![s4-1024[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/s4-10241.jpg?quality=83)
A persistent pattern of winds spins high above the Arctic in winter. The winds, known as the polar vortex, typically blow in a fairly tight circular formation. But in late December 2013 and early January 2014, the winds loosened and frigid Arctic air spilled farther south than usual, deep into the continental United States. Animated video follows.
On Jan. 6, 2014, alone, approximately 50 daily record low temperatures were set, from Colorado to Alabama to New York, according to the National Weather Service. In some places temperatures were 40 degrees Fahrenheit colder than average. Now, an animation created from NASA satellite data shows just how the Arctic air brought a deep chill to the U.S this winter.
Watch the video for a guided tour of the event.
From: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
Video and images courtesy of NASA/JPL
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Record cold spells are just weather. Hot spells however are of course dangerous man-made climate change.
But if colder weather becomes normal, then that too will be caused by human activity, somehow.
One possible side-effect of the displacement of Arctic air southward this winter is a record or near-record low extent of Arctic sea ice in September. And it will be blamed on global warming that has not happened for 17 years 8 months. You heard it here first.
http://www.harvard.edu/president/news/2014/confronting-climate-change
I have been enjoying myself reminding friends in the northern midwest (US) how darned cold it has been, but I have to admit that the cold air was displaced from the north. You can see this demonstrated on the Sea Ice reference page on this site, where a chart of Arctic temperatures from the Danes is on display. The Arctic has been significantly warmer than usual.
Monckton of Brenchley says:
April 7, 2014 at 2:50 pm
Growth in multiyear ice might help offset that tendency, but we’ll see. You can be sure that the media will certainly tout an (overdue) super El Niño as “proving catastrophic global warming & the urgent need to combat it”.
I just read the first paragraph. I cannot read more, I will get sick If I do.
I’m surprised NASA didn’t say it was caused by global warming…
Video Animation would give more complete picture if it did show polar view as here ( NASA 2009), but to be fair it did mention Hudson Bay, which simultaneous with the other usual location above the central Siberia marks for an intriguing ‘coincidence’ ,
REPLY: Right, so run off and complain to NASA about it rather than cluttering up threads here with stuff we can’t do anything about, sheesh! -Anthony
I bet if we have even a slightly warmer than normal Summer they’ll blame it on the “Solar Vortex…”
In the meanwhile the catastrophic human caused global warming seems to ‘boil over’ large areas with an average population density of 0.000001 person/km^2, such as, Amazon, Sahara, Pacific ocean, Atlantic ocean, Himalayas, Mariana Trench etc. Some try to convince us that returning back to and/or staying in poverty is the solution http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBE0RKbRbl4
I thought it was called the circumpolar vortex??
What do you suppose James Hansen has to say about all this record cold? I presume he’ll find some excuse to open his yap concerning the same.
that’s why NYT’s Thomas Friedman wants to call it “global wierding”:
CBS: Face the Nation Transcripts April 6, 2014: … Friedman, Cullen
(SCROLL DOWN – PAGE 2) BOB SCHIEFFER: We’ll be back in one minute to talk about one of the most serious problems facing the world today, climate change…
The unusual seems to be the norm these days with the weather, which bring us to the best-selling author of Hot, Flat, and Crowded, our friend, New York Timescolumnist Tom Friedman and Heidi Cullen, who is the chief climatologist at Climate Central. And they are here today because they’re both involved in our partner Showtime’s new documentary on climate change. It is called Years of Living Dangerously. Tom, this is a multipart series. You take part in one of the episodes. What’s the bottom line here? What did you all find out?
THOMAS FRIEDMAN: Well, Bob, it’s actually a nine part series. And people can watch the first one tomorrow, actually, on YouTube, YearsOfLivingDangerously.com, get it for free. For me, it’s been really the most remarkable documentary project I’ve ever been involved with. I’m looking at the environmental and climate stresses in the Middle East.
So I actually go to Syria and show how the drought in Syria is connected to the revolution. Get to go to Yemen, look at the first city in the world that may run out of water. And then Egypt to look how climate stresses were involved in the revolution there. Participating in the series, you know, we have Arnold Schwarzenegger, Matt Damon, Harrison Ford, Don Cheadle, Mark Bittman. Lesley Stahl from CBS. Remarkable group of people. The whole idea is to bring this home to personal stories. And it does amazingly effectively…
HEIDI CULLEN: Well, you know, I think the series meshes very nicely with the I.P.C.C. reports, which have just come out. They basically show conclusively that climate change is very real. We’re experiencing it right now. And that it is manmade, that is primarily caused by the burning of fossil fuels, oil, coal, natural gas. And we’re already feeling the pain from it, right?…
BOB SCHIEFFER: Well, help me with this. For example, the recent storms we’ve had, the thing that hit New Jersey, with Sandy and all of that. Is that the cause of global warming, the cause of climate change?…
THOMAS FRIEDMAN: Let me put it in personal terms. So your son or daughter has a disease. And you go to a hundred doctors. 97% of them, 97 of a 100 say, “This is the cause and this is the cure.” And 3% say, “This is the cause. This is the cure.” That’s what it is on the climate science. 97% of experts say this. 3% say that. And conservatives are saying, “I’m gonna go with the 3%.” That’s not conservative. That’s Trotskyite radical, okay? That you would go with the 3% not the 97%.
To pick up on something that Heidi said, I actually don’t like to use the term “global warming.” Because that sounds so cuddly. To a Minnesota, Bob, that sounds like golf in February. I much prefer the term “global wierding”, okay? …
HEIDI CULLEN: We need to really move towards making this a nonpartisan issue here in the States. And there’s a great scene, actually, in the Years project, where Bob Inglas, former Republican congressman fro South Carolina, sits down with Michael Grimm, a Republican from Staten Island, where I grew up. Grimm has been dealing with the awful impacts of Sandy. And Inglas says to him, “You know what? I’m Republican. And I believe in climate change. You’ve just been through a terrible experience, where you’ve seen your community ravaged by, in part, climate change. Maybe it’s time to rethink this. You know, the Chinese certainly didn’t treat this as a partisan issue.” And I think that’s really the direction that we need to move in….
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/face-the-nation-transcripts-april-6-2014-pfeiffer-mccaul-friedman-cullen/
milodonharlani says:
April 7, 2014 at 2:44 pm
Record cold spells are just weather. Hot spells however are of course dangerous man-made climate change.
But if colder weather becomes normal, then that too will be caused by human activity, somehow.
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Record cold is evidence of climate disruption. It’s still your fault, so pay up.
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On the other hand, global sea ice anomaly is above .5 million square kilometers. Arctic ice extent is within 2 std devs. of average and Antarctic ice anomaly at +1.2 MKm2 is greater than 2 std. devs. above average. It doesn’t look likely that Chris Turney will make another trip South aboard the Akademik Shokalskiy any time soon.
Re: Ptarmigan2 and his posting of http://www.harvard.edu/president/news/2014/confronting-climate-change, it is looking as if Harvard University is leading the politically correct parade, viz first Pres. Summers and his departure, then this.
Ian M
I would not pay too much attention to the DNMI polar temperatures since historically they are very unstable and only reach/exceed the lower limits on rare occasions.
Anthony,
Yes, of course it was cold in the USA this winter. But it was rather warm in Europe. This really hasn’t got much of anything to do with anything.
REPLY: be sure to repeat that when we have a heat wave this summer and I report on that and the MSM cites it as proof of global warming/climate change/doom. – Anthony
Alan Robertson says:
April 7, 2014 at 3:27 pm
Catastrophic anthropogenic global cooling! Back to the future! Retro ’70s scaremongering.
Sulfate aerosols! Yeah, that’s the ticket! We still need to freeze in the dark to appease the Goddess, who is angry at the mess we are making.
Plus of course man-made global warming from evil CO2 also causes global cooling, when needed.
I’d have to agree with Lawrence Todd. I’ve seen temperature charts from decades in the past and they are extremely squiggly.
OMG – Do you SEE how RED the planet is? Except for that small swirly cool blue bit, we’re burning the planet to a cinder!!!
Very impressive. This is what happens when the natural cycle is cooling and apparently, enough so for over the last decade now, to completely offset the warming from greenhouse gases/CO2.
With the PDO value shifting to negative around a decade ago, we are seeing global weather patterns that are similar to when the last time the PDO was negative………the 1970’s. (It was positive during the warming in the 80’s/90’s)
You can watch a similar month to the one depicted in this video in the frigid Winter of 1976/77/
Go to the link below and put in a starting date of 1976-YEAR MONTH-12 and DAY-25
Hit the + above DAY to manually advance a day at a time from Christmas, through January 1977.
If you want to make a loop of it, you should put in the ending date when you want it to stop at the bottom. I prefer to hit the + and – buttons as it allows for a close look for however long the viewer needs to examine each frame.
http://www.hpc.ncep.noaa.gov/ncepreanal/
During the frigid Winter of 1976/77, California also had a severe drought.
CodeTech says:
April 7, 2014 at 3:51 pm
“OMG – Do you SEE how RED the planet is? Except for that small swirly cool blue bit,…”
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Here in flyover country, we’re about the only holdouts left against the Global Statists and POTUS is trying his best to change that.
In Jan 06, the whole State of Wyoming seems to be an anomalous spur of coldness. WUWT?
“This is what happens when the natural cycle is cooling and apparently, enough so for over the last decade now, to completely offset the warming from greenhouse gases/CO2.”
So nobody gets the wrong impression that should be “completely offset the ADDITIONAL warming that was expected during the last decade by global climate models and CAGW theory, from the continuation of greenhouse gases/CO2 going up the entire time”.
I know its warmer now than it was 150 years ago and I would “guess” half of the beneficial warming of 1 degree C came from the increase in CO2. Many of those that label me and others as deniers, don’t realize this.
Our local paper has been very open minded in allowing me to write articles on weather and climate going back 30 years(when I was chief meteorologist at a local tv station).
I’m grateful for their continued willingness to publish both sides of this issue at time when some are refusing to allow skeptics to make authentic contributions on science related to this political issue.
However, they picked the title:
“COMMUNITY COMMENT: Carbon dioxide increase not to blame for global warming”
The implication was probably unintentional by them.
http://www.courierpress.com/news/2014/apr/04/carbon-dioxide-increase-not-to-blame-for-global/
Much to the dismay and loud d*nials of climatists, it is a further sign that we are, in fact cooling.