There has been much worry that extreme weather is the result of changes in the Arctic. For example: Jennifer Francis, Rutgers University, 25 January 2012.
The “Arctic Paradox” was coined during recent winters when speculations arose that the dramatic changes in the Arctic may be linked to severe snowstorms and cold temperatures in mid-latitudes, particularly along the U.S. east coast and in Europe. Recent studies have illuminated these linkages. Evidence is presented for a physical mechanism connecting Arctic Amplification — the enhanced warming in high northern latitudes relative to the northern hemisphere — with the frequency and intensity of several types of extreme weather events in mid-latitudes, such as droughts, floods, heat waves, and cold spells.
Here is a YouTube video on the issue, the main idea seems to be that changes in the Arctic (supposedly caused by global warming) are changing jet stream patterns in mid-latitudes.
The paper that video is based on is here: http://marine.rutgers.edu/~francis/pres/Francis_Vavrus_2012GL051000_pub.pdf
Now, there’s been a pushback, and “…it is demonstrated that previously reported positive trends are an artifact of the methodology”. Ouch.
Just accepted in GRL: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/grl.50880/abstract
Revisiting the evidence linking Arctic Amplification to extreme weather in midlatitudes Elizabeth A. Barnes DOI: 10.1002/grl.50880
Abstract
Previous studies have suggested that Arctic Amplification has caused planetary-scale waves to elongate meridionally and slow-down, resulting in more frequent blocking patterns and extreme weather.
Here, trends in the meridional extent of atmospheric waves over North America and the North Atlantic are investigated in three reanalyses, and it is demonstrated that previously reported positive trends are an artifact of the methodology. No significant decrease in planetary-scale wave phase speeds are found except in OND, but this trend is sensitive to the analysis parameters.
Moreover, the frequency of blocking occurrence exhibits no significant increase in any season in any of the three reanalyses, further supporting the lack of trends in wave speed and meridional extent. This work highlights that observed trends in midlatitude weather patterns are complex and likely not simply understood in terms of Arctic Amplification alone.
UPDATE: Andrew Revkin has a relevant piece today on this issue of attributing climate change to current weather patterns:
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Could Climate Campaigners’ Focus on Current Events be Counterproductive?
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
Stanford Social Innovation Review An analysis of news releases on climate change from large environmental groups finds a big shift in focus. Details here.This graph is from “Climate Risks: Linking Narratives to Action,” an important new essay in the Stanford Social Innovation Review on the gap between major environmental groups’ messaging on human-driven global warming and the focus of their programs and spending. The message these days has become all about extreme events, from the Frankenstorm to intense droughts, but the programs remain locked mainly on strategies for curbing the flow of greenhouse gases, according to the authors, Amy Luers, Carl Pope and David Kroodsma. Please read the piece.
My main concern in viewing the graph is different. Read more here
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One thing that is certain about the focus on current events -vs- future events, is that current events and the claims about what is driving them can be easily observed, studied, and if need be, falsified, as the new paper from Elizabeth A. Barnes aptly demonstrated about Arctic amplification and current weather patterns.
I think the focus on current events could easily be viewed as counterproductive, since claims about current events are much easier to falsify than future events. If your agenda is to make you fearful of current weather as a manifestation of future warming, it certainly is counterproductive to have such claims falsified in the “here and now” versus in the future where most people have forgotten about them.
I see this as a good thing for climate skepticism. – Anthony
How did her work slip through pal review?
I am shocked, shocked! That science should be going on here.
Your findings, M’am.
Ouch , indeed.
Steven Goddard dug up a great reference on this from the early 1970’s.
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2013/03/06/jet-stream-dips-now-blamed-on-global-warming/
“During the 1970s, deep jet stream dips were blamed on global cooling.
Scientists are much smarter now, and blame jet stream dips on global warming.”
And so it goes.
“…an artifact of the methodology.”
This pretty much sums up climastrology.
For starters AGW theory said over and over again that due to global man made warming the atmospheric circulation would become more zonal not more meridional.
Secondly if one looks at the Arctic Oscillation Index especially during the winter months one will see the trend is toward a more negative Arctic Oscillation(go back to year 2009-present) meaning the atmospheric circulation has been becoming more meridional.(greater blocking)
Thirdly if one goes back in past history and looks at studies of past atmospheric circulation patterns, one will find many studies that show a connection between sustained prolonged low solar activity and a more meridionl atmospheric circulation pattern.
The up shot of what I am trying to convey is the article is wrong when it tries to suggest the atmospheric circulation has not shown a trend toward a greater blocking pattern in recent years which might very well correspond to very low solar activity and secondly the article is wrong in trying to say AGW Theory called for a more meridional atmospheric circulation pattern, when in reality AGW theory maintained the exact opposite would take place due to global man made warming. They said a greater zonal atmospheric circulation pattern would take place(+AO) not a more meridional atmospheric circulation pattern.
This article has all of it’s facts wrong in my opinion.
And after all the work the Met office went to to spin that tale. Why even Huff ‘n Puff picked up the story.
But that is OK, the paper will sink into obscurity just like everything else that does not support ‘The Cause’
2005 0.356 -1.271 -1.348 -0.046 -0.763 -0.383 -0.030 0.026 0.802 0.030 0.228 -2.104
2006 -0.170 -0.156 -1.604 0.138 0.156 1.071 0.103 -0.265 0.606 -1.029 0.521 2.282
2007 2.034 -1.307 1.182 0.544 0.894 -0.555 -0.397 -0.034 0.179 0.383 -0.519 0.821
2008 0.819 0.938 0.586 -0.455 -1.205 -0.090 -0.480 -0.080 -0.327 1.676 0.092 0.648
2009 0.800 -0.672 0.121 0.973 1.194 -1.351 -1.356 -0.054 0.875 -1.540 0.459 -3.413
2010 -2.587 -4.266 -0.432 -0.275 -0.919 -0.013 0.435 -0.117 -0.865 -0.467 -0.376 -2.631
2011 -1.683 1.575 1.424 2.275 -0.035 -0.858 -0.472 -1.063 0.665 0.800 1.459 2.221
2012 -0.220 -0.036 1.037 -0.035 0.168 -0.672 0.168 0.014 0.772 -1.514 -0.111 -1.749
2013 -0.610 -1.007 -3.185 0.322 0.494 0.549 -0.011
The above graph are all of the arctic oscillation values month by month from 2005- present.
The trend is toward more winter blocking..
Yes thank God this paper will sink into obscurity.Wrong on all of the information it presents.
Does this affect the research that showed UV affected the blocking patterns?
The video is worthless,and in complete contradiction of what AGW theory calls for which is a more zonal atmospheric circulation, less blocking.
NO the article has no effect on the research that shows low UV light and blocking are linked.
That research is alive and well, and if anything has been proven once again to be correct if one looks at the solar activity versus blocking from 2009-present. Once again very low prolonged solar activity seems to be associated with blocking.
The Met Office has become a joke. One of the first lessons you have to learn when trying to understand, diagnose or design a complex systems is the old adage: “You can’t see the forest for the trees”. Or, as so succinctly put by that old cartoon hanging in many an engineer’s office: “When you are up to your ass in alligators, it is hard to remember that your initial objective was to drain the swamp.” Any competent engineer (or researcher) soon learns that after digging yourselves down one hole for a while, you had better climb out and look around real good before starting the next hole. If you haven’t learned that lesson, you soon become totally ineffective and a joke to any that has.
A copy of the Barnes paper appears to be available here:
http://barnes.atmos.colostate.edu/FILES/MANUSCRIPTS/Barnes_2013_GRL_wfigs_wsupp.pdf
“An artifact of the methodology.” Now that is serious skepticism. Kudos to Dr. Elizabeth A. Barnes.
I thought that jet stream patterns were known to be different in the two PDO phases. Not that anyone has figured out the PDO.
Salvatore Del Prete (August 20, 2013 at 12:12 pm)
You are absolutely correct that climate science consensus was always for less blocking (more zonal flow) based on an increase in the temperature contrast at the tropopause in the vicinity of the polar jet. You are also correct in noting that there has been more blocking instead of less blocking.
Blocking has reversed from a decrease in the 80’s and 90’s to an increase more recently. To me and most people who study weather, that is indicative of natural variations. Those variations could be related to the secular decrease in solar activity as you suggest.
However the article above does not contradict any of those ideas. It points out that science is now pushing back against the rather opportunistic attribution of blocking to “low sea ice” or something like that. The notion (not even a theory) that surface temperature gradient decreases are somehow propagating to the tropopause demonstrates an ignorance of weather. It is this new paper “pushing back” against that failed meme that is encouraging and leads science back to the understanding that the observed trends in blocking are natural.
The entire climate discussion is starting to focus on the very issues that I have been drawing attention to since 2007.
http://www.newclimatemodel.com/new-climate-model/
and:
http://www.newclimatemodel.com/weather-is-the-key-after-all/
from June 2008.
Once again, no matter who is talking or the direction they are going in (IE “We will all die of heat/cold due to humans!”), there is not enough energy in the puny, tiny, insty, bitsy pokadot bikini amount of added anthropogenic CO2 molecues to what was already there in the atmosphere to push and shove the mighty jet stream around!!!!! They are asking me to believe that a gnat can push the elephant around in the room!
https://www2.ucar.edu/news/backgrounders/weather-maker-patterns-interactive-map#map
30 seconds into the video she says “back in the good ole days we could look down on the arctic and see a nice healthy ice cover”. (I couldn’t go any further.)
What makes ice cover “healthy” and why would no ice cover be unhealthy? Why is the current (or pre-industrial) state assumed to be the optimum? Why do some “scientists” not seem to grasp geologic time scales? Not to mention the lack of acknowledgement that change drives evolution?
Stephen, your model is a top-down model of jet maneuvering by external sources and I say to you exactly what I say to AGWers. The catalysts you and they propose (solar versus anthropogenic CO2) do not have enough energy to do what you say they can do.
Looking at the video 16 mins in the two charts clearly show lower zonal wind speeds in the mid 20th century cooling period and even lower such winds now with higher zonal wind speeds in the late 20th century warming period.
AGW theory requires more zonality and so does not explain either of the periods of lower speeds.
The match with changes in solar activity is far better.
However, she somehow seems to be arguing the opposite.
I’ll leave it to others to have a look and comment appropriately.
She appears to give no weight to the fact that for 20 years increased zonality accompanied decreasing Arctic ice loss and it is only since around 2000 that zonality decreased in correlation with the less active sun whilst Arctic sea ice loss actually slowed down despite the troughs in 2007 and 2012 both of which were about ten years after El Nino events.
She makes no attempt to explain why Arctic sea ice loss did not lead to increasing meridionality from 1980 to 2000.
Pamela.
All one needs to push the jets around from above is a change in stratosphere temperatures.
We can clearly observe such temperature changes in the stratosphere over time and since the temperature inversion in the stratosphere is created entirely by solar shortwave reacting directly with ozone it must follow that changes in ozone amounts have the required effect on the atmospheric circulation below the tropopause.
Sorry, the charts are 6 mins in not 16.
HH Lamb found exactly the same meridional patterns when the Arctic was getting colder in the 1960’s
changes over middle latitudes, where the most significant feature has been the very awkward type of variability from year to year, associated with the behaviour of blocking systems and meridional circulation patterns.” which led to “the extremes of cold and warmth, drought and flood associated with the occurrences of blocking in middle latitudes.”
And he also identified the cause
The slight drop in temperature produces large numbers of pressure centres in the upper atmosphere. These break up the smooth flow of westerly winds over temperate areas.The stagnant air produced in this way causes an increase in extremes of local weather such as droughts, floods, extended dry spells, long freezes, delayed monsoons and even local temperature increases.
http://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2012/09/28/guardian-have-all-bases-covered/