has to be up. Especially since winter nights are so much longer than days, it looks to me like the planet has a back door left open and all that warmth that has accumulated during the latter half of 20thC is being funnelled straight out to space.
“SOMEBODY SHUT THAT *#&*$& BACK-DOOR!!!!!”
The last map shows Washington State a degree or two warmer for the first two weeks of December. True.
We had a cold blast in November but now the air is drifting in off of the Pacific (or not, depends on blocking and so on). We recently had a Pineapple Express dump loads of snow, then turn to rain, west side and mountains. East side of the Cascades missed the rain but it warmed up and the snow has settled from about 18 inches to 8 inches. Now colder and that remaining snow has frozen as a crunchy mass.
For the next week (to the 22nd) we seem to be more “climo” and getting slightly colder. With snow on the ground and a chance of flurries, we will have a white Christmas.
I like the location of the cold air into the upper mid-west and along the eastern states. I’ve lots of friends and relatives back that way but, hey, that’s their problem.
Lots of good information in this post. Thanks.
“When the Atlantic is in the warm positive AMO mode as is currently the case, the NAO and AO tend to be more negative.”
I do not see much correlation there. NAO runs in 40-year long sin wave cycle and AMO in 30 year cycle. NAO was mostly warm in 1920s and 1990s, AMO in 1940s and 2000s. Both were in cold phase during 1960-80.
http://notrickszone.com/2010/11/28/lesson-learned-predicting-the-european-climate-from-the-cet-record/
I looked up Hudson Bay on Cryosphere Today and it seems
to be on course to to be fully iced over by New Years day.
5 StDevs? Wow, did someone discover a new particle?
I do find these posts quite difficult to follow, I hope this is not foolish question. Do we know whether these types of weather patterns prevailed during the Dalton and Maunder minimums? Is it a possibilty that we are seeing the beginnings so of another long period of cold in Europe, another mini ice age?
I remember reading that the famines and mini ice age in the 1300s started with very wet summers in the UK, so wet the farmers could not harvest their crops. We had very wet summers here in the UK in 2008 and 2009, so wet that many farmers did not get their hay inside until September. If they had not had modern machinery it would have rotted in the fields.
“Northern Europe had negative anomalies of more than 4C, while the Hudson Bay region of Canada had monthly mean anomalies greater than +10C.
so negative anomalies get thrown out, and positive anomalies get double weight?
A second question. It seems that the team at WUWT are getting quite a good handle on the various ways the temperature data has been manipulated to show extra heat. Has anyone made a list of these methods, and which are the most notable?
“The last map shows Washington State a degree or two warmer for the first two weeks of December. True.”
We had a “Pineapple Express” last week and it looks like we have another one coming this weekend. The Sierras are going to get dumped on but it might be rain below 8000 ft.
Baa Humbug says: “…it looks to me like the planet has a back door left open and all that warmth that has accumulated during the latter half of 20thC is being funnelled straight out to space….”
Hmm. Uneven distribution of the blackbody temperature of the sky? Variations is same with lower solar activity?
how did the polar bears have cubs if they are undernourished?
last time i looked, Mother Nature has a tendency to suppress fertility when there is a shortage of food.
Well, that explains why we here in Buffalo are getting our butts buried in all this snow. The storms hit the east coast and do a u-turn and head on up into Canada, sending all that cold air on down to us and, more importantly, setting up all these persistent lake effect snow bands, all thanks to those slow spinning low pressure storms. And all we get from the on-air weather weenies is that there’s an unusual low pressure area stuck in Canada, spinning around and sending us all this bad weather. Or that it’s unusual for such a system to be headed westward. This is the sort of stuff they should know and be able to explain that we may see this mess continue for x number of days/weeks. Instead they keep acting surprised.
Time for a reminder:
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=6645
“How The Sun Could Control Global Temperatures”
Since initial publication and as a result of a lengthy exchange with solar specialist Dr. Leif Svalgaard I am inclined to the view that pinning the entire phenomenon on solar protons may be overly simplistic.
Nonetheless the creation of ozone depleting reaction products from a number of solar linked causes does, to me, seem likely to be the cause of cooling of the mesosphere and stratosphere when the sun is active (positive AO) and warming when the sun is quiet (negative AO) which would give the required reversed sign solar effect to support the propositions in my article.
To resolve the issue we need to await updated data concerning the temperature trends in mesosphere and stratosphere since 2007.
Stephen Wilde says:
December 15, 2010 at 10:57 pm
To resolve the issue we need to await updated data concerning the temperature trends in mesosphere and stratosphere since 2007.
If they’ve been warming, publication of that information will be delayed as long as possible. A cooling stratosphere is a central plank in the greenhouse theory.
tallbloke;
If they’ve been warming, publication of that information will be delayed as long as possible. A cooling stratosphere is a central plank in the greenhouse theory.>>
Wouldn’t they just adjust the theory to predict a warming stratosphere as a result of greenhouse gas instead? Seems so much simpler than adjusting the data to match the theory…
It occurs to me that strong, cold negative AO and NAO seem to push cold arctic air exactly where the centers of the glacial ice-shields on the european and northern american continents were during the past ice ages.
Pray it ain’t so yet again, folks – or the polar bears will be playing with their cups on the ice of a frozen Hudson River instead of Hudson Bay sooner than you think…
What a week to pick to work outside; -20C late yesterday according to the car temperature readout (SE Finland).
Typo under D’Aleo’s first graphic:
“it part related”
(Change to “in …”)
[An edit made it in. Thanks… bl57~mod]
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/ao21.jpg
The graph is interesting and the first I’ve seen comparing the GISS global pre-satellite, pre-adjustment and post-adjustment values.
However (as a layman) I think the star indicating the 2009 satellite value is a bit misleading, although there has been a distinct divergence between GISS and both satellite series.
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/mean:13/plot/gistemp/from:1979/mean:13/offset:-0.15/plot/uah/trend/plot/gistemp/from:1979/trend/offset:-0.21
I suspect that Hansen’s intention is to present a relatively smooth temperature increase, which is more consistent with a monotonic increasing CO2 forcing.
Let’s see where his craft takes him.
After all that, what’s the weather like?
All this “global warming” is freezing US to death…
Ohio lighthouse turned into an ice-house by cold weather.
Snow and ice have created an alien landscape around Lake Erie.
See the spectacular video –
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/weather/8205402/Ohio-lighthouse-turned-into-icehouse-by-cold-weather.html
RE: ZT says:
December 15, 2010 at 9:34 pm
Thanks for the link.
Interesting that the Center for Biological diversity release of Dec 14/15, the source of Dr Mann’s comment you provided, which calls for the Obama administration to increase the protection of polar bears, would choose to use Dr Mann’s observations about the plight of the polar bears – he observed apparently pining for winter ice on Hudson’s Bay – as a feature quote.
First because Dr Mann is a climate scientist, not a biologist.
Second because the bears Dr Mann observed on Hudsons Bay – Canadian as maple syrup – are hardly going to be helped by any designation the US gives to the polar bear.
Brutal cold to Europe?
We have only -20 C in northern Finland. 0 C in south. It is nothing. A mild winter day. Brutal cold is below -40 C. Then you have to use arctic diesel, wear hat inside a car, use long underwears, able to ski max 60 min, etc.
Last witer supposed to be cold. But the teperature was only two days below -40 C (just -41 C). The all time record is -52 C. We were nowhere near to it. This winter is going to be same. A colder that couple of last winters, but nothing compared that it used to be in 70’s and 80’s.
I wonder if Al Gore has Emergency food surpplies for the next ice age ?
“Julian in Wales says:
December 15, 2010 at 10:30 pm
Do we know whether these types of weather patterns prevailed during the Dalton and Maunder minimums? Is it a possibilty that we are seeing the beginnings of another long period of cold in Europe, another mini ice age? ”
There is lots of anecdotal evidence and reports from ships logs confirming that in earlier global cooling periods (when the sun was less active) the jets were generally more equatorward and/or more meridional in their movements. There are short term exceptions but I would put that down to oceanic modulation of the jet stream positions partly offsetting the solar effect on the polar vortices.
It was also the case but to a lesser degree in the mid 20th century cooling period which coincided with quieter solar cycle 20 and negative ocean cycles.
What happens next appears likely to depend on how long the solar quietness continues. It is a bit early to have reached the warming peak of the historical 1000 year cycle so this could be a temporary situation but we really do not know.
Whatever, the link between solar activity and the polar vortices is becoming more likely by the day. To break the link we would need to see a lengthy period of positive AO whilst the sun remains quiet and there is no strong El Nino or series of El Ninos pushing the jets poleward.
If there are any research funds available they should be directed at the region from stratopause upwards and the chemical reactions arising from changes in the density, speed and composition of the solar wind.
December 16, 2010 at 1:53 … Sorry Jussi… How disappointing… Don’t be too sure there
won’t be some places reaching -40C or -45C…after all -36,6C already in November in Nikkaluokta…How much in Finland…?? Greetings from across the Baltic de SL…
‘”Northern Europe had negative anomalies of more than 4C, while the Hudson Bay region of Canada had monthly mean anomalies greater than +10C.”‘
So essentially, as an example, going from -20° C to -10° C is considered to exclamation point and underscore “+10C”.
Looking at the images of today at ec.gc.ca more ‘an half of Hudson bay has frozen over already! No wonder those poor poor polar bears are starving with less and less open water.
I played with the Canadian Ice Service IceGraph and got these:
Historical accumulated ice trend’s down sloping.
http://tinyurl.com/2a2rh8p
But of course the historical ice coverage trend’s is up and up
http://tinyurl.com/26auxlm
And the historical weekly ice coverage i got this, where, apparently, not much ever happens.
http://tinyurl.com/2agxf6a
It seem to me that I know have enough “evidence” to write me a “scientific” paper laying out the “facts” that: Hudson Bay’s ice coverage is a no worry. Of course that is a only a maybe, but a really good trollified maybe, I could of course be completely wrong and Hudson Bay might be going down the drain, polar bears becoming extinct by 2020 and all that, but for a very hefty grant I could up the confidence interval and be more sure about what’s going on with that unnaturally warm polar bear pond.
If that doesn’t work I read that the whole region is going through a 60 cm uplift per 100 years, so, soon all that water might break the surrounding natural walls and flood the whole of north eastern Canada . . . by my calculation about 08:02 pm, 3 och may, 2031. Of course I don’t know this for sure, but just imagine that not only will the polar bears in that region, probably, drown, you wont have any children left to cry over the poor polar bears because, to not suffer the same horrible fate of rapidly thinning oxygen concentration, they, unlike stubborn you, will, according to my socioeconomic statistical analysis of your current situation, leave the threatened area with half the marriage by 2019 already.
But like I, almost said, nothing is sure but sure is as sure as feeling sure and for a hefty grant I could probably come up with other less doom and gloomy mights and maybes.
When the Atlantic is in the warm positive AMO mode as is currently the case, the NAO and AO tend to be more negative.
I am not sure this is rock solid. The AMO recently has lagged the PDO but eventually gets in line. 1970 saw both oceans at negative and the NAO was also the same and it was also the low point of the NAO, temperature and solar output.
The position of the blocking highs and what drives them is interesting. After all they are what control the atmospheric teleconnections. Looking at the position of the global static high pressure zones right now they are above the areas of highest SST. Does the warm water suck in the high pressure zones or is it the other way around?
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Wow. Coldest ever. Of course….that is only 120 or so years. So no big deal, right R Gates?
If it is no big deal on being the coldest “ever” then it is no big deal your stupid alarmist crap about the quote unquote long-term trends in the Arctic.
Don’t hold back, Chris, tell it how it is!!!!!!!!!
Reading post like these with NASA splashed all over them reminds me of being young and idolising NASA, it’s a shame when you lose your childhood innocence to be replaced by doubt and shame.
It’s a sad day for the little boy inside me who always wanted to fly to the moon with NASA.
It occurrs to me that the giant push to create new global governance built on the “crisis” of warming that MUST BE ADDRESSED NOW, before its too late, is a little too convenient to have been coincidental. It would appear we need to rethink the premise that correlation does not prove causation… in some cases, it just might. Perhaps, the cooling cycle was seen coming and the warmist social justice grant stooges had good reason to create a policy driving panic… the rationale for their enrichment was about to be stripped away… brings new meaning to the phrase “get it while it’s hot”!
An article from April, 2010; physicists saying the sun is causing cold winters in the UK and Europe, and that there will be more cold winters to come. Also, Mann is quoted as saying he knew the cold of 300 years ago and the warmth of 1000 years ago were due to solar variability. Delicious.
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/42298
I assume that the GISS boys and girls think they are so clever that no one else on earth can figure their chicanery out — Bad choice.
I think a better use of time would be to study the onset of the next glaciation period, as it is now past due. Things like, what triggers it? And what can humans do to cope.
Stephen Wilde says:
December 16, 2010 at 2:06 am
Hi Stephen, while agreeing with your general thrust, there are a couple of points you have made that bear more research.
What happens next appears likely to depend on how long the solar quietness continues. It is a bit early to have reached the warming peak of the historical 1000 year cycle so this could be a temporary situation but we really do not know.
I have researched solar activity over the Holocene and there does not appear to be a 1000 year cycle. But there might be a 4800 year cycle where the golden era’s like the LIA are repeated.
If there are any research funds available they should be directed at the region from stratopause upwards and the chemical reactions arising from changes in the density, speed and composition of the solar wind.
The solar wind is fickle and does not follow the solar cycle directly, it also does not really fluctuate all that much….I would be putting my money into EUV and the size of the ionosphere first.
Has anyone ever had the temerity to ask Hansen or Trenberth the following:
‘The Earth’s climate is clearly headed for an orgasm fairly soon. Do you think it will display the characteristics of a male one or a female one?’
I suspect the answer to that will determine whether the climate heads rapidly toward an ice age, gently back down to a 1970s mean or, if the opposite sex’ performance left something to be desired, a plateau followed by another bout of warming……
Both things are associated with wave-like oscillations you know……….
But it might get those two off their hobby horses and a bit more able to laugh at their own inconsistencies……….
Stephen, what about doing a guest post about it? My feeling is exactly the same, changes in cloud cover causing SST changes, resulting in shifts in air circulation do much sense.
Btw, MWP has been also explained as long-term persisting NAO.
http://climateaudit.org/2009/04/17/explaining-a-positive-nao/
Julian in Wales says:
December 15, 2010 at 10:30 pm
I do find these posts quite difficult to follow, I hope this is not foolish question. Do we know whether these types of weather patterns prevailed during the Dalton and Maunder minimums? Is it a possibilty that we are seeing the beginnings so of another long period of cold in Europe, another mini ice age?
I remember reading that the famines and mini ice age in the 1300s started with very wet summers in the UK, so wet the farmers could not harvest their crops. We had very wet summers here in the UK in 2008 and 2009, so wet that many farmers did not get their hay inside until September. If they had not had modern machinery it would have rotted in the fields.
Gareth says,
Indeed Julian as a smallholder I have also observed this change over the last few years and it’s similarity to mediaeval records. The main change appears to be these high pressure areas in the Winter, with constant low pressure in the summer. I suspect something is happening that none of us, warmist or skeptics predicted. Interesting to hear the cracks in the radio 4 news where one presenter suggested we need to get used to these low winter temperatures and re-purchase the snow ploughs that were scrapped on the basis of snow being a thing of the past. I would imagine Eddy Mayer took the employee to task for the comment and she is even now being “re-educated” in the cellars under Bush house, but even so it’s interesting to hear that journalists and presenters are breaking ranks on climate change.
Nadoleg Llawen!
( Merry Christmas to our non-Celtic friends)
A naive question: What does it make change the Arctic Oscillation?. Just because we can not go back to sleep without knowing the truth. A tag it is not enough.
This from NOAA http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/pdt/
“On This Day, December 16, In 1917, An Ice Jam Closed The Ohio River Between Warsaw, Kentucky And Rising Sun, Indiana. The Thirty Foot High Ice Jam Held For 58 Days, And Backed Up The River A Distance Of 100 Miles.”
I would bet that much of the same atmospheric conditions were in play in 1917 that are current right now. The placement of the ice dam certainly corresponds with the Arctic blast location. Except the Arctic blast probably started before December 16 and stayed around for a longer time. It will likely happen again since there is no reason to believe it would not. The conditions that lead to this kind of cold are clearly driven by natural forces much stronger than minute increases in CO2 atmospheric ppm. These kinds of atmospheric conditions have comparatively tremendous energetic power behind them than do the tiny affects of fractions of increases in ppm greenhouse gasses, and easily sweep aside such things. These large ice dams will happen again.
“Northern Europe had negative anomalies of more than 4C, while the Hudson Bay region of Canada had monthly mean anomalies greater than +10C. The extreme warmth in Northeast Canada is undoubtedly related to the fact that Hudson Bay was practically ice free. It is for this reason that some of the largest positive temperature anomalies on the planet occur in the Arctic Ocean as sea ice area has decreased in recent years.”
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/stormtracks/mstrack.shtml
Or it could be that changes in the AO, AMO, & NAO cause changes to weather patterns.
Julian in Wales and Stephen in England
You are interested in the mechanisms that drive climate change. Here is my viewpoint, an unconventional one because I am not a believer that CO2 makes one iota of difference to atmospheric temperature. I see the atmosphere as a very effective heat vent to energy that arrives at the surface having run the gauntlet of a ‘cloud zone’ of variable transparency.
Negative AO corresponds to strong surface atmospheric pressure in the Arctic and weak pressure in mid latitudes and about the equator. Some effects:
If a negative trend in the AO is sustained (it runs to a 60 year cycle from peak to peak, last peak in the 1940S and currently peaking again) , the stratosphere cools as a continual flow of nitrogen oxide from the mesosphere finds its way down through the funnel called the polar night jet or the ‘stratospheric vortex’ (as distinct from the polar front vortex at the surface) eroding stratospheric ozone. The Arctic has been on a trend for increasing atmospheric pressure in winter since the early 1990s.
If the AO goes positive for a week or two and the flow of nitrogen oxides from the mesosphere is curtailed, there is a build up in ozone in the interaction zone above 10hPa and the subsequent increase in pressure (fall in the AO) inevitably and very regularly causes rather spectacular ‘sudden stratospheric warmings’ of the sort experienced last February. When this ozone finds its way into the mid latitude troposphere (as it always does regardless of whether the warming is spectacular or not) cloud cover will disappear and the ocean will warm strongly all the way to the equator.
When the AO is persistently low (high polar pressure) the westerlies are weakened and the polar easterlies strengthened . The entire northern hemisphere will cool in winter, reversing the winter warming that has occurred since 1978. Places like the Napa Valley will be frosty like they were in the 1970’s. The stratosphere will cool because the flow of nitrogen oxides from the mesosphere will be continually strong. The troposphere will cool and cloud cover will increase.
And what causes this flux in polar pressure? Here is the kicker: The Dst index measures the strength of the electric currents in the atmosphere that are generated by the solar wind. The Dst index goes negative when the solar wind is active. The poles (both of them together) lose atmospheric mass as air is attracted towards the equator where the ‘ring current’ is to be found in the ionosphere.
A curious thing can be observed, namely this. When the sun is quiet the atmosphere is very compact. Neutrals and charged particles are more densely packed, more closely associated. In this circumstance a very small advance in the solar wind can cause a spectacular shift in atmospheric mass from the pole. This is the story that has unfolded each winter except that of February 2008 (the big La Nina year) since about 2007.
And one more thing: The poles are most susceptible to the solar wind in winter when surface atmospheric pressure is highest.
So, our mates the warmers are predicting an increase in climatic extremes in the future. Their prediction is right but their reasoning is wrong. Heaven help us!
If Canada gets frozen up solid in winter, we will see even more of these funny looking elk wondering around in our pastures here in NE Oregon.
http://www.wallowacountychieftain.com/main.asp?Search=1&ArticleID=22795&SectionID=5&SubSectionID=5&S=1
They have not lost temperatures but their “temper” 🙂
They Lied
Just read those reports singl-ing
And commingling too
All kinds of nasty weather
Warmist claims altogether untrue.
Outside the snow is falling
And warmists call it a coup
Come on, it’s only weather
But you know they’ll blame it on you.
All their yap, all their flap is just crap we know
Just look at the snow
We’re watching the polar ice caps grow.
All their yap, all their flap is just crap it’s planned
So they can demand
Our societies move ahead
much like Custer at his last stand.
Reports reviewed by cronies
And phony as phony can be
Warmists collude together to
Model bad weather you see.
Like a Tyrannosaurus
We’ll tell George Soros he’s through
We know it’s only weather
There’s no need to build an igloo.
The theory of AGW is in disarray
Once it’s shown that they were liars there’ll be hell to pay
We’ll be righting their wrongs til finally they’re forced to close up shop
At the the end of the day we’ll watch their theory flop.
Flop! Flop Flop!
There’ll be many consequences from the hue and cry
When alarmist cranks are forced to eat their humble pie
It’ll really be great to see them all shamed in the public eye
From the skeptic blogs springs these things
Now we want our damn Nobel Prize!
Courtesy of Don B
“Comparing the changes in English temperatures (which the researchers say are representative of European temperatures as a whole) with fluctuations in solar activity, the researchers found a strong correlation. Indeed, they say, winter temperatures are on average about a half degree centigrade lower when solar activity is low. Further analysis of the data allowed the team to conclude that the probability of the connection being a statistical fluke was less than 5%. ”
Courtesy of Pamela Gary,
“On This Day, December 16, In 1917, An Ice Jam Closed The Ohio River Between Warsaw, Kentucky And Rising Sun, Indiana. The Thirty Foot High Ice Jam Held For 58 Days, And Backed Up The River A Distance Of 100 Miles.”
That was a 100 year solar minimum.
In 1812 Napoleon had to back out of Russia and leave his grand army behind. That was a 200 year solar minimum
Weak sun, persistently high polar pressure, decline in ozone, colder stratosphere, middle and upper troposphere, more cloud cover, cool ocean, especially in winter. Weak Westerlies, heavy duty polar Easterlies.
In the southern hemisphere the flux in polar atmospheric pressure runs to a 100 year cycle which is currently hitting bottom. Weak vortex, warm stratosphere and upper troposphere disappearing cloud cover and warming seas. But this regime is already changing. Just watch the ozone hole grow as polar pressure begins to increase. In the south west of Western Australia we are already on a cooling trend over the last 10 years.
Erl Happ said:
“If a negative trend in the AO is sustained (it runs to a 60 year cycle from peak to peak, last peak in the 1940S and currently peaking again) , the stratosphere cools as a continual flow of nitrogen oxide from the mesosphere finds its way down through the funnel called the polar night jet or the ‘stratospheric vortex’ (as distinct from the polar front vortex at the surface) eroding stratospheric ozone.”
But Erl the, stratosphere cooled when the sun was more active and has stopped cooling while the sun is less active and may even be warming.
At the moment I can’t go with your view because I think one needs a warmer stratosphere to strengthen the polar high pressure systems and expand the polar air masses at the surface for a negative AO.
Also Joanna Haigh reports that from 2004 to 2007 whilst the sun was less active ozone declined below 45km but increased above 45km.
I think that when the sun is less active the reduction in ozone depletion above 45km allows ozone up there to increase whilst at the same time the creation of ozone below 45km declines. Yet despite the ozone reduction below 45km the stratosphere still warms which puts the upper level ozone destruction processes in net overall control.
An active sun increases ozone destruction above 45km whilst at the same time creation of ozone below 45km increases.
The level of 45km would therefore constitute the height at which the upper level ozone destruction processes take over from the lower level ozone creation processes.
Only that way can we get the stratospheric temperature trends right for the observed changes in pressure distribution in the troposphere.
Geoff Sharp says:
December 16, 2010 at 4:33 am
“Stephen Wilde says:
December 16, 2010 at 2:06 am
Hi Stephen, while agreeing with your general thrust, there are a couple of points you have made that bear more research.”
Thanks Geoff. I agree that there are points that need firming up or adjustment but I’m getting pretty confident about the general thrust. Alternative suggestions that fit observations are welcome.
It appears we are on track to have the coldest December on record here in the NC piedmont…
Dang Matt, you beat me to it!
erlhapp says: December 16, 2010 at 6:43 am
[…]
A curious thing can be observed, namely this. When the sun is quiet the atmosphere is very compact. Neutrals and charged particles are more densely packed, more closely associated. In this circumstance a very small advance in the solar wind can cause a spectacular shift in atmospheric mass from the pole. This is the story that has unfolded each winter except that of February 2008 (the big La Nina year) since about 2007.
And one more thing: The poles are most susceptible to the solar wind in winter when surface atmospheric pressure is highest.
Very interesting. I read in the past year or so the atmosphere has condensed ~125 miles. Looking at the AO and NAO Oscillations’ distribution of high and low pressure systems, positive vs. negative phases, it occurs to me that the negative phase high pressure zones contain more relative mass than the high pressure zones of the positive phase due to the difference in latitudinal temperature. Since the pressure systems would try to equalize, the high pressure flows to low, but would have more energy (mass) behind the flow in the negative phase.
Julian, Gareth
Central Washington State (just east of the Cascade Mtn.) is a major exporter of timothy hay to Pacific Rim destinations. This year the first cutting was accomplished without too much difficulty.
http://dailyrecordnews.com/news/article_8399af1c-6ffd-11df-820e-001cc4c002e0.html
The second cutting was a disaster in the Kittitas Valley where hay was burned in the field or used in gullies for erosion control. The problems were geographically wide-spread. The locals have the most modern equipment money can buy; none of which was any help.
https://www.fcsknowledgecenter.com/uploads/Hay_MktSnap_09-30-10.pdf
—————————————————————
High pressure: An often forgotten aspect of high pressure is that the air involved is coming down from near the tropopause (where it has sent heat outward) and, as it moves to a lower altitude it compacts — thereby having a rise in temperature. Why should we not expect a positive temperature anomaly where a persistent H.P. is established?
Anthony wrote, “I want to thank everyone who commented here and elsewhere regarding my last post about GISS that sent everyone into a tizzy.”
Yet another play on words.
Yet another play on words. [B. T.]
. . . my last post . . . [A. W.]
Oh, no!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_Scream.jpg
Thank you for the courteous and learned replies to my last question, in a way I was fishing for an answer to my hunch that the warmists are wanting it both ways. For instance the cold winter we are suffering now in the UK are from our local point of view very similar to 1947 -8 & 1962 -63 (the 1300s too) when we also had lots of snow. The warmists seem to be telling otherwise, the BBC and others seem to be telling us that the warmth is still there, it just has migrated to other areas, and they then point to their satellite data of heat over Greenland and the Eastern US. But in 1948 and 1962 and 1300 they did not have satellites to track the migrating warmth, so they pretend this year is different from historic cold years like 1962 and 1948.
My question is; Is it possible that the historic cold years, and even the mini ice age, were really warm years (but there were no satellites to see the warm air over Greenland and other oceans).
This may be of interest? It’s not quite on topic, but it does have a connection of sorts, I think.
Gulf Stream Temperature Anomaly
from the new Irish site:
http://www.irishweatheronline.com/2010/12/gulf-stream-temperature-anomaly.html
Something interesting has been happening in the waters of the North Atlantic since the end of the Hurricane Season on 30th November 2010, writes Anthony McEvoy.
The traditionally warm Gulf Stream appears to be cooling. Observations by NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) Satellites appear to show a rapidly developing salient of cool water expanding north eastwards from the Gulf of Mexico and a similar large bulge descending south westwards from Europe. This could be interfering with the development of the Azores High and weakening it. Thus affecting weather patterns over the north Atlantic.
More at
http://www.irishweatheronline.com/2010/12/gulf-stream-temperature-anomaly.html
Nothing will make climate scientists rethink their understanding of climate change more than the development of a persistant negative NAO. A persistent positive NAO has been postulated to be due to GHG forcing. The following JPL paper ties 88 year trends of Nile river water levels with auroral observations as a solar proxy back to 622 AD, much longer than sunspot observation.
They postulate a connection between the NAM and solar forcing from the stratosphere in the UV range that influences the sea level mode of the NAM, the NAO.
http://trs-new.jpl.nasa.gov/dspace/bitstream/2014/40231/1/06-1989.pdf
During higher solar activity positive NAM/NAO modes predominate and descending dry air results in less rain and eventually lower water levels for the Nile.
Arctic sea ice volume has also been correlated with the NAO modes.
http://psc.apl.washington.edu/zhang/IDAO/retro.html#Satellite_ice
I expect that the newly launched cryosat 2 satelite will confirm that sea ice volume is now building.
latest NAO values
http://ioc3.unesco.org/oopc/state_of_the_ocean/atm/nao.php
redc1c4
December 15, 2010 at 10:46 pm
how did the polar bears have cubs if they are undernourished?
last time i looked, Mother Nature has a tendency to suppress fertility when there is a shortage of food.
###
MM is a liar and a disgrace. He knows nothing about Polar Bears, probably did not see any and is making up stories. In mid Nov, any cubs he might have seen would have been about 1 yrear old, i.e. obnoxious, rambunctious pre-teens. There mothers would not be malnourished, though they might be a bit haggard looking from dealing with the kids all summer. Besides, the Hudson bay sub-population he is talking about is not even close to being natural. The only reason it exist at all is because of the near by human cities and their tasty garbage!
As far back as I can remember, most people around these parts have known El Nino winters bring more cold and snow than average. Here in northwest Alberta we’ve been colder than average for December and most of November. Here comes the snow.
GW alarmism is taking the common sense out of our conversations about weather. It seems they toss out everything we already know in favour of speculation. They keep throwing around the label, “extreme weather event” when this definition is necessarily subjective. After all, every single blizzard we have experienced in my town, since the beginning of the instrumental record, has been described by most as an “extreme” weather event. Our memory of the horrors seem to fade over time, until the next winter storm rolls into town. For every cold temp or snowfall record we break, there were hundreds of times we “nearly” broke them.
By classifying every weather event, hot or cold, drought or flood, as proof of climate change, alarmists alienate their followers. Fortunately, those who still possess common sense have not lost their objectivity.
European blocking anticyclones produce a surplus of cold winters months roughly every 50 years, according to Hubert Lamb. He referred to Easton’s winter index which showed the 1940s, 1880s, 1830s and 1780s fit fairly nicely.
The sequence was hidden during the climax phase of the LIA, but was picked up again in the 1490s, 1430s, 1400-9, 1370s, 1310-19, 1260s and 1210-19.
Just a punt, but it looks like a repeat of the early 1960s.
Thanks, Joe. I think I’m getting a handle on this AO / AMO thing. Being on the Pacific side I’ve tended to “glaze” when the word Atlantic leads a phrase… but seeing how this also has impacts on the West Coast of the USA, I think I’ll start watching it more…
It’s looking a bit like the arctic and antarctic circulations call the tune on everything else. Is there an inverse relationship between the AO and whatever the Antarctic equivalent might be? If a slowing AO lets the cold air hit the NH and a speeding up Antarctic circumpolar current sent more cold water up the coast of S.America (to make a cold Eastern Pacific) a lot of things would fit nicely…
I also note in passing that the Warmers seem to like using a “Static Scoring” while the reality is always a “Dynamic Scoring”. An example:
The Hudson Bay is used as an excuse for warmer Eastern Canada due to low ice. But it takes a couple of years after a cold cycle starts to cool the waters back to ‘freeze now’ temps. So one would expect a time lag in a dynamic scoring model. That time lag is ignored in the static view. The bay is talked about at though it is now, and always will be, warm and ice free. Yet we know it’s had a long period of warming, and is very massive. So we know it will slowly cool over years, leading to increasing ice levels (and thus, colder air temps). Just like the cold center (cold heart? 😉 of the Pacific right now will take a dozen years to drift up toward Alaska.
In the coolling cycle, the water lags.
It would be interesting to go back and look at, oh, 1970-1990 and see if we had a lagging of the water warming then, too. I seem to remember a boat load of “lake effect snow” in the early ’70s but then it dropped off. Now, suddenly, it’s back. As though during the warming phase the water was lagging in heat and could not evaporate enough. Now the water is overwarm, so evaporates a lot, as it cools back to ice making temperature.
Speculative at this point. But would be a nice little project to demonstrate how much dynamic scoring vs static scoring matters to interpreting the ‘narative’…
Whether or not 2010 turns out to be the warmest year on instrument record is completely unimportant. It will certainly be at least in the top 2 or 3. More important is what the decade of 2010-2019 brings. It seems many (but not all) skeptics are betting that Joe Bastardi et. al. are correct and that the decade ahead will bring cooler temps. A variety of short term fluctuations are to credit for this supposed cooling, from a relatively quiet sun to the PDO, AMO, NAO, and various other ocean cycles. Also, according the the AGW skeptics, along with this cooling trend will be an expansion of the Artic Sea Ice, as it is supposed to reverse its 30-year downward trend. All these factors lead many skeptics to conclude that 2010-2019 will not be as warm as 2000-2009 was.
On the “warmist” side, while there may indeed be solar and oceanic influences in the climate over the next decade, as indeed there always is, those who believe that the AGW hypothesis is likely correct would expect the decade of 2010-2019 to likely be warmer than 2000-2009 as the forcing from CO2 continues to overwhelm other natural cycles.
The AO index situation continues to intrique me as the relative higher pressure over the Arctic is causing cold air to be forced out of the Arctic while temperatures in the Arctic and sub-arctic continue at normal to above normal conditions.
On the o
Interesting review of the Arctic/North Atlantic Oscillation (AO/NAO). And the relationships with the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO).
But, why the need to attack NASA GISS?
What has Hansen to do in the discussion about Polar Oscillations?
The article says:
“The greenhouse models all predict an increase in the frequency and strength of the positive arctic oscillation in time, most (2/3rds) exceeding the 90% range of natural variability.”
What is evident in the figure is that the sentence quoted is true only from the 2030s-2040s. Since 2009/2010 is still in the 2000s, it is not surprising that natural variability still causes a number of negative AO.
Why every interesting discussion on climate here is contaminated with attacks on climate scientists?
Science is about nature, models and evidence. If some evidence contradicts models, these are updated. The behaviour of the AO do not contradict the models (because they predict natural variabilty still dominant in the last decade).
By the way, a great failure of these models is to UNDERestimate the velocity and degree of melting in the Arctic. The AO maybe is part of this failure. Maybe yes, maybe not. If in 20 years the AO continue to behave as it is now, probably these models will need to be changed, and they surely will if that is the case. That is how science works.
Saying “AO spoiling NASA GISS party” is just silly.
davidmhoffer says:
December 15, 2010 at 11:57 pm
“tallbloke;
If they’ve been warming, publication of that information will be delayed as long as possible. A cooling stratosphere is a central plank in the greenhouse theory.>>
Wouldn’t they just adjust the theory to predict a warming stratosphere as a result of greenhouse gas instead? Seems so much simpler than adjusting the data to match the theory…”
No; adjusting the theory would mean reworking the Fortran code of their models, and worse, finding the right parameter combination to make the new model hindcast the past more or less well while at the same time predicting rising temperatures – not an easy task at all.
Adjusting the data is much, much easier, and with Hansen, they have an expert for that.
Steve:
“Since the pressure systems would try to equalize, the high pressure flows to low, but would have more energy (mass) behind the flow in the negative phase.”
Exactly. For negative phase read “high polar pressure.” which is a fall to the negative in the AO.
Another way to look at this is observe the effects of a change in polar pressure on the source-sink zones for the major wind systems. One sink is the equator and it changes very little. A source zone is the 30-40° latitude zone where the trades and the westerlies originate. The next sink is the low pressure zone at the surface ‘polar vortex’. It doesn’t exist in the northern hemisphere when pressure is weak at the pole, which is normally the case in winter so the westerlies sweep all the way into the Arctic. (normal is the long term average in the warm phase like we have had from 1980 till the present, almost the span of an adult human lifetime).
When polar pressure increases it is at the expense of the source zone at 30-40° latitude. Result is that the difference in pressure driving the trades falls slightly, the difference in pressure driving the westerlies falls massively while the difference in pressure driving the all of a sudden becomes positive. The change in the pressure differential underestimates the change in flow because the source sink relationships dictate that a wind that didn’t exist at the surface before, the polar easterlies suddenly arrives. When that wind reaches the surface in Siberia or Greenland its warm, because it has entrained ozone in the descent and ozone absorbs long wave radiation from the Earth. Hence the Arctic warming. But that same air is relatively very cold when it hits 50° of latitude and the pulse in ozone is temporary. It’s the harbinger of cold.
And that relates to the concern of Julian of Wales when he says:
“they then point to their satellite data of heat over Greenland and the Eastern US. But in 1948 and 1962 and 1300 they did not have satellites to track the migrating warmth, so they pretend this year is different from historic cold years like 1962 and 1948.
My question is; Is it possible that the historic cold years, and even the mini ice age, were really warm years (but there were no satellites to see the warm air over Greenland and other oceans).”
So, its just temporarily warm in places that are usually very cold. And the warmth is due to heat from the stratosphere where air temperatures can rise by 100°C in the middle of winter. Its not heat that has come from other places at the surface.
Stephen Wilde. You have yet to grasp the thing that governs the temperature of the stratosphere. Its not UV or the strength of solar activity. Its the dynamics of the interaction between the mesosphere, the stratosphere and the troposphere at the winter pole. But, rest easy, you are not alone. When the penny drops you will see that the flux in ozone from the winter poles governs sea surface temperature in the mid latitudes and at the equator.
Think of the Earths electromagnetic atmosphere and the mass of the atmosphere shifting from both poles towards the equator when the solar wind provides the energy. But, the vortex is strongest in the winter hemisphere. Why does the northern hemisphere stratosphere have more ozone than the southern. Because that northern stratospheric vortex does not exist in northern summer. The land masses heat up too much. When it comes into play in northern winter it is a potent influence on the climate (cloud cover and temperature of the sea) between the Arctic and 40° south latitude.
You talk about shifting jet streams. Better to think in terms of changing pressure differentials driving the surface winds. The jet streams are an artifact of the way the atmosphere is set up, just like the Madden Julian Oscillation and the so called “Planetary Waves”. Bullshit baffles brains every time. If people are ideologically committed to a closed climate system they will suggest that it is ENSO that drives the Arctic Vortex whereas in fact its the other way round. See: “The Influence of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation on the Arctic Oscillation and Implications for Surface Climate Prediction” Butler et al. from NOAA. Lot’s of good stats but cause and effect confused.
while the difference in pressure driving the………Polar Easterlies
I missed the critical bit.
DirkH says:
” Adjusting the data is much, much easier, and with Hansen, they have an expert for that.”
Measuring the stratospheric temperatures is the task of SATELLITES (and to a lesser extent, radiosondes), that is, the folks of Remote Sensing Systems (RSS) and the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH).
If some adjustement is done to this data, blame the right people, please!
from mars says:
“The greenhouse models all predict an increase in the frequency and strength of the positive arctic oscillation in time, most (2/3rds) exceeding the 90% range of natural variability.”
Sadly mistaken I am afraid. The polar oscillations are driven by the strength of the solar wind and the degree of intimacy between neutrals and non neutrals. The models forgot to put that bit in.
The atmosphere vents heat, it does not store it. The models got that bit wrong as well. Isn’t it marvelous how you can so much mileage out of such a simple idea. Mark Twain had a great way of expressing that idea. I can’t find it but this one is just as much fun:
One must keep up one’s character. Earn a character first if you can, and
if you can’t, then assume one. From the code of morals I have been
following and revising and revising for seventy-two years I remember one
detail. All my life I have been honest–comparatively honest. I could
never use money I had not made honestly–I could only lend it.
Brendan Kelly of NOAA reccommends killing bears to save them:
http://nz.news.yahoo.com/a/-/world/8525955/inter-species-mating-could-doom-polar-bear-experts/
Climate change is pushing Arctic mammals to mate with cousin species, in a trend that could be pushing the polar bear and other iconic animals towards extinction, biologists said.
…
How far Arctic species have intermingled is unclear, although some important examples abound, according to the article, lead-authored by Brendan Kelly of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
…
Kelly’s team recommended culling hybrid species when possible, as has been done for the offspring of red wolves and coyotes in the United States.
They also pointed out that sharply reducing the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) pumped into the atmosphere will help slow the disappearance of the Arctic ice cap.
from mars,
Funny how climate charlatan James Hansen’s graphs are always the scariest: click. GISS trends up when UAH and RSS trend flat to down.
So who should we believe? Someone rational? Or ‘Coal trains of Death’ Hansen? The guy is a certified lunatic and should have been put out to pasture after his 1400 speeches claiming that Bush was trying to silence him. As if GWB even paid attention to that abnormal wacko.
These short-term cycles are interesting, but the long-term (100,000-year) cycles are more so.
As I understand it, the Laurentide Ice Sheet began in the Hudson Bay – Baffin Island area, and the Cordillian Ice Sheet originated in the coastal mountains of British Columbia. Hence my questions to you experts:
What weather/climate conditions re AO, PDO, etc. lead to rapid build-up of ice in those areas? Are increased precip and cool summers in those regions part of that? What signs might indicate the “tipping point” has been (or will be) reached and the long plunge into the next glaciation begun?
Smokey says:
“Funny how climate charlatan James Hansen’s graphs are always the scariest: click. GISS trends up when UAH and RSS trend flat to down.”
It is funny how you cherry-pick 1998 as the start year, the year with strongest El Niño on record. You should start fromn a relatively ENSO neutral year like 1995 to the present.
If you want a decent graph(since 1995), see here:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1995/offset:-0.15/mean:12/plot/gistemp/from:1995/offset:-0.24/mean:12/plot/uah/mean:12/from:1995/plot/rss/mean:12/from:1995
And the trends, of course(since 1979):
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1979/trend/offset:-0.13/plot/gistemp/from:1979/trend/offset:-0.21/plot/uah/from/trend/plot/rss/from/trend/offset:%200.02
Ah, in trend the outlier is UAH, not GISTEMP…
erlhapp says:
“from mars says:
“The greenhouse models all predict an increase in the frequency and strength of the positive arctic oscillation in time, most (2/3rds) exceeding the 90% range of natural variability.””
I do NOT said that, IT WAS WRITTEN IN THIS POST BY By Joseph D’Aleo, CCM.
I was quoting him to show that the graph that he shows below that statement clearly indicate that that was a prediction for the 2030s/2040s,not for the present time (2000s) so the statement, that compares present day AO with the AO predicted for 30 years in the future, is misleading.
Did you notice the “” or have read this post?
Do that before comment, please.
from mars says:
December 16, 2010 at 1:59 pm
Interesting review of the Arctic/North Atlantic Oscillation (AO/NAO). And the relationships with the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO).
But, why the need to attack NASA GISS?
Saying “AO spoiling NASA GISS party” is just silly.
================================
No. Its just true.
NASA GIZZ has discredited itself long ago.
James Hansen is the worst aberration of a scientist in modern times (especially in light of the fact that he is a “public servant” funded by the taxpayer).
Unfortunately his poison affects the entire organization.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
From Mars,
I took it that when you said :
‘What is evident in the figure is that the sentence quoted is true only from the 2030s-2040s.’
Was an endorsement of that statement.
Joe’s opinion of the models (and Hansen is a great promoter of them) is encapsulated in the words:
‘No GHG need apply.’.
from mars says:
“Ah, in trend the outlier is UAH, not GISTEMP…”
Looks to me like GISS is the black line, and RSS is the dark blue line. Which would be confirmed by your second graph and speaking of cherry-picking, that’s what you’re doing with WFT. That’s why I don’t use it – it’s a cherry-picker’s dream. [And if you think the chart I posted was my own, it’s not. I was using it to make the point that Hansen is being disingenuous].
Here is another chart showing satellite records vs massaged GISS & NOAA manipulations. The “adjustments” done to the raw data always result in either higher temperatures, or a steeper rising trend line, or both.
It’s obvious that the temperature record is manipulated to make it look scarier.
Mike D
I’m no expert, but my reading of glacial advance begins with wet summers and cooler winters. Not too sure about ‘tipping points’, even large volcanic eruptions in a colder periodicity have only temporary impact.
erlhapp says:
December 16, 2010 at 6:43 am
A curious thing can be observed, namely this. When the sun is quiet the atmosphere is very compact. Neutrals and charged particles are more densely packed, more closely associated. In this circumstance a very small advance in the solar wind can cause a spectacular shift in atmospheric mass from the pole. This is the story that has unfolded each winter except that of February 2008 (the big La Nina year) since about 2007.
This is were the answer lies I think, something that is sure is height of the atmosphere is at record modern lows. Solar EUV varies by at least 16% over the cycle and it doesn’t have a base floor like other indexes. The current minimum is substantially lower than the previous minimum which has lead us to a more compact atmosphere which is unlikely to grow much looking at the last 12 months of EUV output. Perhaps the solar wind is more of a player in these conditions or maybe its something else that drives the higher pressures in the Arctic. Interestingly the opposite has been happening at the other end of the world which shoots a bullet in the theory, but this has had the effect of strengthening the La Nina pattern as has been shown in the past. Also of interest is Antarctica is experiencing the most positive AAO on record but here in Oz we have had persistent blocking highs that have added to the massive rainfall.
Stephen keeps referring to the ozone readings during a quiet Sun (2004-2007), but looking at the record the Sun was not quiet in that period, nothing like it is now. If the NAO keeps positive all winter we need to get this message out there, the models are so far off on this one. The long term NAO is looking very interesting right now.
I understand the 100 year pattern, there are 2 distinctive forces in play that occur around every 200 years that overlap to make it appear as a 100 year cycle. One is grand minima, the other is just low cycles at the bottom of the wave. Both have climate implications but if the stars are aligned correctly the grand minima force is much stronger and prolonged.
This story fits the pattern:
“Torrential rain prompts Gaspe state of emergency”
http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/TopStories/20101216/rain-gaspe-101216/
Recall the recent massive snows further west (in the blue) and look at where Gaspe is (near the limit of red) on the map:
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/ao71.jpg
–
Erl Happ: Interesting notes. I’ve recently turned more attention towards solar wind records and I can confirm that there are unambiguously shared nonlinear patterns over the entire record. Anyone sticking to linear methods might draw hilariously obtuse conclusions. Piers Corbyn is surely LHAO. I am also developing the opinion that ENSO is constrained from the poles – and particularly by the distribution of continents (notably the north). I hope that sometime you might have time to get everything that you think is important summarized into as concise a summary as is possible. If so, many who are already appreciative will be even more so. Best Regards.
Geoff Sharp said:
“Stephen keeps referring to the ozone readings during a quiet Sun (2004-2007), but looking at the record the Sun was not quiet in that period, nothing like it is now.”
Agreed but I’m comparing 2004/7 to the period covering the cycles 18 to the peak of 23. The period since 2007 will be interesting either way.
Compared to the oscillating energy available in our own oceans, and atmosphere (in a way, another vast “ocean”) to affect change in temperature, changes in anything the Sun has wrought just does not have that same potential. And neither do human sourced CO2 changes. Anybody willing to suggest a driver outside of these two systems, oceans and atmosphere, must first rule out these very powerful influences. No one has done that yet to my satisfaction. Show me a mechanism and put it to maths. And please, do not send me to an article to read. If you don’t know the calculations related to the Sun’s influence or that of human sourced CO2, then find a source that does and cut and paste their calculation here.
This Arctic blast is clear and present evidence (with clear and present maths to quantify it) of the power involved in both oceans and atmosphere to affect the temperature we experience. So put up or…
Geoff Sharp says:
December 16, 2010 at 6:56 pm
============================
Well said, Geoff.
Stephen Wilde says:
December 16, 2010 at 7:39 pm
Agreed but I’m comparing 2004/7 to the period covering the cycles 18 to the peak of 23. The period since 2007 will be interesting either way.
EUV was high during this period, to be of use the period between 2008 and now will tell the story.
Check out the jet stream action over the south pole, lots of incursions brought about by the high/low pressure differences, lots of rain in Melbourne and Sydney looks to be copping it. Trouble is the AAO has been in high positive mode (in general). Perhaps the positive/negative phase is not the full story?
Ocean SST’s have lots of warm/cold pools, could this be the determining factor?
Geoff Sharp and Paul Vaughan and Pamela Gray,
If you look at daily data over the last two years some 49 movements of the Dst index produced a rise in both the AO and the AAO index. Some 24 movements to the negative involved a rise in the AO index alone and 22 movements to the negative resulted in a rise in the AAO index alone. A few movements saw no rise at all. Very few.
When atmospheric mass moves from the south pole, and the process has been going on since 1948, it finds its way mostly to the mid latitudes of both hemsipheres producing an increase in the differential driving both the trades and the westerlies but it is the westerlies that are most energized. As the polar index rises there is an increase in sea surface temperature in the mid latitudes. The signal in the northern hemisphere is very plain. In the southern hemisphere there can be short term cooling (I suggest cold water upwelling and effects of a speed up in the ocean circulation) but in the long term an index of differential pressure driving the westerlies is locked to the temperature of the southern ocean. Draw your own conclusion.
I have a full description of all this but it’s not concise as Paul Vaughan would like. But I am happy to provide it to those interested and look forward to feedback. My email is easy to find.
It’s a somewhat complicated story because the hemispheres of the earth are so different. A very important part involves the role of the polar stratospheric vortex in determining the flux of ozone into the winter hemisphere. Fortunately there is excellent material made available by the NOAA (a great resource) that enables one to put together a chain of causation to link from Dst (Disturbed time Index) through to SST (sea surface temperature). And Pamela for one will be surprised.
One can see a period of time when air pressure was strong over Antarctica when sea surface temperature was driven by the AAO. Currently, its being driven by the AO because air pressure over the Arctic in winter is at a 60 year high.
Low AAO in winter (high surface pressure) was behind the La Nina of 2007 -2008.
It goes this way. Low pressure at pole increases westerlies. The stratospheric vortex (night jet if you like) is very weak. There is little mesosphere/stratosphere interaction. Upper stratosphere above 10hpa loaded with ozone. Every weekly or so the solar wind falls away. Dst relaxes. AO and AAO fall slightly from whatever level they happen to be at. Vortex invigorated, transport of high ozone air commences, increase in geopotential heights at 60-90° lat. Convectional circulation in the stratosphere commences as ozone absorbs OLR. High Ozone warmed air descends into the troposphere in locations that create a mirror image of geopotential heights to that in the stratosphere. That is where the ocean warms.
Reversing the cycle: High pressure at the pole weakens the westerlies and the sea cools as cloud cover increases. Cloud cover increases as the ozone content of the atmosphere is reduced by a burgeoning vortex bringing nitrogen oxides down from the mesosphere. If there is less ozone, there is less absorption of outgoing radiation from the Earth so the stratosphere and the upper troposphere is cool. Cool air,relatively invariable specific humidity, sub freezing temperatures, more ice cloud, more reflection of solar energy, cooler ocean. And its the mid latitudes rather than the tropics where most of the action is.
Truly abundantly and hopelessly heretical stuff. Open system. Hourly and daily fluctuation. Trends over centuries. A very direct link between the solar wind and change in SST at the surface. Mediated via the influence of the most potent greenhouse gas of them all, ozone. That is the poetic element.
So, that is the short version Paul. No diagrams, no pictures, just words.
Geoff Sharp:
Re: “Interestingly the opposite has been happening at the other end of the world which shoots a bullet in the theory, but this has had the effect of strengthening the La Nina pattern as has been shown in the past. Also of interest is Antarctica is experiencing the most positive AAO on record.”
Considering what you have said I don’t think it is helpful to look at the SST in the tropics and the be all and end all of what is about to happen to global temperature. There can be contrary trends in the hemsipheres. The mid latitudes are where cloud cover dynamics play out. The Southern hemisphere has more ocean. Low AAO drives the westerlies and SST increase in winter but the flux in ozone from the south pole and change in stratospheric temperatures is negligible in summer. Those spots of cold ocean in the southern ocean reflect a colder stratosphere and upper troposphere at the moment. All the action is now in the Arctic.
The AO has been mostly negative since September but the degree of fluctuation is now increasing. You can see the movement in atmospheric temperature here: http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/temperature/
If we have a sudden stratospheric warming in the Arctic like last February you will see a marked increase in SST in the Pacific off Japan or wherever 200hpa and 500hpa geopotential heights are anomalously high….in both hemsipheres. The sea will warm first in mid latitudes and their will probably be a simultaneous cooling of the sea in the tropics.
It’s no good trying to simplify the thing any more than the real situation allows.
Erl, thanks for the notes. One thing I’m not clear on is why you think it is necessary to look beyond SW to Dst. This appears to put your view (electric apparently) at variance with that of Piers Corbyn (but perhaps I have misunderstood). (I also note that you make no mention of lunisolar tides.)
Pamela Gray says:
December 16, 2010 at 6:22 am
…………
Conditions in the North Pacific currently are surprisingly similar to those 1910’s and 1950’s.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/NPG.htm
Can we draw any conclusions from it ?
Solar activity may be in 1910’s (low) but not in 1950’s (highest ever).
AMO? PDO? Yes both on the way down, but they do not drive the climate, they are the climate.
AMO, PDO, SOI, etc are indices (temperature and pressure differentials) do not determine the real temperature and atmospheric pressure, they are result of those temperature and pressure movements.
Enneagram says:
December 16, 2010 at 6:15 am
Compare details on top map (Hudson Bay – Lake Baikal) here
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2010november/fig1.gif
and the maps here
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/NFC1.htm
I am sure you got the idea, but you knew that anyway, there are
far too many waiting to know what is already known.
Paul
Re: DST
Paul here is my post in reply to R. Gates on another thread:
Solar has an effect, but I think not the way most of scientist consider, but in the odd strong pulses of magnetic field known as magnetic storms (re: DST index), or as NASA would have it ‘magnetic ropes. They pump strong currents inducing magnetic field in the highly conducting magma (lithosphere in the Arctic is less 25-30km thick), while induction can go as deep as 100km or more. These counter act the Earth’s field itself causing shift of the GMF strength from the Hudson Bay area towards Siberia where lithosphere is much thicker. This can be clearly seen by the change in the Hudson bay’s area magnetic field’s and its negative correlation to the SSN.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LFC9.htm
Correlation weakens to totally disappear further away. Antarctica doesn’t have any of the properties above.
Stratosphere is highly ionised, the bifurcation of the Arctic’s GMF causes the spreading polar vortex to split in two halves, having profound effect on the Arctic climate / temperatures.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/NFC1.htm
see also top map:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2010november/fig1.gif
(clarification: The Dst is a geomagnetic index which monitors the world wide magnetic storm level. )
Paul
“Erl, thanks for the notes. One thing I’m not clear on is why you think it is necessary to look beyond SW to Dst. ”
Paul,
I don’t know what your reference to SW represents? Short Wave Radiation?
So vukcevic, let me see if I understand your view:
You envision GMF influencing tropospheric dynamics [as opposed to (a) solar wind influencing GMF & tropospheric dynamics via separate pathways or (b) solar wind influencing GMF via tropospheric dynamics]?
Erl Happ asked, “I don’t know what your reference to SW represents? Short Wave Radiation?”
Apologies. Solar wind.
savethesharks says: December 15, 2010 at 9:27 pm
Check out the latest scientific discussion from the Raleigh NWS:
“The very cold Arctic air mass in place over our region is a rare
occurrence this early in the winter season. The winter weather event
expected later tonight and Thursday will also be a rare event. It is
rare to have average temperatures running 10.1 degrees below normal
for an extended period of time – even for the first two weeks of
December at Raleigh-Durham and Greensboro. This makes these first
two weeks of December the coldest ever at both sites.”
Wow. Coldest ever. Of course….that is only 120 or so years. So no big deal, right R Gates? If it is no big deal on being the coldest “ever” then it is no big deal your stupid alarmist crap about the quote unquote long-term trends in the Arctic.
Wow! Pre-emptive strike. Nice touch. Too bad it didn’t succeed. :<(
Paul Vaughan says:
December 17, 2010 at 6:59 am
….
I will be updating soon http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/NFC1.htm, will drop you a note.
Paul Vaughan,
Paul
“Erl, thanks for the notes. One thing I’m not clear on is why you think it is necessary to look beyond SW to Dst. ”
Abbreviation is the source of our problem.
Dst is the Disturbed time index, a direct measure of the effect of the solar wind on the electric fields within the atmosphere. The enhanced flow of electrons in the ‘Ring Current’ is a singular example of changes in that electric field. Gravity and the electric field together with the distribution of kinetic energy (mainly due to absorption of long wave from the Earth by ozone and the release of latent heat of evaporation) determine the distribution of the atmosphere around the globe. The element that changes most on short and long time scales is the electric field. However, latent heat release in the tropics varies much more than surface temperature.
Our mental construct of stratosphere and troposphere, the former with all the ozone does not serve us well. There is mixing across the ‘boundary’ (the tropopause) which exists most tangibly in our minds and rather less tangibly in the atmosphere. This accounts for change in cloud cover. In the stratosphere, the incursion of water vapor from the troposphere is a denaturing factor of equal significance.
It can be observed that atmospheric mass moves from the winter pole towards the equator under the influence of this electric field when it is enhanced by the solar wind.
One immediate effect is a cooling of the upper stratosphere over the equator.
Once energized the ring current has a slow relaxation characteristic over a couple of months. There is a slow change in the base state across solar cycles particularly observable at solar minimum and in the evolution of atmospheric pressure at the poles where 30 bar of pressure can be lost and only a bar or two gained at the equator over a sixty year period.
The climate effect is related to change in the flow of air in the systems we know as the Trades, the Westerlies and the polar Easterlies and the most spectacular changes are seen in the latter two, especially in the northern hemisphere. As the westerly flow increases the ocean warms, the two tightly locked together on short and long time scales. The inference is that cloud cover has been lost. The observation that supports that is the flow of ozone into the troposphere in the mid latitudes. That comes from the polar upper stratosphere whenever surface atmosphere increases slightly. On a daily scale this can be observed as a fall in the Arctic Oscillation Index or the Antarctic Oscillation Index. There is an immediate response in terms of increased geopotential heights between 60-90° of latitude. In large scale events this starts at 1hPa within this latitude band. On smaller scale events the ozone is entrained into the polar stratosphere from outside that latitude band appearing at or about 100hPa.
Monitor this at:
http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat_a_f/
http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/intraseasonal/temp10anim.shtml
http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/temperature/
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/intraseasonal/temp30anim.shtml
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/intraseasonal/z200anim.shtml
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/daily_ao_index/hgt.shtml
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/intraseasonal/z500_nh_anim.shtml
Thanks Erl, I read your comments with interest. Your description of the weekly short term oscillations will be something I follow up on, but of more interest to me is why we have high pressure at the north pole right now as apposed to record low pressure at the south pole which has been that way over the entire southern winter.
This graph shows that a positive AAO (low pressure at the south pole) correlates with a high SOI or La Nina pattern so I must be missing something or confused. Your statement “Low AAO in winter (high surface pressure) was behind the La Nina of 2007 -2008.” seems to be at odds?
Geoff, I note that your graph (thanks for sharing that) is for ONDJ. When I get a chance I’ll take a look at how the relationship varies seasonally. (Related: In NAO / SOI relations, March tells an interesting story about the 1976 climate shift.)
—
A solar-terrestrial relations note:
I have confirmed the findings of the following paper using different methods:
Le Mouël, J.-L.; Blanter, E.; Shnirman, M.; & Courtillot, V. (2010). Solar forcing of the semi-annual variation of length-of-day. Geophysical Research Letters 37, L15307. doi:10.1029/2010GL043185.
The article first got a mention at WUWT Aug. 28, 2010:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/28/weekly-climate-news-roundup/
On Oct. 3, 2010, a full WUWT article was devoted to the findings:
“Length of day correlated to cosmic rays and sunspots”
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/10/03/length-of-day-correlated-to-cosmic-rays-and-sunspots/
At the time I was too busy with financial pursuits to do an audit, but yesterday I found the time.
LOD also contains crystal clear information about lunisolar tides (no ambiguity whatsoever). This time series is a terrestrial climate gold mine (so we should be vigilantly watchful for any potentially arising efforts to vandalize this key record, such as we see with 1940s SST records).
—
Erl, thanks for the stimulating notes. The bit about electricity pulling the atmosphere towards the equator (if I haven’t misunderstood) will surely be mercilessly attacked by physicists. I’ll stick to exploring data, leaving physics to physicists. One thing I can tell the physicists with absolute confidence: The data have not been thoroughly explored by the climate science mainstream (so it’s no wonder that mainstream paradigms have run so seriously afoul). I sincerely hope that sensible researchers from all fields in these multidisciplinary investigations will pause to realize that climate science leaders fell victim to Simpson’s Paradox decades ago. The earth orientation experts will likely play a key role in the clean up of the climate science mess. I would like to caution all climate ‘hobbyists’ that it is necessary to condition analyses on the season of the year; the notion that anomalies have some ideal properties that obviate the need to look at seasons is purely nonsensical. Best Regards.
Now approaching -5. Just how low will this lady get?
http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/daily_ao_index/ao_index_mrf.shtml
Hi Geoff,
Nothing like a searching question to focus the mind. The following represents a very careful reply.
The AAO is a direct proxy for the strength of the westerlies in the mid latitudes of the southern hemisphere as is the AO for the westerlies in that hemisphere. The strength of the westerlies I estimate as the difference in pressure between 30-40°S and 60-70°S in the southern hemisphere and 30-40N and 50-60N in the northern hemisphere. When the differential rises the sea between 30-50° lat warms. So, in general terms does the sea between the equator and 30° lat. but the relationship is looser. If we are suggesting that the AAO drives the lot we must recognize that SST at 0-30N and 30-50N has a pretty loose relationship with 30-50S. ENSO is in the middle of this lot.
The AAO was low mid 2007.
The westerlies strengthen as polar pressure falls. Cloud cover down. SST up.
A weaker sun is associated with lower AAO and AO, higher pressure at the poles.
Your measure of ENSO could be the SOI or ENSO 3.4 SST. None of these approximate SST between 20N and 20S.
The flux in the strength of the westerlies is several times the flux in the strength of the trades.
In general low pressure at either pole is associated with strong westerlies, cloud loss and warming seas in mid latitudes 30-50°S. This generally means a similar trend at 0-30S but not necessarily in the northern hemisphere. On a longer time scale low pressure is associated with a warmer stratosphere due to an inactive stratospheric vortex, less influence from the mesosphere and less middle and upper troposphere cloud.
Now, the question as to how we can have low pressure at the south pole and near record pressure at the north pole is something that is of great interest to me too. On the face of it the solar wind energizes the ring current over the equator and atmosphere is sucked away from both poles. Currently low geomagnetic activity should mean high pressure at both poles and this is in general the way it works on longer time scales. But, the pressure at the pole is weak in summer and strong in winter. It is much stronger in the south in winter than it is in the north in winter. The northern landmasses play a role in northern summer by heating up the atmosphere. Perhaps the currently very cold northern land masses due to several successive cold winters are allowing the Arctic to accumulate atmospheric mass in a way that we have not seen before. The trend for higher pressure in the Arctic in winter set in after a phenomenal collapse in the early nineties. Arctic pressure was high in the forties and it is high again sixty years later. It’s a different pattern to the south pole where pressure has fallen continuously.
Within the space of twelve months we see half a dozen peaks in both polar indices (but not this year). Normally there is a tug of war going on so that when one is high the other is low. But, on an annual (or somewhat longer) basis they tend to move together.
Low pressure at the southern pole is due to a progressive loss since 1948. Currently pressure is bottoming, in fact it has started to rise in one season (summer I think but can’t find the graph at this moment).
We should not forget that there are two poles and the north is where ozone is in highest concentration. Flux in the vortex in the north produces ozone pulses that drive change in SST at 30-50N that are higher in amplitude than at 0-30N, 0-30S and 30-50S. These pulses in ozone from the north are responsible for extending the very broad peaks in anomalous SST at 30-50S from the time the southern vortex is active in late winter through to February-March at the time when the northern vortex is most influential. It has recently been noticed that there is a relationship between ENSO and the AO which is documented by Butler et al “The Influence of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation on the Arctic Oscillation and Implications for Surface Climate Prediction”
It has been noticed that between January and March if the AO is high we tend to have La Nina, but the argument in the paper is that La Nina causes high AO. Could it be that the AAO is concurrently low and this is the cause of the La Nina? Silly thing is that the relationships all move over time with the solar wind and the pattern of warming that we have today is very different to that prior to 1978 or even prior to 1993 when the AO began to rise. Nothing in our climate system is stable. There are two poles, two vortexes.
So far as mid latitudes are concerned high AO represents lower polar pressure enhanced westerlies and warming seas in the mid latitudes of the northern hemisphere but also in the mid latitudes of the southern hemisphere because the differences are large and the mixing is speedy. The mid latitudes respond more than low latitudes because there is more cloud and more flux in ozone. If we look at anomalous SST this year a warming started at 30-50N in January and continues while cooling at 30-50S also began in January and continues. At 0-30S cooling began about June and continues with temperatures 0.1°C below the 1948-2010 average. However at 30-50°N cooling began about June, it has been slight and temperature is currently stalled at 0.4 °C above the 1948-2010 average.
“ENSO”, the SOI and ENSO 3.4, a tiny stretch of ocean in the mid Pacific is something that we ought to forget about. It’s simplifying the matter to the point where study is likely to be unproductive. Fact is that the ocean warms in any place where cloud cover diminishes and cloud cover is most variable in the middle and upper troposphere as determined by the flux of ozone out of whichever pole is currently active. There are no golden rules. Just a mix of disparate trends that never repeat themselves.
So, I will withdraw that comment about low AAO and La Nina in 2008.
Paul,
Re: “The bit about electricity pulling the atmosphere towards the equator (if I haven’t misunderstood) will surely be mercilessly attacked by physicists.”
Leif tells me this:
“The standard way of making such an analysis is called a ‘superposed epoch’. You pick a set of ‘key times’, e.g. a dip in Dst. Say you have 90 such dips. Then you take 90 slices of ao each several days wide and line them up such that they coincide on the key times. finally, you compute the average for each day of those slices and plot the result. This gives you the response and the spread gives you the error bar.
Can you help?
I will second this statement:
“I would like to caution all climate ‘hobbyists’ that it is necessary to condition analyses on the season of the year; the notion that anomalies have some ideal properties that obviate the need to look at seasons is purely nonsensical.”
If we notice that sea surface temperatures relate to atmospheric conditions at disparate latitudes from pole to pole and that sea surface temperatures relate strongly to the differential pressure driving the wind systems we can further note that the differential pressure driving the trades and the westerlies in the northern hemisphere depends upon atmospheric pressure over Antarctica and also over the Arctic. And the same applies in reverse.
Pressure fluxes much more at the poles than elsewhere, the atmosphere moves across the hemsipheres. This is the result of an external, not an internal driver.
I thought I would show some diagrams. In the end it was easier to do a quick and dirty post on my blog. So, the data that backs up my comment is at: http://climatechange1.wordpress.com
Erl, I’m not convinced (at all) that SW should be swapped for Dst. I encourage you to consider where SW is measured (vs. where SW-influenced geomagnetic indices, such as Dst, are measured).
—
Erl Happ asked, “Can you help?”
If a sufficient research grant is supplied: Yes.