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.
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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…