From the Institute of Physics
Cold winters caused by warmer summers, research suggests
Scientists have offered up a convincing explanation for the harsh winters recently experienced in the Northern Hemisphere; increasing temperatures and melting ice in the Arctic regions creating more snowfall in the autumn months at lower latitudes.
Their findings may throw light on specific weather incidents such as the extremely harsh Florida winter of 2010 which ended up killing a host of tropical creatures, as well as the chaos-causing snow that fell on the UK in December 2010.
Published today, Friday 13 January, in IOP Publishing’s journal Environmental Research Letters, this new research suggests that the trend of increasingly cold winters over the past two decades could be explained by warmer temperatures in the autumn having a marked effect on normal weather patterns, causing temperatures to plummet in the following winter.
The strongest winter cooling trends were observed in the eastern United States, southern Canada and much of northern Eurasia, which the researchers, based at Atmospheric and Environmental Research (AER), the University of Massachusetts and the University of Alaska Fairbanks, believe cannot be entirely explained by the natural variability of the climate system.
Their results showed strong warming throughout July, August and September in the Arctic, which continued through the autumn and, according to their observational data, appeared to enhance the melting of sea ice.
This warmer atmosphere, combined with melting sea ice, allows the Arctic atmosphere to hold more moisture and increases the likelihood of precipitation over more southern areas such as Eurasia, which, in the freezing temperatures, would fall as snow. Indeed, the researchers’ observations showed that the average snow coverage in Eurasia has increased over the past two decades.
They believe the increased snow cover has an intricate effect on the Arctic Oscillation – an atmospheric pressure pattern in the mid- to high-latitudes – causing it to remain in the “negative phase”.
In the “negative phase”, high pressure resides over the Arctic region, pushing colder air into mid-latitude regions, such as the United States and northern Canada, and giving the observed colder winters.
The lead author of the study, Judah Cohen, said: “In my mind there is no doubt that the globe is getting warmer and this will favour warmer temperatures in all seasons and in all locations; however, I do think that the increasing trend in snow cover has led to regional cooling as discussed in the paper and I see no reason why this won’t continue into the near future. Also if it continues to get much warmer in the fall, precipitation that currently falls as snow will fall as rain instead, eliminating the winter cooling.”
It is also deduced that one of the main reasons conventional climate models fail to pick up on this observed winter cooling is their failure to account for the variability of snow cover, which, as demonstrated in this study, can greatly improve the accuracy of seasonal, and lengthier, forecasts.
“We show in the paper how using the snow cover in a seasonal forecast can provide a more skilful or accurate forecast. Without correctly simulating the coupling of winter climate patterns and the variability of snow fall, the models currently used by Government centres miss an important influence on winter and will therefore continue to be deficient in predicting winter weather on seasonal time scales, and even longer decadal time scales,” continued Cohen.
“In my mind there is no doubt”. There speaks a true scientist with an inquisitive mind.
It’s so cold because it’s so warm.
If it keeps getting warmer, it will get even colder.
Then it will get so cold that it doesn’t get warm anymore, then it will get warmer for good.
I Я a klymut syunteest
That is typical warmist logic. If it cools, it must be because of warming. That is what you should expect from “scientists” with preconceived notions.
The strongest winter cooling trends were observed in the eastern United States, southern Canada and much of northern Eurasia, which the researchers, based at Atmospheric and Environmental Research (AER), the University of Massachusetts and the University of Alaska Fairbanks, believe cannot be entirely explained by the natural variability of the climate system.
The researchers, who swore that they have never in their lives heard of the Eemian interglacial, the Holocene Climatic Optimum, the Roman Climatic Optimum, the Medieval Warm Period, or the Little Ice Age, stated that until very recently every season was the same as the one before: predictable, benevolent, and loving. Only co2 could cause so much unpredictability, and so much raw hate, they say.
warm air causes more snow too…………
We’re going skiing in Miami this weekend
“the trend of increasingly cold winters over the past two decades could be explained by warmer temperatures in the autumn”
Sounds like a negative feedback to me …. I hate it when that happens :))
Reading between the lines, this press release reads like ” no matter what happens with the weather, we have a problem & we need to study it, so keep those grant dollars heading our way ….”
Am I being to cynical ???
So what has happened this year then. Not much snow yet after a very warm autumn!
Repeat after me.”correlation is not necessarily causation”.
I can refute this with one word – Scotland.
So ok can this be republished where they say “colder winters cause warmer summers which cause doomday”.
This paper seems like another “everything is global warming fault” from the propaganda machine.
More proof they know little or nothing about climate, climate mechanisms or climate research. The cause of the current pattern is changes in the Rossby Waves in the Circumpolar vortex from zonal, with few low amplitude Waves, to Meridional with more higher amplitude Waves and is related to a cooling world as the vortex expands. An article on this change as well as its relationship to ENSO and a possible mechanism will be posted to my web site later today.
http://drtimball.com/
I do think that the increasing trend in snow cover has led to regional cooling as discussed in the paper and I see no reason why this won’t continue into the near future.
Finally, climate science has found a positive climate feedback, although of the cooling variety.
Of interest, is that we don’t know why increasing snow cover doesn’t cause runaway cooling and a ‘snowball’ earth.
Do these people have no dignity?
The fact that it snows means that it’s COLD. And it’s not cold because it snows.
Mediaval science to hide the mediaval warming
Modern science to hide modern cooling
Postnormal science to create a postnormal society
I hope 2012 will bring the ratio back in science and politics. This is going nowhere.
Gee, another dumb study. Don’t these people have any better way to waste research grant money??
Now I know why the dinosaurs died out. It was so warm that time that they froze to death eventually.
And yes there were icecaps on Earth during the Eocene Optimum, because it was so warm. The winters must have been very severe during that period.
I think not. More mumbo jumbo in the peer-reviewed literature. It should never have gone through peer-review.
The Law of Parsimony has just been ravaged.
Well this winter hasn’t seemed very warm so far, at least not in the US.
But then again, such surprising weather that doesn’t follow “global warming -> colder winter” would not be unexpected because…well, because global warming itself causes surprising weather.
Large snowcover is cause of negative AO. What causes negative AO is Suns low activity. If polar vortex breaks early, like october, we have large snowcover in northern hemisphere in november.
So that paper has less value than toilet tissue.
Yet we have not had statistically significant warming since 1995, so…
Yes well. Talk about putting carts before horses.
Kindest Regards
As a result of the increase in population, the environmental movement has decided to give its full backing to the latest UN initiative. “DEFRAG” Defrag is part of the sustainable development policy and it involves the preservation of space on earth. It has been decided that space is becoming so scarce, that that which remains should be collected in special areas and preserved for future generations. GSMs (General Space Models) are already predicting that these areas will quickly be filled (with space) and future storage of space will reach a tipping point in the near future
.Makes about as much sense as the article I have just read.
Hasn’t the AO been positive to this point in the 2011-12 winter season thus far? I understand that a shift may be approaching/underway, however.
Tim Ball says
More proof they know little or nothing about climate, climate mechanisms or climate research.
———-
Ahhh more hyperbole and little regard for intellectual precision.
What it does prove is that they don’t know everything and they are constantly looking to expand their understanding and so now they know more than they did before.
Which is kind of different from the message that they have a preconceived position.
I know someone with not a doubt in her mind that the Americans are degrading her brain with beam weapons. I keep telling her it is global warming, but her absence of doubt persists!
Great, so take an absurd claim “Its colder because its warmer”, then ask a scientist to offer up conjecture on how this might occur, and call it a convincing study..
This is no different than a StarTrek episode where the authors have already written some horriblw story on time travel and then they ask scientist after the fact to try and add some smart words and conjecture on how it may work to the script to make it sound convincing.
Tim Ball says
The cause of the current pattern is changes in the Rossby Waves in the Circumpolar vortex from zonal, with few low amplitude Waves, to Meridional with more higher amplitude
———-
So my question is what causes the change in Rossby waves, if this in fact what is happening?
There is a cause and effect problem here. What exactly is the ultimate cause as distinct from a secondary cause.
Check fig 4 of this recent article at Jo Novas:
http://joannenova.com.au/2012/01/does-the-pdo-drive-global-temps-and-is-there-a-siberian-connection/
From “the Siberia-Pacific climate pendulum”.
It shows quite clearly, that cold around Pacific equator is followed by cold in Siberia and vice versa.
Not the other way around.
K.R. Frank
If it HAD been constantly warming, would they have come out and said something was wrong – that some cooling should have occurred? SURE they would have.
Their findings may throw light on specific weather incidents such as the extremely harsh Florida winter of 2010 which ended up killing a host of tropical creatures, as well as the chaos-causing snow that fell on the UK in December 2010.
———-
I have a very simple hand waving argument for these cold winters.
AGW is stronger in the tropics since greater water vapour feedbacks are in effect there. So the heat credit there has to move from the equator to the poles. Hence more equator to pole circulation.
Rather like applying more heat to a boiling kettle more hot weather systems move to the poles displacing cold air that moves towards the equator.
The consequence is that the Poles get warmer and mid latitudes get big snow dumps as cold and warm/moist weather systems pass in the night.
Obviously this description is so simple its not likely to be true. Feel free to poke holes in it.
You could start with:
1. Is the radiation budget in credit at the equator and in deficit at the poles!
2. Is this difference increasing?
3. Are there measurements that justify the claim that north south circulation of air is increasing?
4. Is there any evidence that there is greater alternation between hot and cold weather conditions?
And so on. This is a falsifiable hypothesis. No magical Rossby waves in sight.
You mean they don’t model snowfall at the moment??????
Had to wipe the coffee off the laptop, is it April already? Its still snowing outside.
That snow is sure having “an important influence” on Vancouver, with the usual rear-enders, flipped cars and blocked highways. 15 cm more tonight and another system coming on Wednesday – satellites not models. Its always the satellites proving the models wrong.
I guess the throw-away comment by the Met Office UK, a few winters ago, that snow “will be a rare and exciting event” was because thats how the models are written.
“We show in the paper how using the snow cover in a seasonal forecast can provide a more skilful or accurate forecast. Without correctly simulating the coupling of winter climate patterns and the variability of snow fall, the models currently used by Government centres miss an important influence on winter and will therefore continue to be deficient in predicting winter weather on seasonal time scales, and even longer decadal time scales”
Facepalm.
It rained all night the day I left
The weather it was dry
The sun so hot, I froze to death
Susannah, don’t you cry.
This is so obvious that my kids know it. If you have a warm winter, you will have a cool summer – so that the average remains about even. And vice-versa.
To me, it is fair proof that the earth has a massive feedback mechanism that keeps the average temperature stable. Our puny efforts at pumping out carbon dioxide are minor. The sun controls the temperature of the earth.
not feeding the troll…
And there you have it! Religion!
DaveE.
Bottom line is however, that the planet continues to warm and arctic sea ice continues to melt. Look at mid troposphere temps and cryosphere today for verification of this. While some contributors here insist on blanking any research that doesn’t fit the belief system, let’s just keep half an eye on the facts & the continuing trend. AGW will not be “dead in the water” until the warming TREND is reversed. It has not reversed and while I accept it may be reaching the top of its cycle, the trend line of mid troposphere temps, since 1960 would suggest otherwise. The same is true of arctic sea ice since 1979. The odd few cold winters here and there are simply not enough to offset the current trend, so I wait with baited the breath the loudly trumpeted signs of negative phase PDO etc, etc being realised.
In the same way that warmists have no right to claim that Australian floods and Russian heat waves have anything to do with AGW, we have no right to point to a few cold winters in various locations as being evidence of a cooling trend. When and only when a cooling trend shows up clearly on a decadal basis can we start to really expect researches of orthodox view AGW to pull their heads out of the sand and more importantly, for the media and the politicians to take any real notice.
Philip Bradley says:
“Of interest, is that we don’t know why increasing snow cover doesn’t cause runaway cooling and a ‘snowball’ earth.”
I think it was the “Science Channel” had a program on the theory on snowball Earth that involved the continental drift interupting the oceanic conveyor which circulates warm southern waters to the north and returns colder water to the south. At some point the continental drift blocked this system and caused the freeze up of everything. I do believe that it is theorized that glaciations are contributed to by the continuous build up of snow and the increasing reflection of sun light this causes which also would have contibuted to snow ball Earth. All theory (conjecture?), of course, even the idea that there ever was a snow ball Earth.
I’ve got Just one or two problems with that nonsense, the one that stands out is this,
During the winter of 2010 – 2011 the largest lake in the whole of Ireland and the UK froze over, due to prolonged record breaking freezing temperatures.
I knew this confident rubbish was coming someday and I told others about it before it happened. With more grant-funded research they will close the loop on any and all variances from whatever they say and do. The explanation of more or less hurricanes from the thought police is next. The brown shirts will be replaced by the smart green shirts.
The lead author of the study, Judah Cohen, said: “In my mind there is no doubt that the globe is getting warmer and this will favour warmer temperatures in all seasons and in all locations; however, I do think that the increasing trend in snow cover has led to regional cooling as discussed in the paper and I see no reason why this won’t continue into the near future. Also if it continues to get much warmer in the fall, precipitation that currently falls as snow will fall as rain instead, eliminating the winter cooling.”
Perhaps this is clarified in the original, but increased snowfall in the Northern Hemisphere winter due to warmer, wetter air from the Arctic, does not imply decreased spatio-temporal average temperature over the same area and time span. So what the author said may not be false or self-contradictory. He is surely correct that, if the warming Arctic produces more snow, then continued warming will eventually cause rain in its place. This is true whether or not CO2 accumulation is the cause of the warming.
However, it is also not necessarily true that net global heat accumulation will result in every region having a warmer climate, so that part does not follow.
The Northern Hemisphere temperatures and the CET have high degree of correlation. By looking at the CET summers and winters it is obvious that there is no correlation:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CET-SW.htm
The CET summers and winters oscillate at different rate and often out of phase; it would be surprising if the Northern Hemisphere did behave differently, considering high degree of correlation.
Further more, as it can be concluded from the above link summer temperatures have hardly changed in the last 350 years, while all the temperature increase is due to the rise in the winter temperatures.
m.vukcevic
There has been no warming since the late 1990’s.
No warming means that if increased winter “severity” is a result of warming, then the “severity” resulting from warming will stop increasing also. So has it stopped? When is it going to stop? Did it stop in 1998?
I am unconvinced that severity is increasing.
This is the sort of rubbish you get if you give people to many grants for research. Black is White, Hot is Cold, Up is Down, and the money is ours.
@Ken bellet, which warming trend are you talking about?
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:2001/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2001
Steve Goddard already debunked this on his site.
http://www.real-science.com/anchorage-water-vapour-year
I don’t see indications in their paper that they examined what happened in the 1960s or 1940s. Most of their pretty pictures start in 1988, and they mention 1973 in snow hindcasting. Their models don’t know history.
LazyTeen writes: “Rather like applying more heat to a boiling kettle more hot weather systems move to the poles displacing cold air that moves towards the equator.”
LOL dense colder air being displaced by hot less dense air… a new physics paradigm!
To all concerned including the authors of this sad, really sad paper, recommended reading: Leroux, Dynamic Analysis of Weather and Climate” Springer-Praxis 2010 2nd edition.
Richard Craniums the lot of ’em
This reminds me of an old gentleman that I encountered at my first job back around 1980. Having just moved from the west coast to the east coast I asked about how hot or cold the summers and winters were. He said the temperatures always seem to average out the same but if you had cold winter it would lead to a hot summer while a mild winter would lead to a mild summer. Later on I thought about his generalization in terms of the jet stream. If you have zonal flow, generally from west to east, temperatures in summer and winter will moderate. However, if the jet stream had a large north south component to it, a lot of cold could be brought down from the arctic in the winter and the summer jet could summon flow from the tropics. I also thought that most of the changes in the jet stream were a result of the state of the oceans (PDO, ENSO) but will acknowledge the arctic oscillation can certainly make itself felt in the winter, like it did in Feb. 2010 in DC.
LazyTeenager says: “What it does prove is that they don’t know everything and they are constantly looking to expand their understanding and so now they know more than they did before.”
But the problem is not what they don’t know; it’s what they do know that ain’t so.
“Their results showed strong warming throughout July, August and September in the Arctic, which continued through the autumn and, according to their observational data, appeared to enhance the melting of sea ice.”
At DMI they have an archive of Arctic temps going back to 1958
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
Admittedly these are ERA40 modeled estimates, but since there never has been much in terms of actual empirical temperature observations for the Arctic, they probably constitute the BAG ( Best Available Guess) for that history. I don’t know if it’s just me, but having clicked through the entire series, I can’t say I see any evidence of this “strong warming throughout July, August and September in the Arctic”. 1958 appears almost identical to 2011.
Jim G says:
All theory (conjecture?), of course, even the idea that there ever was a snow ball Earth.
I was referring to snow’s high albedo, as anyone who has skiied on a sunny day will know about.
Increased snow = cooling = more snow = etc
The snow albedo positive feedback (ie cooling feedback) should operate at any level of snowcover and its a puzzle why it doesn’t cause runaway cooling.
Just for fun I ran up a chart of fall (Sep/Oct/Nov) temperatures vs winter (Dec/Jan/Feb) temps for the state of Washington, using the NCDC figures from 1896 to 2010. Each blue lower dot represents the winter just after the purple fall dot above. (Wash isn’t Arctic, but it’s much more influenced by Arctic events than by tropical events.)
http://ockhamsbungalow.com/blog29/fall-vs-winter-wash-1896-2010.jpg
Some periods of correlation, but mostly not…. and I don’t see any leading or lagging from one year to the next.
Here’s the XLS for completeness:
http://ockhamsbungalow.com/blog29/wash-fall-winter-temp.xls
…and this result was determined by…a computer model? I’m out.
I hope the authors give proper credit to Stephen Foster, for “the sun so hot I froze to death.”
Hmm…
Yet more testiculation!
( hand waving while talkng total B*****cks
Do these (pseudo) scientists actually get paid?
I would like to see Bob Tisdale weigh in on this matter, as it seems to me IMO that a warmer gulf stream could possibly lay the foundation for the effects noted in this study.
extrapolate the theory a bit and I get: The Little Ice Age was a consequence of the Medieval Climate Optimum.
Intrapolate a bit and I get: My refigerator can keep cold by burning a candle inside it.
It’s really a bunch of bull. The Arctic was very warm in late summer/fall 2011… and yet the AO for December was at a record positive value. All while Eurasian snow cover was relatively high while N American snow cover was very low. They just so badly want to tie this to CAGW/GHGs… when the AO is largely driven by other factors like sudden stratospheric warming events which oscillate with the QBO, solar activity which can increase and decrease available ozone in the Arctic regions which sink through the stratosphere and warm the troposphere and promote blocking… and also the PDO, AMO, and ENSO… all of which impact the subtropics and the mid-latitude westerlies over the ocean basins. The very positive AO this winter is likely a myriad of factors including higher solar activity, a westerly QBO transitioning to easterly (westerly promotes less blocking), and the positive SOI/La Niña which enhances the North Pacific gyre and the Southeast ridge. When those are enhanced, the heights have to fall further north in the Arctic… it’s just how it works. You push one button down, the other springs up. Of course the warmer Arctic is increasing snowfall in northern latitudes during winter. Wasn’t there recently a post here that indicated that during the height of the ice age, the whole planet was colder… except the Arctic, which was possibly warmer than it is today?
Well, it will have to get warmer before it snows here in Ottawa tonight. After a couple of days of -20, we have warmed up significantly and are expecting 10 cm. So maybe it is warming that gives us snow…..
For some reason, this sounds exactly like what is needed to make glaciers form in the usual ice age locations….
A bit scary with the tilt, et al, posed for an ice age to start and the sun not exactly robust….
Of course, until the models can explain the Minoan and Roman warm periods and tell us what the preconditions are to get the glaciers started, they are pretty worthless GIGO in my book.
Quebec is in North America and [it] streches from northen [to] southern Canada. [The] recent winters here are not colder They have been remarkably mild. We are in quite a mild winter now
LazyTeenager says:
January 16, 2012 at 12:33 pm
Their findings may throw light on specific weather incidents such as the extremely harsh Florida winter of 2010 which ended up killing a host of tropical creatures, as well as the chaos-causing snow that fell on the UK in December 2010.
———-
I have a very simple hand waving argument for these cold winters.
…
And so on. This is a falsifiable hypothesis. No magical Rossby waves in sight.
Lazy, you have gotten one thing right. Your Nickname. Get back to us when your scientific method becomes a young adult.
The authors would gain more knowledge if they studied the downstream effects of the AO and jet stream changes during low solar output. If so they would realize a man made component is not necessary.
There is research that suggests changing conditions in the mesosphere and stratosphere brought about by chemical changes from reduced UV output affects the strength of planetary waves, which go on to break up the north polar vortex. Get on board guys and get off the gravy train.
Any story that constantly migrates to a “new position” every time nature disproves its “previous position” cannot long endure. Eventually, even the most gullible listeners must conclude, “This story is just fundamentally false.”
Monty Python would be so lucky to produce such scripts.
LazyTeenager says:
January 16, 2012 at 12:16 pm
Probably “Ahhh more hyperbole and little regard for intellectual precision.”
I don’t get it. First you insult Dr. Ball, then you expect him to answer your questions. Perhaps you can learn a bit about “disagreeing agreeably.”
The biggest problem with this scenario, is the fact that Arctic sea ice is not melting.
Not worth a serious comment.
If it were not already well known this article would have caused rational thinks world wide to simultaneously shout “Correlation is Not Causation!”
To summarize – the event that follows is affected to some degree by events that precede it. By this simple rule we can conclude snowball earth will not fall on the heals by a matter of hours a long stretch of global warming. We can safely infer the oceans will not boil by the end of this century barring some jolt to the ecosystem heretofore unknown. Serial influences go only forward in time. There is no reason to suspect events will repeat at a low level of detail. Butterflies in Brazil do not impact the PDO nor the rate of change of albedo of the hemispheres. Chaos being what it is, blaming butterflies is possibly as close to settled science as GHG impact is on global climate.
Bryan Short (January 16, 2012 at 3:31 pm) wrote:
“it’s just how it works. You push one button down, the other springs up.”
Exactly:
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/vaughn_npp_image1.png
LazyTeenager says:
January 16, 2012 at 12:13 pm
Tim Ball says
More proof they know little or nothing about climate, climate mechanisms or climate research.
———-
Ahhh more hyperbole and little regard for intellectual precision.
What it does prove is that they don’t know everything and they are constantly looking to expand their understanding and so now they know more than they did before.
As thick as a brick is a Lazy Teenager.
The IPPC stated: The science is settled = Nothing left to see = lets commit on the settled science to save the world NOW – err NOW – err no I really mean NOW = 1980 to 2012- 2013… 2050…
Lazy fool you’ll believe any old crap as long as it’s stamped approved by the IPPC.
And Dr Tim Ball has never stated the science is settled. He is to much of a scientist to state such stupidity!!!
But we can always depend on you to expose the soft underbelly of the warmist hoax, even when you think you are standing up from them. Your the warmist gift that keeps on giving.
Headline:
Warmer summers may be causing colder winters
http://www.ctvbc.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20120114/bc_warm_summers_cold_winters_120114/20120114?hub=BritishColumbiaHome
Article Excerpt:
=—
“When that oscillation is strong, it creates powerful east-west winds that block cold polar air from drifting south. But when the oscillation is weak, more of that air starts moving north-south, pulling the Siberian High downwards.
“I like to think of Siberia as a refrigerator for the entire northern hemisphere,” Cohen said.
“If you have less snow, it’s like keeping the refrigerator door closed. The cold air stays locked up in the Arctic. But if the snow cover is much more expansive, it’s like opening up the refrigerator door — the cold air spills out into the kitchen.”
Cohen said his group’s work explains why North American winter temperatures and Siberian snowfalls aren’t doing what climate models predict they should.
“The model projections for the other three seasons turned out very good. The one season they’re not doing so well is winter.”
—=
(bold emphasis added to highlight refrigerator analogy)
Also Noteworthy:
One commenter claims the Spanish Armada is responsible for 1000 years of anthropogenic-CO2-warming.
Since the ‘observational data’ probably has a warming bias there’s no telling how cold it will actually get if it really gets warm.
Paul Vaughn, no surprise here that the CTV article is signed by Bob Weber from the Canadian Press… This journalist is as biased as they come. He reported on Kaufmann’s but never bothered to ever interview Steve McIntyre regarding proxies at Yamal for instance…
And now for something completely theory!
Soooo ….. a 0.5 up tick of T over 150 years warming are making more snow and then colder winters,,,,,,, Oh the humanity!!
Weather has officially become climate!
These researchers never have heard of the solar cycle, I suppose? It is known for many years that the solar cycle influences the jet stream position. The largest change in the solar spectrum over a cycle is in the high energy range, UV and beyond. That changes the temperature of the lower stratosphere (and ozone formation) mainly in the tropics which influences the poleward flow in the stratosphere. At low solar activity (as we have had in previous years), the jet stream position / clouds / rain patterns shift equatorwards. Opposite during high solar activity. That also influences the Arctic Oscillation: at low solar activity the polar highs can reach lower latitudes.
Some background:
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2005/2005GL024393.shtml
http://www.nwra.com/resumes/baldwin/pubs/SolarCycleStrat_TropDynamicalCoupling.pdf
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/09/030926070112.htm
TomRude says:
“LOL dense colder air being displaced by hot less dense air… a new physics paradigm!
To all concerned including the authors of this sad, really sad paper, recommended reading: Leroux, Dynamic Analysis of Weather and Climate” Springer-Praxis 2010 2nd edition.”
I heartily agree. Most of climate study seems to be about finding correlations and then arbitrarily choosing which is cause and which is effect. Marcel Leroux presents mechanisms that make sense. The cold air masses in the areas as described in the paper with the resultant snow falls are perfectly explained by his theory.
I see a perfect homeostatic/thermostatic mechanism at work here:
1. Arctic Ocean warms up.
2. More precip on land keeps falling as snow.
3. Snow on landmass surrounding Arctic Ocean cools air over Arctic Ocean down.
4. Cooler air over Arctic Ocean cools Arctic Ocean down again.
Weeeh! Climate Science is easy!
Any actual data? I’d like to see records of moisture content in the air at arctic locals.
I noted it froze up early on the Pacific side, and later on the Atlantic side.
I’ve noted it is reletively warm north of 80 degrees this winter, but this is largely due to wind. When it is calmer the cold air settles. When it is windy there is mixing. As in either case temperatures are well below zero, I’m not sure how the difference effects the ice cover. A lot of wind must shove the ice around, build pressure ridges, chill the floes and leads with greater “wind chill,” so that warmer might actually result in thicker ice.
Meanwhile, the real world is getting colder. http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/execute.csh?amsutemps
and has been suffering from a “bipolar condition” for weeks now:
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/map/ANIM/sfctmpmer_01a.fnl.30.gif
While the highest Arctic has far above normal temperatures, Antarctica has looked more or less completely blue on the daily anomaly map for many weeks now. I guess summer never came to Antarctica this year.
1. Global Temperatures are NOT increasing see AMSU satellite data *current 0.12C” flat so no warming
2. What about Antarctica (cooling, flat, normal temps) so more snow in Buenos Aires?
3. Europe quite mild winter this year haha please explain
4. What drivel.. how this sort of stuff gets published is beyond me_
Climate scientists then go on to prove that black is white and get run over on a zebra crossing.
Has there been any parallel research done in the Antarctic, since the record levels of antarctic sea ice have mirrored the very low levels in the Arctic?
Is the relative paucity of land mass in the Southern Oceans an issue there??
Homer Simpson explains it best. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTR-xzA8xLk
LazyTeenager says:
January 16, 2012 at 12:16 pm
There is a cause and effect problem here. What exactly is the ultimate cause as distinct from a secondary cause.
The big band is the ultimate cause. Except of course for the super nova that collapsed in our parent universe to give birth to this particular universe.
Lazy Teenager is an appropriate pseudonym because my article speaks to the issue of cause/effect and proposes a possible mechanism. I stand by my charges that Lazy considers too strong because the material about Rossby Waves and other issues were in the literature decades ago.The Jet Stream and Rossby Waves were identified in the 1940s.
It seems part of the laziness in today’s climate science is a failure to review literature or put recent work in a context. It is part of the problem I have discussed when specialists study one small area of a generalist discipline. Generally, they don’t know the wider subject or the literature.
http://drtimball.com/2012/what-causes-el-nino-la-nina-ipcc-doesnt-know-but-builds-models-and-makes-projections-anyway/
Occam says, La Nina and Negative PDO Full stop.
@Tim Ball says:
January 17, 2012 at 8:55 am
I`m not sure of the mechanisms, but yes there is are very good correlations between changes in the solar wind speed and the ENSO index.
“..this new research suggests that the trend of increasingly cold winters over the past two decades..”
Now I was under the impression that GW was largely down to all the warmer winters in the mid/upper latitudes ?
So if the part of this science is correct, that snow cover effects weather more than they thought, then the opposite is true.
They also have failed to account for the warming caused by change in land use. Could it be that UHI has a bigger effect on global climate than thought. With the amount of asphalt that has been laid, I can’t see how warmers can lay this effect to negligable.
[Oldschool Browser Alert: In Internet Explorer the following climatology animations will stick on January (instead of looping through all months as they should).]
—
Snow Depth:
http://i39.tinypic.com/2yywnlh.png
Precipitable Water:
http://i52.tinypic.com/9r3pt2.png
Precipitation:
http://i42.tinypic.com/2njypw9.png
Monthly Maximum of Daily Precipitation:
http://i41.tinypic.com/34gasr7.png
Low Level Cloud Cover:
http://i52.tinypic.com/auw1s0.png
Evaporation Minus Precipitation:
http://i43.tinypic.com/2isvynb.png
Column-integrated Water Vapor Flux with their Convergence:
http://i51.tinypic.com/126fc77.png
Credit: Climatology animations have been assembled using JRA-25 Atlas [ http://ds.data.jma.go.jp/gmd/jra/atlas/eng/atlas-tope.htm ] images. JRA-25 long-term reanalysis is a collaboration of Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) & Central Research Institute of Electric Power Industry (CRIEPI).
“AGW is stronger in the tropics since greater water vapour feedbacks are in effect there. So the heat credit there has to move from the equator to the poles. Hence more equator to pole circulation.”
Lazy Teenager,
And what proof do you have? If you refer to the IPPC’s own documentation, the AGW fingerprint in the tropical tropesphere is a mid level “hotspot”. This signature has failed to materialize. To put it another way, there is no warming in the tropics -either at the surface or aloft. Likewise, we have seen no amplification of the Hadley Cell. And if you remember what many Alarmists were saying a decade ago, the artic source regions would warm to such an extent that cold winters would be a thing of the past. That certainly has not come to pass. You people chase weather events like a dog chases a car.
“transfer of most of the heat is by evaporation and wind”
Computer Models and Atmospheric Circulation: A Major Failure
by Dr. Tim Ball on May 5, 2011
http://drtimball.com/2011/computer-models-and-atmospheric-circulation-a-major-failure/
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1. Column-integrated Water Vapor Flux with their Convergence:
http://i51.tinypic.com/126fc77.png
Compare 1 with 2 & 3:
2. Near-Surface (850hPa) Wind:
http://i52.tinypic.com/nlo3dw.png
3. Near-Surface (850hPa) Wind — Polar View:
http://i54.tinypic.com/29vlc0x.png
Compare with wind-driven ocean gyres:
4. Wind-Driven Ocean Currents:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/67/Ocean_currents_1943_%28borderless%293.png
“Apart from all other reasons, the parameters of the geoid depend on the distribution of water over the planetary surface.” — N.S. Sidorenkov
The study fails to grasp the obvious:
Winter is getting worse because it’s getting colder.
There ain’t no global warming because the Earth is losing heat faster than it comes in.
Duh.