Multiple indicators show global temperatures headed down this month, and fast.
by Joe D’Aleo, CCM, AMS Fellow
As shown above (see the datapoint in the square box), the UAH AMSU daily temperatures are the coldest for the globe at 600mb of all the years tracked since 2002 (warmest 2010, previously coldest 2009).
The new Dr. Ryan Maue reanalysis based global temperature anomalies has declined dramatically this month – almost a full degree Celsius!
Forecasts for temperature 8 days in advance are appended to the reanalysis values.
Is this a reflection of the stratospheric warming pushing the cold to middle latitudes?
The cross section suggests that initial warm burst has ended. Often they repeat as the cold reloads and dumps again.
The 10mb warmth has only backed off slightly.
Notice at the north pole how temperatures warmed 50C (90F) at 10mb.
See how the warmth at the top has spread north then east then west.
Some lowering of the cold as warmth above presses down.
Meanwhile much of the lower 48 and western Europe is having a mild winter in contrast to recent years. It may end up among the coldest ever in Alaska. With a recent heat wave that I am sure Gerald Meehl at NOAA/NCAR is looking at where temperatures in Fairbanks rose to a balmy -3 (warmest this month), the average monthly temperature is an amazing 16.5F below normal. In Anchroage it has been about 13F below normal with double the normal snowfall.
The Alaska temperatures follow with the PDO. A cold PDO (with cold water offshore) means colder than normal, a warm PDO warmer than normal. Any surprise warming was observed as we moved from the La Nina rich cold PDO before 1977 to the El Ninos and +PDO in the 1980s and 1990s (attributed the CO2 of course). Any surprise with a negative 2 STD PDO and La Ninas, it is brutally cold again.
How will all of this play out in February and March???
BTW, instead of taking a PR cruise to Antarctica during their late summer to see melting ice maybe Hansen, Gore and Trenberth should go to Alaska in mid winter to see their fairy tale collapse as they freeze their tails.
Can anyone tell me WHERE it’s cold? Because here in Charlotte, NC, we have a real chance of going 100% snowless without even a TRACE for the first time in the 133 year record.
Judging from that heat bloom off the coast of Japan, I’d say someone has awoken Godzilla(TM).
Meanwhile here in HK
“Thursday, January 26, 2012
Hongkongers shivered through the coldest Lunar New Year holiday in 16 years, with the mercury plunging to seven degrees Celsius in urban areas yesterday and going under three degrees in Ngong Ping on Lantau.
The third day of the Year of the Water Dragon brought frost to high places in the Northern New Territories and a chilling 5.6 degrees outdoors for residents.
The Hong Kong Observatory said it was the coldest Lunar New Year holiday since 1996 and that the cold snap will continue for a few days, though it will be slightly warmer at the weekend.
Hong Kong Union Hospital said 13 people were admitted to its accident and emergency ward with hypothermia over the past two days.
http://www.thestandard.com.hk/news_detail.asp?we_cat=11&art_id=119082&sid=35190873&con_type=3&d_str=20120126&fc=4
The HadCrut3 data for December very recently appeared and it also confirms this slide lately. At 0.340, 2011 is only the 12th warmest on its record. Even 1997 beat 2011. You can get a very small but insignificant negative slope for 14 years and 10 months, back to March 1997. I do not expect January to be much different from December, so if that happens, the insignificant but negative slope will stretch back to 15 years on HadCrut3 once the January numbers are in. The December anomaly was 0.252. Naturally, this would not be expected to be the case for all of 2012, but if it were, then 2012 would be the 18th warmest on the HadCrut3 data set.
See how the warmth at the top has spread north then east then west.
Whoa. Have another look at that animation. Watch for an area of heat to exit the southern polar latitudes and reappear in the northern. That looks like it’s going through the magnetic axis to me.
MattN says:
January 26, 2012 at 6:17 pm
“Can anyone tell me WHERE it’s cold?”
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Try the Arctic where Ocean Heat Content passed a maximum in 2004 and is now declining. See the current WUWT article on OHC and my comments therein http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/01/26/october-to-december-2011-nodc-ocean-heat-content-anomalies-0-700meters-update-and-comments/#more-55499
http://wxmaps.org/pix/temp4.html
Europe is going to get it.
Here in Iceland the weather has been very unusual. November was rather warm, but December and January have been unusually cold. I think we have not seen as much snow in Reykjavik since about 1984.
So where is that mid troposphere heat anomaly now? GHG’s are still rising, By natural means since we only inject 3% of the global CO2 production into the atmosphere.
North America, generally, is warmer than normal this winter.
Traditionally, a La Nina leaves a big cold swath from Alaska to Oregon to Minnesota. Right in the middle of that triangle is the normally the coldest.
This winter, however, the circulation pattern is setting up so that Alaska is absorbing all of the cold and it is not building south. It is almost like Alaska has its own polar vortex and the rotation is sweeping warmer air from the Pacific across the middle of the continent. If one watches some of the longer animations, this is exactly what is happening.
Just an example of how a La Nina, a stratospheric warming event (polar vortex breaks up into two or three smaller ones off of the pole – one in Alaska in this case – the other over Asia) can lead to general weather conditions over a season.
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/map/images/rnl/sfctmpmer_30a.rnl.html
Are we moving towards geological pole shift???We are definitely in magnetic pole shift.Are Global storms next?The magnetosphere is damaged. Does that make us more prey to Gamma rays?
Ryan Maue had a graph of daily changes in global anomalies much like the current one back around 2008. It was discontinued when NOAA changed how it distributed its data, which made gathering the data necessary for the graph too difficult, for a time.
A copy of the old graph would be very interesting to look at. It really opened my eyes, at the time, for up until then I had no idea how dramatically the world anomalies could shift, on a day to day basis. What was really amazing was the free fall that occurred, as the 2007 El Nino gave way to the 2008-2009 double dip La Nina. Off the top of my head, I recall the anomalies dropped a full degree in a little over thirty days. Therefore it is likely wrong to describe the current drop as “Unprecedented.”
However it is also likely wrong to attempt to discount the current plunge as mere “noise.” After all,
we are expected to get all freaked out by a .8 degree rise over thirty years. How can we then go “Ho Hum” when that entire rise is more than erased in only thirty days?
I’d like to add that the current double-dip La Nina is by no means over. The various models have been so very wrong, when it came to predicting the second dip, that I cannot trust them when they say a third dip will not occur. Triple dippers occurred before, (1954-57, 1973-76, 1983-86, 1999-2002,) and can happen again.
Last winter was odd, for usually La Ninas are kind to the Northeast USA, even as the rest of the world chills. I lived in Maine during the 1973-76 La Nina, and because I was young I was all bummed out by kindly winters I now appreciate. However I then saw something which seems true more often than not: It is the winter after the La Nina fades away that the Northeast gets blasted by the arctic.
The winter of 1976-77 saw harbors freeze right down to Baltimore. Because I was young and invulnerable, I went for walks up on the sea-ice in Maine that now make me shudder, because there are places where tidal currents keep the ice thin. However one moonlit night I walked out on Casco Bay from Harraseetket Harbor past Crab Island all the way to Harpswell. The cold persisted, and a couple of years later I skated from South Freeport down to the Royal River in Yarmouth, on the ice by the shore. It was so cold that powdered sea-salt drifted over the surface of the ice without melting it.
That was great, when I was young and hot blooded, but now that I’m old and in charge of the heating bills, I’m hoping the current La Nina is a triple dipper. I am a great believer in procrastination, and would like to put off the eventual arctic response to La Ninas, in the Northeast USA, for another fifteen months, if possible.
Pleasant to read your own observations…..thanks.
To be fair, here in western Maryland the winter has been relatively mild & rainy. The only thing remarkable is a general lack of winds so far. The soil is saturated & any major rain/snow event will cause big flooding.
And looking out the window, onion-grass is tough — grows even in the middle of the winter if it’s not too cold.
In my opinion if you want to predict the rest of 2012 winter ,the key is to look at similar past patterns like the 1984 AO winter and AO spring pattern from Feb-June and look NCDC National temperature pattern for the same period . We will have well below average temperatures March , April and May . Things will not wam up until June. Things are just back end loaded this winter . It will be cold during this period .
2010 was probably the last hurrah for the peak of this AMO cycle. It should be heading down over the next two decades. That should moderate NH average temperatures and possibly slow the decline in Arctic sea ice as well.
Caleb says:
January 27, 2012 at 6:36 am
What was really amazing was the free fall that occurred, as the 2007 El Nino gave way to the 2008-2009 double dip La Nina. Off the top of my head, I recall the anomalies dropped a full degree in a little over thirty days.Therefore it is likely wrong to describe the current drop as “Unprecedented.”
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No, the temperatures dropped only 0.35 degrees in 4 months. This would be unprecedented since the little ice age.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:2007/to:2009
Caleb says:
January 27, 2012 at 6:36 am
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Actually, you are right. I messed up monthly changes with averaged monty changes.
http://policlimate.com/climate/cfsr_t2m_2011.png
Manfred,
Thanks for doing the hard work. I was just recalling stuff off the top of my head. It always pays to double check memory.