Post by Dr. Ryan N. Maue
Throughout history, the term Russian Winter has come to explain the multitude of military failures of various invading forces into European Russia. The effects of weather and short-term climate on warfare has been recognized and studied for generations. One such campaign involved Napoleon’s march across western Russia toward Moscow in 1812. Yet, with what records survive, the winter of 1812-1813 was apparently relatively mild. Move ahead to the winter of 2010-2011, which has been relatively mild over most of Eastern Europe and Western Russia, including Moscow where the cold blasts have been short-lived. However, during this week and the next ten-days, a brutal Arctic blast is poised to engulf Scandinavia and Eastern Europe, and become even colder as it pushes eastward — crossing the Urals through Russia — beneath a powerful dome of high pressure. Daily temperature anomalies will range from 15° to 35°C below normal, which is already very cold in February. In familiar Fahrenheit: Moscow will likely see near -30°F with surrounding areas -40° to -50°F. Eastward in Central Russia and Siberia during the next several days, temperatures will likely test the -60°F range. Elsewhere, the ECMWF deterministic model is predicting a total of 5-tropical cyclones in the Southern Hemisphere during the next 10-days with a powerful one impacting parched Western Australia and another monster in the South Pacific passing just west of Fiji.
Maps Follow…
Link to Global Temperature Anomalies, every 6-hours for the next 192 hours…
A plot of the 8-day averaged Temperature Anomalies from the United States NCEP GFS forecast model shows a very large area of purple over Western Russia in the 15°-20°C below climatology range. Overall, the global temperature anomaly of -0.16°C remains below the previous 30-year mean as the planet cooling effects of La Nina have finally settled in. This is quite the difference to last February when the global anomaly was nearly +0.4°C.
What’s the forecast coldest temperature that each locale on Earth can expect during the next 7.5 days? Well, the coldest temps should reach into the -60°s especially over Siberia and Greenland. But, the zero degree °F shading which is the transition from light purple to green, shows that almost all of Northern Hemisphere landmasses north of 45°N will see sub-zero temperatures sometime during the next week. The grayish shading is -30°F and below.
Note, these maps update every 6-hours as the NCEP GFS model generates a new forecast cycle. Save to disk if you wish to keep them…
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I came across this a few days ago, and it’s possibly relevant to this discussion. It goes by the attention-grabbing title of:
“When sudden warming can mean cold weather”
It seems that sudden warming in the stratosphere can cause cold weather at the surface.
Full story here:
http://www.meteogroup.co.uk/uk/home/weather/weather-news/news/ch/decb5d61bc43953d5ac72814f47538ac/article/when_sudden_warming_can_mean_cold_weather.html
And nobody even bothered to invade Russia in 2010. Such a good freeze is going to waste. 🙁
My thoughts exactly!!! 🙂
PS. Anyone else notice that the Feb temp measures for GISS and RSS are either late, or haven’t generated any publicity at all????
Wonder why?
Oh, and it’s supposed to snow here in Fresno on Thursday… Snow!… In Fresno!!!! Last time it did that was in 1998. Global warming indeed!
A link to Charles XII that tried to invade Russia during the peak of Maunder minimum 1709. The year is named “the great frost. Really bad timing for the invaders.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_XII_invasion_of_Russia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Frost_of_1709
I am in Stockholm at the moment and the temp has not risen above minus 5 for the last week, with lows in the minus 20s. Stockholmers tell me the winters have been getting colder for the last 2 years. It’s not a good idea to go out without thermals and a down jacket. If it gets any colder I’m back in rainy warm Wales till the weather improves!
Although this coming Russian cold snap is being touted as
the “cold of 1,000 years” we know using that title is a bit
of journalistic sensationalism.
The European press seems to be forgetting about the
Little Ice Age which brought them really cruel winters.
Gareth Phillips says:
February 15, 2011 at 10:36 am
“… Stockholmers tell me the winters have been getting colder for the last 2 years. ”
——————
Oh Gareth, that is (inverted) warmista talk!
How about…. have been colder the last two years?
The argument over the word decimate can be decided by looking at either of these two links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humpty_Dumpty
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”
Or this one – be sure to read the reference to Stephen Jay Gould near the end:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimation_(Roman_army)
Now, move along.
Oliver Ramsay says on February 15, 2011 at 12:35 pm
Not good enough.
Mid-February, a good time to check the winter temperature in Oymyakon, often the coldest place in Siberia.
I am 30km south-west of Oslo, Norway and right now (midnight) I read -8C on my weather station.
Graph last 24 hours, last week & last month here
http://arnholm.org/wstation/
Early Sunday morning (06:50) Feb 13 was the coldest I have seen since the weather station became operative last year (early Feb 2010). I measured -23.4C
The seasonal forecast issued by Met.no (the Norwegian equivalent of UK Met Office) for December, January and February is looking like a huge miss. They forecast 2.5C warmer than normal, but right here December was 7.7C colder than normal, January was 0.2C colder than normal. February so far is 0.6C warmer than normal, but this is likely to change with the current cold.
I have computed that for the seasonal forecast to end on target (2.5C above normal), the remaining time in February must be measured at more than +30C day & night. Not very likely.
Andrew in Finland
February 15, 2011 at 6:21 am
However forcasts for this week are for lower temperatures than we experienced last year.
Andrew,
Thanks for the weather tip. The superb Finnra Road Weather Cameras network covering all of your country is clearly a valuable public asset. Sadly this type of service is not provided for road users here in the UK.
AleaJactaEst says:
February 15, 2011 at 6:43 am
Neil Jones says:
February 15, 2011 at 4:25 am
The UK used to be separated from Western Europe by the North Sea. Alas, since the most recent crop of red then purple political clones turned up we have been assimilated as if the Brabant massif had never been drowned.
I wonder if tectonics could take us in the direction of the Land of the Free??
Sorry, no. You are on the other side of the great Atlantic divide. 🙂
Scottie
Your link is really another shameful cherry picking by the author trying to explain cold as hot . Sudden Stratospheric Warmings SSW happen annually in the Arctic but very rarely in the Antarctic like every 20 years. In the Arctic there are a few every year for relatively fleeting time periods. As the author says they are very hard to predict and harder to attribute their effects. If it was to add to the discussion, the author might at least try to explain why the one SSW that he mentions is more relevant then all the others. He feels like the author is obligated to write some kind of damage control to counter all the cooling.
@Elizabeth:
Those brilliant minds that tell us a warmer world is less desirable must never have had to go out and start their car on a -40 morning.
Required reading in the re indoctrination camps:
http://www.jacklondons.net/buildafire.html
steveta_uk:
Don’t be misled by Jim Hodgen’s “not reasonable.” Sub-zero temperatures (below 0 F.) are not very unusual here in the US, except maybe in the past 30 years. (I’m not saying that Jim meant to mislead you.) The lowest temperature I’ve ever experienced was -36 F. at 4 AM at a place in New Hampshire. That’s what the thermometer outside the kitchen window said. I understand that the Buffalo, New York area has seen -50 F.
This winter in Moscow is severe enough, but in no sense extremal. It feels just like ordinary Moscow winter of late 1970-early 1980, but after 1986 there was almost uninterrupted series of very mild winters. So for people as old as I am it looks like a return to normalcy. I remember winters with below -40C temperature holding more than 2 weeks in late January, and several such winters in a row.
Of interest?
“General Winter” is a broader form of the expression coined by Tsar Nicholas I in 1854, amid the Crimean War, in which he said he’d let Generals January and February look after the French and British invaders. (In the event, Nicholas died in 1855, of a chill he caught while reviewing troops at the front.) Winter also helped the troops of Peter the Great in 1703-06, in the Great Northern War against Sweden.
http://everything2.com/title/General+Winter
Some one needs to tell the publishers of these maps that there’s no Soviet Union anymore…
CRS, Dr.P.H.
The decisive battle of Poltava started on july 8 1709, winter wasn’t a real problem for the swedes, rather outstretched supply lines were.
Australian National Radio today had a big interview with a Ph D (whose name I missed) where the interviewee told us that all the tundra of northern hemisphere will be gone in 20 years, releasing untold amounts of CO2!