Coldest Antarctic June Ever Recorded

Story submitted by Eric Worrall

Antarctica continues to defy the global warming script, with a report from Meteo France, that June this year was the coldest Antarctic June ever recorded, at the French Antarctic Dumont d’Urville Station.

According to the press release, during June this year, the average temperature was -22.4c (-8.3F), 6.6c (11.9F) lower than normal. This is the coldest June ever recorded at the station, and almost the coldest monthly average ever – only September 1953 was colder, with a recorded average temperature of -23.5c (-10.3F).

June this year also broke the June daily minimum temperature record, with a new record low of -34.9c (-30.8F).

Other unusual features of the June temperature record are an unusual excess of sunlight hours (11.8 hours rather than the normal 7.4 hours), and unusually light wind conditions.

Dumont d’Urville Station has experienced ongoing activity since 1956. According to the Meteo France record, there is no other weather station for 1000km in any direction.

http://www.meteofrance.fr/web/comprendre-la-meteo/actualites?articleId=8990197

h/t IceAgeNow

Translated version of the Meteo France page:-

https://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.meteofrance.fr%2Fweb%2Fcomprendre-la-meteo%2Factualites%3FarticleId%3D8990197

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ren
July 12, 2014 2:14 am
KenB
July 12, 2014 2:17 am

Yes it was actually nice to hear the weather girl announcing the coldest July record for 100 years, hard to deny the cold weather and the effect of sun and clouds, the minute a cloud obscures the sun it’s damn cold here in Melbourne Australia and lately at night the clouds clear so that little UHI effect remains over the city.
It was also reported that substantial snow is falling at Mount Macedon to the North of Melbourne, I sort of recall that happening back in 1961. I guess this is all new for the kids born in the recent warmalogical decades.

ren
July 12, 2014 2:29 am
Admin
July 12, 2014 2:31 am

Gerard
Just heard on the ABC (Australia) News that Brisbane and many areas of Queensland had their coldest overnight temperature ever recorded. Many inland areas of Queensland had morning temps down to -5 celsius
I’m living through it 🙂 – not much fun enduring freezing conditions in a house which is designed for tropical conditions!

Santa Baby
July 12, 2014 2:39 am

Sky clears and little wind means probably high pressure. And if it was more high pressure than normal of course it means very dry and cold weather?

jones
July 12, 2014 2:57 am

Just where is the heat hiding?
Eh?…Eh?
Is it in the deep ice-core?

July 12, 2014 3:03 am

Stephen Skinner says:
July 12, 2014 at 12:21 am
http://www.gdargaud.net/Antarctica/WinterDdU.html

Thanks for that link. The stuff was fascinating.

sleepingbear dunes
July 12, 2014 3:14 am

ren
I think you meant the Antarctic sea ice extent stopped growing. Based on your graph, it looks the same thing has happened many times before.

JimBob
July 12, 2014 3:18 am

Y’all check around and see if Algore is visiting.

KWG1947
July 12, 2014 3:31 am

On http://earth.nullschool.net/ , I have been tracking the various areas of Antarctica for temperature using that sight at the surface level setting. So far for July I have been able to locate temperatures of about -71.9C or -97.42F. It will be interesting to see what the record coldest day becomes this year with the last record being set at -135.8F on December 10, 2013 by NASA Satellite. The same satellite data recorded -135.3F on July 31,2010. The coldest thermometer temperature was -128.6F at Vostok on July 21, 1983. Got mittens?

Eliza
July 12, 2014 4:06 am

The trend in Antartctia has not stopped. it would have to drop another 1.2 millions square km or MORE and stay there for it to “drop”. Its just fallen to its trend line now and will probably resume its expansive growth within weeks.

July 12, 2014 4:32 am

Brisbane and many areas of Queensland had their coldest overnight temperature ever recorded over the last few days, despite the fact that the Sun rises at 6.27AM and sets at 5.09PM at present, and it is often sunny for over 10 hours, right through the day.

Dave
July 12, 2014 5:07 am

It’s worse than we thought.

pat
July 12, 2014 5:12 am

posting from south of Brisbane…..brrrrrrrr….
10 July: Local France: Alps get summer snow as wet weather to stay
Holidaymakers in the Alps in recent days would have been forgiven for thinking they had come in the wrong season after the region was hit by some very unseasonal snowfalls. There was bad news for sunseekers too with the sun set to stay away for much of July.
Parts of the Alps looked like a winter wonderland on Thursday as summer snow continued to fall, disrupting the usual holiday activities…
The only place you’ll be guaranteed sun is down on the Mediterranean the forecaster says, as well as along parts of the Atlantic coast if you are lucky.
Thankfully the weather forecaster says things should improve in Autumn and September, but nothing is guaranteed.
http://www.thelocal.fr/20140710/in-pictures-french-alps-get-summer-snow
10 July: CBS: Polar Vortex Part II: Record Low Cold Possible Next Week
Meteorologist Megan Glaros reports the polar vortex will be shooting a pocket of cold air our way in the middle of next week, possibly resulting in record low temperatures all across large portions of the Midwest and upper Great Plains, including Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, Michigan, and Ohio…
http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2014/07/10/polar-vortex-part-ii-record-low-cold-possible-next-week/

July 12, 2014 5:26 am

jones says:
July 12, 2014 at 2:57 am
Just where is the heat hiding?
Eh?…Eh?
Is it in the deep ice-core?
*********************************************************************************************************************
No, it is that big yellow thing in the sky 🙂 🙂

tonyM
July 12, 2014 5:50 am

Sometimes it is a bit annoying reading magazine articles.
http://www.gaisma.com/en/location/dumont-durville–permanent-station-of-france.html
From that site I certainly can’t see how it could be interpreted that there were more than a few hours of sunlight rather than the excess of 11.8 hours quoted for June. Even the average quoted seems far fetched unless they stretch the elastic to include dusk and dawn and then some.
Perhaps someone has an explanation for what exactly is meant.

Mike T
Reply to  tonyM
July 12, 2014 7:23 pm

I’d suggest the 11.8 hours of sunshine quoted is a monthly total. Australian stations normally give a monthly average, but then we have plenty of sunshine and a daily average for the month would be more meaningful. I’m not a great fan of Stokes-Campbell sunshine recorders but they’ve been used for a very long time. They do require a manned station, because paper cards have to be changed daily (preferably after sunset, although they can be changed at the same time daily and sunshine hours apportioned to the correct day, giving cards split over two days). Given the automation of weather stations one wonders whether measurement of sunshine is another element that’ll have a patchy record for the future.

Tom J
July 12, 2014 5:52 am

Did Al Gore visit the Antarctic in June?

ren
July 12, 2014 6:02 am

sleepingbear dunes says
ren
I think you meant the Antarctic sea ice extent stopped growing. Based on your graph, it looks the same thing has happened many times before.
Course. But the weakening of the vortex means that the cold air will go now to the north. See temeprature sea.
http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sst_anom.gif

ren
July 12, 2014 6:17 am

The El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is the dominant mode of tropical variability on interannual timescales. It is well known to have significant influence on the Walker Circulation in the tropical Pacific. Large perturbations to the circulation as well as resulting changes in water vapor can change ozone concentrations in the lower atmosphere. The largest changes in ozone from ENSO are seen near the tropopause which is a particularly sensitive region of our climate system. Ozone is an important greenhouse gas and changes in its amount especially in the upper troposphere influence radiative forcing at the surface. Ozone is also an important source of the hydroxyl radical (OH) which can impact the oxidizing capacity of the troposphere and the lifetimes of some greenhouse gases. Observations of the ozone sensitivity could provide a useful way to evaluate the representation of processes such as ENSO in chemistry-climate models. .
http://aura.gsfc.nasa.gov/images/science/20121108.jpg
http://aura.gsfc.nasa.gov/science/feature-20121108.html

Bill Illis
July 12, 2014 6:22 am

Official monthly temperatures at Dumont Durville Antarctica since 1958. Actually June 2014 was the coldest month on record (including the months of July and August which are typically colder than June).
http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/met/READER/surface/Dumont_Durville.All.temperature.txt
Amundsen Scott station at the south pole was warmer than average in June 2014 at -54.6C versus the mean June temp of -58.5C. Farday on the Antarctic Peninsula was also warmer than average.
http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/met/READER/surface/Amundsen_Scott.All.temperature.txt
http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/met/READER/surface/Faraday.All.temperature.txt

ren
July 12, 2014 6:26 am

To investigate the 2011 Arctic ozone loss, scientists from 19 institutions in nine countries (United States, Germany, The Netherlands, Canada, Russia, Finland, Denmark, Japan and Spain) analyzed a comprehensive set of measurements. These included daily global observations of trace gases and clouds from NASA’s Aura and CALIPSO spacecraft; ozone measured by instrumented balloons; meteorological data and atmospheric models. The scientists found that at some altitudes, the cold period in the Arctic lasted more than 30 days longer in 2011 than in any previously studied Arctic winter, leading to the unprecedented ozone loss. Further studies are needed to determine what factors caused the cold period to last so long.
“Day-to-day temperatures in the 2010-11 Arctic winter did not reach lower values than in previous cold Arctic winters,” said lead author Gloria Manney of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology in Socorro. “The difference from previous winters is that temperatures were low enough to produce ozone-destroying forms of chlorine for a much longer time. This implies that if winter Arctic stratospheric temperatures drop just slightly in the future, for example as a result of climate change, then severe Arctic ozone loss may occur more frequently.”
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/arctic20111002.html
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat-trop/gif_files/time_pres_TEMP_MEAN_ALL_SH_2014.gif

Alan Robertson
July 12, 2014 6:56 am

tonyM says:
July 12, 2014 at 5:50 am
Sometimes it is a bit annoying reading magazine articles.
http://www.gaisma.com/en/location/dumont-durville–permanent-station-of-france.html
From that site I certainly can’t see how it could be interpreted that there were more than a few hours of sunlight rather than the excess of 11.8 hours quoted for June. Even the average quoted seems far fetched unless they stretch the elastic to include dusk and dawn and then some.
Perhaps someone has an explanation for what exactly is meant.
____________________
Shifting atmospherics… the hours of sunlight vary because the sunlight is refracted through thick layers of atmosphere due to the sun’s low angle above the horizon and local sunrise/sunset can occur before/after actual sunset.