From California Institute of Technology:
Warm water causes extra-cold winters in northeastern North America and northeastern Asia
PASADENA, Calif.—If you’re sitting on a bench in New York City’s Central Park in winter, you’re probably freezing. After all, the average temperature in January is 32 degrees Fahrenheit. But if you were just across the pond in Porto, Portugal, which shares New York’s latitude, you’d be much warmer—the average temperature is a balmy 48 degrees Fahrenheit.
Throughout northern Europe, average winter temperatures are at least 10 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than similar latitudes on the northeastern coast of the United States and the eastern coast of Canada. The same phenomenon happens over the Pacific, where winters on the northeastern coast of Asia are colder than in the Pacific Northwest.
Researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have now found a mechanism that helps explain these chillier winters—and the culprit is warm water off the eastern coasts of these continents.
“These warm ocean waters off the eastern coast actually make it cold in winter—it’s counterintuitive,” says Tapio Schneider, the Frank J. Gilloon Professor of Environmental Science and Engineering.
Schneider and Yohai Kaspi, a postdoctoral fellow at Caltech, describe their work in a paper published in the March 31 issue of the journal Nature.
Using computer simulations of the atmosphere, the researchers found that the warm water off an eastern coast will heat the air above it and lead to the formation of atmospheric waves, drawing cold air from the northern polar region. The cold air forms a plume just to the west of the warm water. In the case of the Atlantic Ocean, this means the frigid air ends up right over the northeastern United States and eastern Canada.
For decades, the conventional explanation for the cross-oceanic temperature difference was that the Gulf Stream delivers warm water from the Gulf of Mexico to northern Europe. But in 2002, research showed that ocean currents aren’t capable of transporting that much heat, instead contributing only up to 10 percent of the warming.
Kaspi’s and Schneider’s work reveals a mechanism that helps create a temperature contrast not by warming Europe, but by cooling the eastern United States. Surprisingly, it’s the Gulf Stream that causes this cooling.
In the northern hemisphere, the subtropical ocean currents circulate in a clockwise direction, bringing an influx of warm water from low latitudes into the western part of the ocean. These warm waters heat the air above it.
“It’s not that the warm Gulf Stream waters substantially heat up Europe,” Kaspi says. “But the existence of the Gulf Stream near the U.S. coast is causing the cooling of the northeastern United States.”
The researchers’ computer model simulates a simplified, ocean-covered Earth with a warm region to mimic the coastal reservoir of warm water in the Gulf Stream. The simulations show that such a warm spot produces so-called Rossby waves.
Generally speaking, Rossby waves are large atmospheric waves—with wavelengths that stretch for more than 1,000 miles. They form when the path of moving air is deflected due to Earth’s rotation, a phenomenon known as the Coriolis effect. In a way similar to how gravity is the force that produces water waves on the surface of a pond, the Coriolis force is responsible for Rossby waves.
In the simulations, the warm water produces stationary Rossby waves, in which the peaks and valleys of the waves don’t move, but the waves still transfer energy. In the northern hemisphere, the stationary Rossby waves cause air to circulate in a clockwise direction just to the west of the warm region. To the east of the warm region, the air swirls in the counterclockwise direction. These motions draw in cold air from the north, balancing the heating over the warm ocean waters.
To gain insight into the mechanisms that control the atmospheric dynamics, the researchers speed up Earth’s rotation in the simulations. In those cases, the plume of cold air gets bigger—which is consistent with it being a stationary Rossby-wave plume. Most other atmospheric features would get smaller if the planet were to spin faster.
Although it’s long been known that a heat source could produce Rossby waves, which can then form plumes, this is the first time anyone has shown how the mechanism causes cooling that extends west of the heat source. According to the researchers, the cooling effect could account for 30 to 50 percent of the temperature difference across oceans.
This process also explains why the cold region is just as big for both North America and Asia, despite the continents being so different in topography and size. The Rossby-wave induced cooling depends on heating air over warm ocean water. Since the warm currents along western ocean boundaries in both the Pacific and Atlantic are similar, the resulting cold region to their west would be similar as well.
The next step, Schneider says, is to build simulations that more realistically reflect what happens on Earth. Future simulations would incorporate more complex features like continents and cloud feedbacks.
The research described in the Nature paper, “Winter cold of eastern continental boundaries induced by warm ocean waters,” was funded by the NOAA Climate and Global Change Postdoctoral Fellowship, administrated by the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research; a David and Lucille Packard Fellowship; and the National Science Foundation.
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Jenny Sixpack,
Uh…is that beer or abs? Which is what you should really worry about! What is the best beer, and how can I keep these great abs? Or maybe cutting down on the beer will save the abs, or if you work out more you can save the abs but drink more beer, or….hell, just get drunk and don’t worry about any of it.
I think Tom in Florida is on to something.
Add to that the fact that NASA managed to turn water purple at -28 oC and you have a paper IMHO.
Have these people not read of Hadley and Ferrel cells?
See http://cmmap.colostate.edu/images/learn/climate/ferrel.jpg
(google/bing “Ferrel Cells” and you will obtain more)
However, the diagram referenced above shows the effect of the Ferrel Cell circulation is to provide a westerly wind. Now given that you have a relatively strong westerly, show how a marginally warmer ocean off the coast will provide sufficient convection to counter the existing Ferrel Cell circulation in a way that leads to new winds.
Sorry I think they have come up with another hypothesis for Ferrel Cell circulation when it has already been shown to exist purely due to heat exchange between the poles and the tropics. Whoever ‘peer reviewed’ this paper was probably on-side with ‘the team’ or was not a meteorologist.
So much for the warm water bottle effect
Using computer simulations for something other than dangerous anthropogenic warming is a welcome innovation. At least we get something meaningful out of the money spent on all those supercomputers. That said, I am not quite sure if they actually determined the physical existence of these Rossby waves. They are known from the oceans too but can only be detected by satellites. The Topex/Poseidon satellite tracked one of them created by the 1983 El Nino. Its wave height was about 5 cm and wavelength was hundreds of kilometers. It crossed the ocean from South America to Japan in ten years and collided with the warm Kuroshio current. And then it pushed the Kuroshio north which caused water temperatures in the Northern Pacific to rise. Just one of the strange weather phenomena we usually cannot easily explain.
I have been watching this all winter, and I would say the warmer water in the N.W Pacific was at times splitting the jet stream and a narrow atmospheric river passed over Alaska and then headed towards the N.E. bringing the Arctic air with it. You can see this effect here: http://www.stormsurfing.com/cgi/display_alt.cgi?a=glob_250
So I think they are looking at the wrong area of warm water as far as the colder N.E. is concerned.
Ian W, the Tri Cellular circulation model and its Ferrel, Polar and Hadley cells is obsolete and does not correspond to the reality. Only half of the Hadley has been observed. Read: http://ddata.over-blog.com/xxxyyy/2/32/25/79/Leroux-Global-and-Planetary-Change-1993.pdf
The OP implies the water off the US west coast is colder than the water off the east coast at the same latitude. I just looked at the actual temperatures and the northwest coastal waters are, right at this moment, about 10F warmer than the northeast coastal waters at the same latitude.
The OP appears to be unadulterated trash. The colder northeast winters are because the friggin ocean is colder. The friggin ocean is colder because of the oceanic conveyor belt which runs counterclockwise in both the pacific and atlantic oceans with the warm side on the west coasts of North America and Eurasia.
http://icons-ecast.wxug.com/data/climate_images/conveyor.jpg
So, this means that we are back to “The Day After Tomorrow”. Unless we are not. So if we warm up our oceans, we will either be covered in snow, or covered in rain, or covered in heat, or covered in cold. That about wraps up the consensus, yes?
Most images of the North Atlantic showing the Gulf Stream, such as the one at the top, show that it does not reach across to Northwest Europe. Here are two:
http://www.water-well.net/images/gulf-stream.gif
Or here:
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_EHb1D5Z-k4o/SSr3eXVyDiI/AAAAAAAAcIw/vudpqsJ1sLM/s400/sst.gif
Once the concept gets expressed and displayed by a graphic artist, things change:
http://www.macmillanmh.com/tlxnews/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/GulfStream_Map.jpg
There is a large volume of high saline warm water flowing out of the Mediterranean Sea and being in the Northern Hemisphere tends to turn to the right (North).
So shutting down the Gulf Stream will stop drawing the Canadian Arctic air across the NE USA, and that cold air mass will sit there and grow and Ice Sheet. Ditto for much of N. Asia/N. Europe. It’s the osmosis of atmospherics that keeps us in the Interglacial, and when that shuts down it’s Laurentide time.
Food for thought.
So why did the system shut down in the Younger Dryas?
I haven’t seen the paper but I am now using the Gulf Stream in my reconstructions (or I’m using the location where the Gulf Stream turns west and provides its biggest impact on temperatures).
I see the complete opposite effect for the US.
The Gulf Stream has a very unusual peak in (you guessed it, 1937, the hottest year in the US in the actual measurements – nice peaks in 1988 and 1998 as well, two other hot years – a big decline in the last few years as the US cooled of – warmer this winter again but has dropped sharply in the last few months).
I am forced to call bulloney on this one. It is more likely that US temperatures influence the temperatures in the Gulf Stream than the other way around – which way does the wind blow and the weather systems move – from the US to the Gulf Stream.
http://img20.imageshack.us/img20/7135/gulfstream.png
You can see the full Gulf Stream (which actually starts at the equator and ends at about 30W,40N in the Atlantic) in this animation of the last 30 days ocean currents.
http://www7320.nrlssc.navy.mil/global_nlom32/navo/WHOSP1_nlomw12930doper.gif
Does this mean that for us in UK global warming will make it
a. hotter
b. cooler
c. wetter
d. drier
e. drownded
f. dessicated
g. None of the above
h. All of the above?….”
_______________
you missed
i. any of the above
Coaldust, et al.–
You say you stopped reading after seeing the words, “computer simulation”. I understand your skepticism, because computer simulation has been so egregiously abused in climate science. However, computer simulations do have their uses–even in atmospheric science. They can give us insight into things that might be going on.
It’s just that predicting the future a century out isn’t one of those uses.
Wow: Here they taught me in 5th grade geography that prevailing weather moved from west to east in NH and east to west in SH. Therefore the west coast of S.A. and Africa were colder and the east coast of N.A. and Asia were colder in winter than the opposite coasts of all these continents. The reason: oceans can retain enormously more heat energy than land areas in winter.
John Phillips says:
March 30, 2011 at 2:23 pm
Well now wait a minute. Its just common sense. In the northern hemisphere the weather moves west to east, so the west side of continents get their weather from the oceans which are warmer than the land in winter. I think its that simple.
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John…..I think you’re right
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Steve R says:
March 30, 2011 at 3:11 pm
This seems like an excessively complicated explaination of why the east coasts of continents are colder than the west coasts. Doesn’t it suffice to state that the east coasts have a continent upwind and west coasts have an ocean upwind?
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Yes Steve, one would think it would suffice. Or as we would say where I come from….Yep that oughta do it.
Congratulations gentlemen….I do believe that you have proven yourselves a good deal brighter than the lads at Caltech.
Having lived in both NY and Porto, Portugal, I can assure you at least that Porto is a warm water port and NY is a cold water port.
Whatever causes the difference, Porto is a beautiful, old world city. For the sailors out there, it makes a great stop on the way to the Med.
“These warm ocean waters off the eastern coast actually make it cold in winter—it’s counterintuitive” / “Surprisingly, it’s the Gulf Stream that causes this cooling.”
“Surprising” & “counterintuitive” are not words used in such contexts by competent, sensible researchers.
Aren’t these new claims at least partly related to the following?
Leroux, Marcel (1993). The Mobile Polar High: a new concept explaining present mechanisms of meridional air-mass and energy exchanges and global propagation of palaeoclimatic changes. Global and Planetary Change 7, 69-93.
http://ddata.over-blog.com/xxxyyy/2/32/25/79/Leroux-Global-and-Planetary-Change-1993.pdf
Hmm. Seems like in 1929 there was at least one person who made a connection between the gulf stream and weather, and they didn’t have climate models.
http://tinyurl.com/5wvwddu
IF you look up into the sky most days, you will see a rather large Moon, the computer models don’t have a knob to adjust the effects of the lunar tides in the atmosphere and oceans. So they just ignore it all together, like in this basic model study where the topography was not considered either.
The builders of Stonehenge studied how the declinational effects of the sun and moon were causing the halting retreat of the Ice age as the ENSO effects at the time were more pronounced than now.
Below is a link to how the lunar declinational tides create and move the jet streams and Rossby waves around.
http://research.aerology.com/supporting-research/four-fold-pattern-rossby-wave-generation/
Feel free to browse the site and read a few of the captured lead ins to threads of interest, it’s all free.
Paul Vaughan says:
March 30, 2011 at 7:54 pm
“These warm ocean waters off the eastern coast actually make it cold in winter—it’s counterintuitive” / “Surprisingly, it’s the Gulf Stream that causes this cooling.”
“Surprising” & “counterintuitive” are not words used in such contexts by competent, sensible researchers.
==========================
Exactly! Its like “duh.”
There is nothing counterintuitive about it.
At least they did not make the funding-required “global warming” plug.
Maybe it is getting so foolish to do so that is going away.
Unfortunately, not so fast.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Ummm, then why is the eastern US/Europe supposedly cold when the GS shuts down? That was shown by AGW models as well…guess they were wrong all along?
I think its more of the weather patterns, and topoography. The Cascades in the PNW keep cold air out, Cold air from Canada is more accessible to the Eastern US than the West.
In the Eastern US, when a storm cuts to the Lakes, the temperature warms more than it would to a storm cutting west of the PNW/over the pacific. Vosa-versa for cold airmasses.
All this does is confirm that changes in surface temperatures are not always an indication of heat input, but often is just an indication of changes in winds such as foehn winds and chinooks. It is like warming real greenhouses. The glass is not preventing heat from radiating back into space, as much as it is blocking winds and preventing the redistribution of heat.
I think the lesson learn here, boys and girls, is this you can make a computer model do just about anything.
We’ve known the mechanism that keeps the east side of continents colder now for a very long time now in the mid-latitudes, it’s called the Coriolis Effect.
This is all about trying to turn science on its head by introducing these nutty theories that can yield desired results because mathematicians can manipulate numbers to make them say what they want them to.
Sure, the model works out in the constraints and parameters applied to the model but as we often realize those aren’t the same conditions in which the real world operates.
So global warming now causes cooling, so cooling is also our fault right?