'Warm blob' in Pacific Ocean not caused by climate change, affects U.S. weather

From the University of Washington:

‘Warm blob’ in Pacific Ocean linked to weird weather across the US

warm-blob1

The one common element in recent weather has been oddness. The West Coast has been warm and parched; the East Coast has been cold and snowed under. Fish are swimming into new waters, and hungry seals are washing up on California beaches.

A long-lived patch of warm water off the West Coast, about 1 to 4 degrees Celsius (2 to 7 degrees Fahrenheit) above normal, is part of what’s wreaking much of this mayhem, according to two University of Washington papers to appear in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union.

“In the fall of 2013 and early 2014 we started to notice a big, almost circular mass of water that just didn’t cool off as much as it usually did, so by spring of 2014 it was warmer than we had ever seen it for that time of year,” said Nick Bond, a climate scientist at the UW-based Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean, a joint research center of the UW and the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Bond coined the term “the blob” last June in his monthly newsletter as Washington’s state climatologist. He said the huge patch of water – 1,000 miles in each direction and 300 feet deep – had contributed to Washington’s mild 2014 winter and might signal a warmer summer.

Ten months later, the blob is still off our shores, now squished up against the coast and extending about 1,000 miles offshore from Mexico up through Alaska, with water about 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than normal. Bond says all the models point to it continuing through the end of this year.

The new study explores the blob’s origins. It finds that it relates to a persistent high-pressure ridge that caused a calmer ocean during the past two winters, so less heat was lost to cold air above. The warmer temperatures we see now aren’t due to more heating, but less winter cooling.

Co-authors on the paper are Meghan Cronin at NOAA in Seattle and a UW affiliate professor of oceanography, Nate Mantua at NOAA in Santa Cruz and Howard Freeland at Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans.

The authors look at how the blob is affecting West Coast marine life. They find fish sightings in unusual places, supporting recent reports that West Coast marine ecosystems are suffering and the food web is being disrupted by warm, less nutrient-rich Pacific Ocean water.

The blob’s influence also extends inland. As air passes over warmer water and reaches the coast it brings more heat and less snow, which the paper shows helped cause current drought conditions in California, Oregon and Washington.

The blob is just one element of a broader pattern in the Pacific Ocean whose influence reaches much further – possibly to include two bone-chilling winters in the Eastern U.S.

A study in the same journal by Dennis Hartmann, a UW professor of atmospheric sciences, looks at the Pacific Ocean’s relationship to the cold 2013-14 winter in the central and eastern United States.

Despite all the talk about the “polar vortex,” Hartmann argues we need to look south to understand why so much cold air went shooting down into Chicago and Boston.

His study shows a decadal-scale pattern in the tropical Pacific Ocean linked with changes in the North Pacific, called the North Pacific mode, that sent atmospheric waves snaking along the globe to bring warm and dry air to the West Coast and very cold, wet air to the central and eastern states.

“Lately this mode seems to have emerged as second to the El Niño Southern Oscillation in terms of driving the long-term variability, especially over North America,” Hartmann said.

In a blog post last month, Hartmann focused on the more recent winter of 2014-15 and argues that, once again, the root cause was surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific.

That pattern, which also causes the blob, seems to have become stronger since about 1980 and lately has elbowed out the Pacific Decadal Oscillation to become second only to El Niño in its influence on global weather patterns.

“It’s an interesting question if that’s just natural variability happening or if there’s something changing about how the Pacific Ocean decadal variability behaves,” Hartmann said. “I don’t think we know the answer. Maybe it will go away quickly and we won’t talk about it anymore, but if it persists for a third year, then we’ll know something really unusual is going on.”

Bond says that although the blob does not seem to be caused by climate change, it has many of the same effects for West Coast weather.

“This is a taste of what the ocean will be like in future decades,” Bond said. “It wasn’t caused by global warming, but it’s producing conditions that we think are going to be more common with global warming.”

###

For more information, contact Bond at nab3met@uw.edu or 206-526-6459 and Hartmann at dhartm@uw.edu or 206-543-7460.

Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert system.

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Bohdan Burban
April 9, 2015 5:30 pm

The Juan de Fuca Ridge coincides closely with the location of this warm “blob” of water … since spreading oceanic crust is a well-documented locus for submarine volcanic and hot-spring activity, this possibility has to be examined.

johnmarshall
Reply to  Bohdan Burban
April 10, 2015 3:30 am

Yes, but the flow of water through the mantle would have to increase by a thousand(?) times to accomplish this blob.

xyzzy11
April 9, 2015 5:31 pm

Interesting – a non-warmist explanation for an unusual event. Not sure if the repeated text is intended though 😉

Reply to  xyzzy11
April 9, 2015 6:40 pm

[Fixed. -w.]

Bill Illis
April 9, 2015 5:34 pm
Editor
Reply to  Bill Illis
April 9, 2015 5:53 pm

Bill, the preliminary Reynolds OI.v2 SSTa for the North Atlantic for March 2015 is seasonally below zero again, and appearing to continue the decline there.comment image

Editor
Reply to  Bob Tisdale
April 9, 2015 5:56 pm

PS: Too bad the blob exists in the North Pacific, and at present, shows no evidence of returning to its pre-2013 values.

Bill Illis
Reply to  Bob Tisdale
April 9, 2015 6:43 pm

3 years ago today. LOL.
There is a North Pacific Gyre that picks up the ocean circulation from the Equator, and it takes two years to make its way from the western warm pool region, then up the Asian coast in the beginnings of the Kuroshio Current, then across the north Pacific in the endings of the Kuroshio current, then flows down the west coast of North America in the California Current etc. etc. etc. These people should just know better.
http://www.ospo.noaa.gov/data/sst/anomaly/2012/anomnight.4.9.2012.gif

DeNihilist
Reply to  Bob Tisdale
April 9, 2015 10:35 pm

Bill, seems that you may be onto something. Traces of the Fukishimo radiation are now being found off the coast of British Columbia. how long ago was that tsunami?

taxed
Reply to  Bill Illis
April 9, 2015 6:58 pm

lts interesting that the map shows how just much of a effect the weather pattern that causes Arctic blasts over North America is having on the northern Atlantic. lt seems to back up my idea that it was the persistence of such a weather pattern over many years is what drew the Atlantic side of the NH into the ice age.

S.C.
Reply to  taxed
April 9, 2015 8:50 pm

If not then It is indeed an amazing coincidence.
Here is N.A. Ice cover 20K years ago during the max..
http://lenoxhistory.org/2014site/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/namQ.jpg

NZ Willy
Reply to  taxed
April 9, 2015 11:21 pm

S.C.: silly, the Arctic Ocean was not clear during the ice ages, pretty pictures notwithstanding.

William Astley
Reply to  taxed
April 10, 2015 3:09 am

Further to S.C.’s comment
S.C.
April 9, 2015 at 8:50 pm
The map which is shown is not correct as it shows vast regions of the ocean that are not covered with ice during glacial maximum which is physically not possible.
For example, even during the Younger Dryas abrupt cooling event, 11,900 years ago when the temperatures on the Greenland Ice Sheet dropped 15C and the average temperature in Southern England was -3C, the North Atlantic Ocean froze each year to the latitude of Northern Spain.
The 75% of the Younger Dryas cooling occurred within a decade. The Younger Dryas abrupt cooling period when the planet went from interglacial warm to glacial cold lasted for 1200 years.
In replied to taxed.
It is an abrupt drop in the intensity of the geomagnetic field that caused the Younger Dryas 1200 year abrupt cooling period. Insolation changes did not cause the Younger Dryas. It is a ridiculous urban legend that summer insolation at 65N causes the glacial interglacial cycle there are 12 paradoxes associated with the silly theory. Regardless summer insolation at 65N was past maximum 11,900 years ago and is now the same as glacial maximum. It is also an urban legend that stoppage of the North Atlantic drift current is physically capable of cooling the planet from interglacial warm to glacial cold with 75% of the cooling occurring in less than a decade. Simulation runs indicate a complete stoppage of the North Atlantic drift current would result in European winter cooling of a few degrees Celsius.
http://www.geo.vu.nl/~renh/pdf/Renssen-etal-QI-2000.pdf
Estimates for the start of the Younger Dryas all demonstrate a strong and rapid rise of C14 (Cosmogenic isotope that increases when there is decreased solar activity and/or a massive reduction in the geomagnetic field increased galactic cosmic rays GCR to strike and interact with the atmosphere causing increased cloud cover.) This change is the largest increase of atmospheric C14 known from the late glacial period and Holocene records.
Is the Gulf Stream responsible for Europe’s mild winters? By Seager et al.
http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/res/div/ocp/gs/pubs/Seager_etal_QJ_2002.pdf
http://sciences.blogs.liberation.fr/home/files/Courtillot07EPSL.pdf
http://geosci.uchicago.edu/~rtp1/BardPapers/responseCourtillotEPSL07.pdf

Response to Comment on “Are there connections between Earth’s magnetic field and climate?, Earth Planet. Sci. Lett., 253, 328–339, 2007” by Bard, E., and Delaygue, M., Earth Planet. Sci. Lett., in press, 2007
Also, we wish to recall that evidence of a correlation between archeomagnetic jerks and cooling events (in a region extending from the eastern North Atlantic to the Middle East) now covers a period of 5 millenia and involves 10 events (see f.i. Figure 1 of Gallet and Genevey, 2007). The climatic record uses a combination of results from Bond et al (2001), history of Swiss glaciers (Holzhauser et al, 2005) and historical accounts reviewed by Le Roy Ladurie (2004). Recent high-resolution paleomagnetic records (e.g. Snowball and Sandgren, 2004; St-Onge et al., 2003) and global geomagnetic field modeling (Korte and Constable, 2006) support the idea that part of the centennial-scale fluctuations in 14C production may have been influenced by previously unmodeled rapid dipole field variations. In any case, the relationship between climate, the Sun and the geomagnetic field could be more complex than previously imagined. And the previous points allow the possibility for some connection between the geomagnetic field and climate over these time scales.

taxed
Reply to  taxed
April 10, 2015 3:57 am

William Astley no l don’t think the Gulf stream keeps europe mild, that’s mostly down to the warm air coming up from the mid Atlantic. But the North Atlantic Drift does keep the european waters mostly ice free. So ice sheets forming over North America would have sent a lot of cold air flowing over the northern Atlantic. Which along with a more powerful jet stream would have taken a lot of heat out of the North Atlantic Drift. So Europe would have lost a lot of the benefit it gains from the North Atlantic Drift to keep its shores ice free. This in turn with colder air coming across the Atlantic would in time lead to major climate cooling and growing sea ice around the European shores.

Tom O
Reply to  taxed
April 10, 2015 7:07 am

Taxed, I will say this much. Your idea is as good as the ones that are in reply to it. I don’t think anyone that reads this column was alive during the little ice age, or the medieval warm period or the last ice age or at any time, actually prior to, say 100 years ago. Yet so many speak as if they KNOW exactly what past climate was. Many are “scientists” that know from their training that what they “know” is conjecture based on evidence that appears to support certain premises. A proxy is a proxy, it is not an instrument, but it is treated as if it empirical data from an instrument. A lot of good assumptions can be made based on the proxy information, but every single scientist knows that they are assumptions, yet they act like they are carved in stone truths. That is part of the problem with the AGW BS, they treat their models as if they are the truth. No one knows jack for a certainly prior to the age of instrumental data – that, by the way is the data that seems to be trusted the least since it is constantly being “adjusted” to modern assumptions – yet everything that comes out of their mouths seems to be “you’re wrong because it was this way, not that way.” Sorry, I accept that there is possibility in what they say, and you can make reasonable projections from it, but there is no way of saying “this is the way it was 50,000 years ago” unless they lived then and can answer from first hand experience. Once upon a time scientists remembered that there is nothing – nothing – that is set in stone, but that was in the days before specialties, and the one specialty that all seem to have is “I KNOW WHAT I SAY IS TRUTH.”

Reply to  Bill Illis
April 10, 2015 12:56 am

It was 11 of March 2011.
Intensity of the earthquake may have a longer term effect on the mixing of cold and warm currents i.e. Kuroshio-Oyashio and Alaskan currents system.
In wikipedia list http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_earthquakes_in_Japan of M8+ earthquakes are at
01 September 1, 1923 M8.3
March 2, 1933 M8.4 Major drought 1934
December 20, 1946 M8.1
March 4, 1952 M8.1 Major drought 1953-4
May 16, 1968 M8.2
September 25, 2003 M8.3
March 11, 2011 M9.0 Major drought 2012
Month of March (spring equinox time) Japan’s major earthquake could have a high probability of causing major drought in the USA (3 of 7 all in March). Two September quakes (autumn equinox) were followed by minor droughts, but minor droughts are regular occurrence, so no correlation is established.
Speculative ?

Reply to  vukcevic
April 10, 2015 12:59 am

that was reply to DeNihilist

Reply to  vukcevic
April 10, 2015 12:31 pm

Hello Vukcevic, I found myself also wondering about the potential for ocean changes from some of these very large quakes over the last 12 years. The deadly Sumatran Christmas quake for one example must have created quite a pulse that would have shifted the very warm Indian Ocean waters out into the Pacific and south towards Antarctica. What affect might that have had?

ren
Reply to  Bill Illis
April 10, 2015 3:07 am
ren
Reply to  Bill Illis
April 10, 2015 3:15 am
old44
April 9, 2015 5:37 pm

With all this talk of Warm Blobs I thought Al Gore was making a comeback.

Andrew Richards
Reply to  old44
April 11, 2015 3:07 pm

warm blob, green blob. warm green blob. i wonder if the ‘blob’ imagery comes to us from the cagw cultist propaganda department?

Editor
April 9, 2015 5:43 pm

And as I’ve noted in numerous posts, the blob (a natural occurrence) was the primary factor in 2014’s record high, or near record high, global surface temperatures.

Reply to  Bob Tisdale
April 9, 2015 6:30 pm

Bob, elsewhere I have seen people writing that this is going to make man are global warming increase. To me, this analysis shows that natural variability is swamping manmade variability. Do you agree?

Andrew Richards
Reply to  kellyhaughton
April 11, 2015 3:27 pm

I hope Bob replies. I am not a physicist but it seems to me you are spot on kelly. if air in each of two identical balloons (with the temp of one maintained at 20 deg C and the other at 30 deg C) were quickly mixed, this would result in a mixed air temperature of 25 deg C NOT 50 deg C.

RACookPE1978
Editor
Reply to  Andrew Richards
April 11, 2015 3:58 pm

Andrew Richards

if air in each of two identical balloons (with the temp of one maintained at 20 deg C and the other at 30 deg C) were quickly mixed, this would result in a mixed air temperature of 25 deg C NOT 50 deg C.

You are making too many assumptions there.
If both balloons have equal internal volume AND are at exactly equal pressures of exactly equal air compositions (same original gas mixture and humidity levels); then, prior to mixing, the the higher temperature balloon must have fewer molecules within it (lower mass) since its molecules are at a higher temperature (greater velocity of each molecule).
PV = nRT, remember?
(T increases, therefore n must decrease if PV_hot = PV_cold
But, once mixed – we assume into a second volume of 2xV, the total energy of the two will be mixed. But N_cold is still greater than N_hot, even at their final equilibrium temperature.
If this were a real-world example, the two balloons will be constantly exchanging heat with the environment (either one loosing heat, one gaining heat, or both losing heat. ) There are additional thermal and volumetric losses in the valves and piping needed to connect the two.
Ever notice that “theoretical, flat-earth-average-disk” models only run in a computer or as text questions are much easier than actually doing experiments in the real world? /sarcasm

TGBrown
Reply to  Bob Tisdale
April 11, 2015 5:46 am

Thanks, Bob — The version of the above article I saw quoted the researchers as claiming that warm north pacific temperatures produced the droughts. It seems to me that a warm ocean will increase the water vapor content and therefore increase the precipitation near the ‘warm blob’. So is it the shift north of the warm water that produces cooler temperatures in the equatorial regions, lowering the H20 in the air available to California. I’d appreciate your comments.

Richard G
April 9, 2015 5:46 pm

Bond could not have coined the term “the blob” because I first heard of it in the 1950’s.

Reply to  Richard G
April 9, 2015 8:41 pm

“The Blob” A childhood horror movie that now makes me laugh.

Paul Mackey
Reply to  jim Steele
April 10, 2015 12:47 am

A true classic!

Reply to  jim Steele
April 10, 2015 12:33 pm

Scared the p out of me way back when.

Bill Treuren
April 9, 2015 5:57 pm

Is it clear that the blobs hot or cold are symptoms or drivers of climatic outcomes.
By way of example when its hot in central US that is driven by weather not the cause of hot weather.
If there is one thing that I have noticed over the last years its blocking highs those blobs could be little more than driven water against a continent.

Pamela Gray
April 9, 2015 6:05 pm

So. I need to fund climate warming because someone thinks this:
“This is a taste of what the ocean will be like in future decades,” Bond said. “It wasn’t caused by global warming, but it’s producing conditions that we think are going to be more common with global warming.”
Dear Lord, save me from what people “think”.

Latitude
Reply to  Pamela Gray
April 9, 2015 6:21 pm

….exactly

Reply to  Pamela Gray
April 9, 2015 7:07 pm

People think?

old engineer
Reply to  Pamela Gray
April 10, 2015 11:17 am

Paumela
Exactly my thought. This is a way of continuing the “we are all going to fry, so give up your liberty and money so we (the U.N. agencies) can fix this for you” without having to defend the CO2 meme.

old engineer
Reply to  old engineer
April 10, 2015 11:20 am

old fingers don’t hit the keys too well. of course I meant “Pamela”

EOM
Reply to  Pamela Gray
April 10, 2015 12:10 pm

No one actually knows what instigated glacial advances, for sure; your guess of a few weeks ago, the blocking pattern, seems as good as any. Once such an advance starts, everyone will think the cause is obvious.
Temperatures may have fallen noticeably across much of the globe, but the really catastrophic changes seemed to have been confined to North America and extreme northwest Europe, with the formation of that huge continental ice sheet. See SC’s picture.
Without guessing or using models, where have the terminal moraines been left? Examining closely topographic maps, the original channel of the Missouri River seems to have turned north somewhere just west of Culbertson MT and the original Ohio River seems to have flowed toward Lake Erie and into the St Lawrence Basin. A terminal moraine seems to run just north of these rivers, including just east of the Mississippi River between St Louis MO and Cairo IL. Further east, Long Island and Sable Island seem to be where the moraines are.
Appling the Koppen Classification System, which usually is a decent approximation of the relationship between conditions, also plant life, and annual temperatures and precipitation, the following seems to be roughly true. The furthest extent of a continental ice sheet seems to be where the average temperature of the warmest month is 0 degrees C. That would include, at the furthest extent of the ice sheet, the average July temperatures of St Louis, Cairo IL, Cincinnati OH, Pittsburgh PA and NYC; Halifax was apparently colder. The other months of the year were apparently colder at these locations at subtropical latitudes. Such conditions occurring for long periods of time seems to be unusual, even catastrophic.

u.k.(us)
April 9, 2015 6:19 pm

“This is a taste of what the ocean will be like in future decades,” Bond said. “It wasn’t caused by global warming, but it’s producing conditions that we think are going to be more common with global warming.”
=============
So, now the ocean is the canary ?, but only maybe ?
Who are the “we” of which you speak ?

Latitude
April 9, 2015 6:21 pm

, but if it persists for a third year, then we’ll know something really unusual is going on.”……
….no, you won’t

ossqss
April 9, 2015 6:30 pm

Reminiscent of the Russian heatwave, but over the water and longer…..

eyesonu
April 9, 2015 6:34 pm

It looks like the blob of warm water that I believe I noticed off the Asian coast 3 or 4 years ago that then moved north to the Russian coast/NW Pacific and then about a year or 2 ago continued its clockwise rotation around the Pacific to the Alaskan coast where it’s spreading along the North American coast back towards the equator.

Designator
Reply to  eyesonu
April 10, 2015 9:22 am

This is what I remember seeing also. I’m curious what it has to do with that 2011 earthquake/tsunami.

carbon bigfoot
April 9, 2015 6:37 pm

The first of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse Continents Pulling Apart is Happening. We have only months to live.

Neil
Reply to  carbon bigfoot
April 9, 2015 7:21 pm

Well, I guess I don’t have to worry about my taxes, then.
I’m off for some marshmallows instead.

Peter Brunson
April 9, 2015 6:46 pm

So Nick Bond who got his PhD in 1986 has not seen this phenomenon before.
So?

SAMURAI
April 9, 2015 6:50 pm

It’s interesting that this 300 million cubic MILE “blob” of warm ocean water isn’t generating more precipitation along the US West Coast given the increased ocean evaporation that must be occurring…
I hope this blob brings some much needed rain to California soon because it’s getting crazy (well, even crazier than usual) in California with government officials run amok with new water rationing mandates and penalties.

Reply to  SAMURAI
April 9, 2015 10:52 pm

The Blob is the reason for the drought. When it breaks the rains will return to normal, which I expect to see this next winter from the puzzle pieces I have been looking at.

Reply to  SAMURAI
April 10, 2015 5:41 am

Check your mafs. You have some extra zeros, 8D

Reply to  Eric Sincere
April 10, 2015 12:27 pm

What,s a few zeroes amongst friends? Lighten up, hehehe.

Frank Knarf
Reply to  SAMURAI
April 10, 2015 9:41 am

Volume is about 60,000 cubic miles

4caster
April 9, 2015 6:54 pm

Haven’t we known about the Pacific-North American (PNA) pattern for at least 50 years? It seemed like a pretty normal PNA pattern in the U.S. this winter, akin to those in the 60s and 70s, albeit pronounced temporally. I don’t believe this is some new undiscovered pattern. It would be better, in my mind, to study why patterns (especially blocking patterns) set up for extended periods, from months to interannually. Also, the comment from one author about this being a taste of what’s to come in succeeding decades is just ridiculous. These patterns have been forming and breaking down for millions of years…why would slight natural warming of a degree C or 2 over the past century (or even man-made, if you believe in that voodoo) cause such oceanic warming? Better to look at solar effects on – and interactions with – upper atmospheric patterns, which cascade down to lower levels and possibly to the oceans. I will still point out my 3-solar cycle bundling theory, two of which comprise the quasi-70 yr temperature (and northeast U.S. winter activity) cycle. This “L-P cycle” (the “L” is for David Ludlum) modulates the stronger 200 yr cycle, which modulates the larger 800 yr (some say 1000 yr) cycle. Putting them all together shows that we will remain plateaued or start trending down slightly in global temperature over the next 35 years, down slightly more in the 35 years after that, then drop noticeably after 2080 to 2120 as the negative parts of each of the 3 cycles begin phasing. After that, we should be descending into the next LIA…from 2250 to 2650 or so. Too bad I won’t be around to verify my forecast!

April 9, 2015 7:12 pm

There was a similar situation in the late 1950’s, wherein there was a “warm” spike in the PDO, after the PDO shifted to a long term “cold” trend. In the 1950’s the “warm blob” fell apart in the third year, and the PDO reverted to its long-term “cold” phase.
Records are poor, but there may also have been a similar situation between 1917-1919.
The warmth fuels low pressure off the west coast, which builds a ridge of high pressure from California up towards eastern Alaska. California gets drought, and Alaska gets warmth, but the cold air plunges south to the east of the ridge of high pressure, and eastern North America gets very cold winters, like the last two.
I am watching the Atlantic carefully. All the cold air pouring off eastern North America is seeming to chill the Gulf Stream, and the AMO looks like it is shifting towards its “cold” phase.
My guess is that we are at a kindergarten level, when it comes to understanding how these Pacific and Atlantic patterns interact, but the scientists who are carefully observing (and not getting suckered into the Global Warming hoopla) are pioneers on the frontier of a greater understanding.

Editor
Reply to  Caleb
April 9, 2015 7:56 pm
Reply to  Ric Werme
April 10, 2015 2:02 am

I did forget. Thanks for reminding me of your timely post. It is interesting how Portland Oregon had record warmth in 1934 as Portland Maine had record cold.
Someone who has time ought study how the Atlantic responded to years when there was a “ridiculously resistant ridge.”
The past winter was the worst I can ever remember here in New Hampshire, in terms of there being deep powder snow without any crust ever forming on top of it. Even with snowshoes I sank nearly a foot. Watching my dog wallow through it made me wonder about the coyotes and foxes. I think a lot didn’t make it, for I can see few signs of them out in the woods, so far this spring.
…if you can call this dank, cold weather spring!

JimS
April 9, 2015 7:13 pm

I guess this is what happens when El Nino gets itself lost and goes north.

Harold Ambler
April 9, 2015 7:14 pm

Want to get this water to cool? Let the wind blow, and let the overturning commence. When I look at SST anomaly maps and see warmth, I at least sometimes think of anomalously calm winds. Prevailing north winds typically cause a lot of overturning along the U.S. West Coast. Wonder what’s going on with those of late?

April 9, 2015 7:14 pm

All I know is the The Warm Blob ruined my winter surfing season here on the northern Oregon coast. We surfers want the offshore winds that are found on cold, clear days. All we’ve had is warm onshore winds day after week after month 🙁
By the way, I wonder if the starfish die-off, apparently caused by a virus, is in any way related to the relatively warm water.

Reply to  Max Photon
April 10, 2015 3:36 pm

All I know is the The Warm Blob ruined my winter surfing season here on the northern Oregon coast
I disagree. Here in WA, we had an outstanding winter season on the coast, and the warmth meant I only had to wear gloves on a few days. New Years Day, for example, I surfed 6 hours straight.
By the way, I wonder if the starfish die-off, apparently caused by a virus
Not sure. I saw some live starfish recently in Grays Harbor, so maybe they are staging a comeback.

k. kilty
April 9, 2015 7:24 pm

As air passes over warm water does it not get charged with water vapor? And since the west coast has parallel and continuous mountain ranges shouldn’t that additional vapor produce lots of precipitation of some type? This smells like a just so argument.

Marcos
Reply to  k. kilty
April 9, 2015 8:40 pm

‘warm’ is relative. the surface temps there are still in the 45-55 degree F range

John F. Hultquist
Reply to  k. kilty
April 9, 2015 10:15 pm

… the west coast has parallel and continuous mountain ranges shouldn’t that additional vapor produce lots of precipitation of some type?
When the air moves onshore and over those mountains then (orographic) precipitation occurs. The Mt. Baker Ski Area in northwestern Washington State reported 1,140 inches of snowfall for the 1998-99 snowfall season.
http://www.publicaffairs.noaa.gov/releases99/aug99/noaa99056.html
That’s a National single season record.
That pattern is going to hit this weekend:
http://www.komonews.com/news/local/Winter-Im-baaaack-Storm-to-smack-passes-with-late-season-snow-299218081.html

Reply to  John F. Hultquist
April 9, 2015 11:06 pm

And the 1998/99 snow event occurred during a La Nina.

Svend Ferdinandsen
Reply to  k. kilty
April 12, 2015 10:22 am

Like Kilty i also wonders a bit.
“As air passes over warmer water and reaches the coast it brings more heat and less snow, which the paper shows helped cause current drought conditions in California, Oregon and Washington.”
Draught is normally connected with cold water along the coast and warm water with sufficiently rain.
What happened with the CAGW meme that warmer air holds more moisture?

Pathway
April 9, 2015 7:32 pm

Just like 1934 pattern.

William Astley
April 9, 2015 7:45 pm

The warm blob is due to reduced west to east wind speeds. The warm blob will be replaced by a cold blob when the mechanism that is inhibiting the solar modulation of planetary clouds abates (wind speed will pick up, as has already occurred in the Atlantic where there is now record high jet stream velocity in the winter and there will be more low level clouds). The inhibiting mechanism has started to abate in other regions of the planet (record sea ice in the Antarctic all months of the year, recover of Arctic sea ice, cooling of the Greenland Ice Sheet and increased snowfall) however the relax time is slower in North America due to the impedance of the Northern America continent crust.
There is roughly a tenfold increase in dust deposited on the Greenland Ice Sheet when there is a Dangaard-Oeschger cooling cycle and a hundred times increase when there is a Heinrich cycle. The dust particles are carried from Mongolia. Both the D-O events and the Heinrich events correlate with solar cycle changes.
Solar observations continue to support the assertion the solar cycle has been interrupted. We will first experience a D-O cooling cycle if I understand what is happening to the sun and the mechanisms.
http://wso.stanford.edu/gifs/Polar.gif
The peculiar solar cycle 24 – where do we stand?
http://iopscience.iop.org/1742-6596/440/1/012001/pdf/1742-6596_440_1_012001.pdf

The peculiar solar cycle 24 – where do we stand?
Solar cycle 24 has been very weak so far. It was preceded by an extremely quiet and long solar minimum. Data from the solar interior, the solar surface and the heliosphere all show that cycle 24 began from an unusual minimum and is unlike the cycles that preceded it. We begin this review of where solar cycle 24 stands today with a look at the antecedents of this cycle, and examine why the minimum preceding the cycle is considered peculiar (§ 2). We then examine in § 3 whether we missed early signs that the cycle could be unusual. § 4 describes where cycle 24 is at today.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-01-13/surging-jet-stream-winds-hinder-u-s-bound-flights-from-europe

Surging Jet-Stream Winds Hinder U.S.-Bound Flights From Europe
Stronger westerly headwinds for U.S.-bound flights are stretching out travel times, forcing some planes to stop for refueling. Trips such as London to New York, a busy business route, are running almost eight hours — 45 minutes longer than voyages in September.
Two Philadelphia-bound American Airlines flights, one from Brussels and the other from Amsterdam, had to touch down on Jan. 11 to refuel in Bangor, Maine, said Scott Ramsay, the carrier’s managing director of its integrated operations center. The journey from Brussels took 9 hours and 16 minutes, about an hour more than three months earlier, according to industry data tracker FlightAware.
Higher Costs
Flights across the Atlantic to eastern U.S. cities in December 2013 averaged 19 minutes later than a year earlier, according to industry data tracker MasFlight.com. Travel times in December 2014 were similar to those in 2013, MasFlight’s data from more than 1,300 flights a year showed.
With the threat of increasingly strong headwinds every winter, airlines face higher costs on those westbound flights with the use of extra fuel and the crew’s time.
“When you were planning to fly non-stop, stopping for fuel costs money,” said George Hamlin, president of Hamlin Transportation Consulting, who has more than 40 years of experience in commercial aviation and aerospace.

taxed
Reply to  William Astley
April 9, 2015 8:07 pm

William its the fact that this weather pattern powers up the jet stream is what leads to the rapid cooling of the northern Atlantic. Because of the powerful storms and strong winds it causes which sucks heat out of the ocean at a quicker rate.

The Ghost Of Big Jim Cooley
Reply to  taxed
April 10, 2015 12:21 am

Are you saying that this is the AMO?

taxed
Reply to  taxed
April 10, 2015 1:30 am

The Ghost of Big Jim Cooley no its not the AMO as we know it because that changes between warm and cold too often. If anything l would say the AMO helps to keep us out of an ice age because its keeps switching between warm and cold. No what am saying what happens. Is that when this Arctic blast weather pattern over North America becomes the dominant weather pattern over many years. lts that what risks leading the NH into a ice age (at least the Atlantic side).

William Astley
Reply to  taxed
April 10, 2015 3:21 am

Yes and there will be an increase in wind speed over the Pacific ocean and an increase in cloud cover. The warm blob in the Pacific Ocean along the North American coast is a transient condition caused by the solar change.
The warm blob, sudden increase in wind speeds over Atlantic and significant cooling over the Greenland Ice sheet and North Atlantic Ocean is observational evidence of a forcing change. Due to the cooling there is the start of significant ocean effect snow on the east coast of the Canada and the US. PEI the small Canada province received 5 meters (197 inches, 16 feet) of snow winter 2014/2015. That is the highest amount of snow on record and breaks the recent 2013/2014 record.

ignacy
Reply to  William Astley
April 10, 2015 1:49 am

Solar activity and magnetic fields affect the temperature and the distribution of ozone at high latitudes.
http://oi59.tinypic.com/5klwzs.jpg

ren
Reply to  ignacy
April 10, 2015 2:38 am

Below you can see the impact on the circulation of stratospheric ozone by temperature. Circulation is contrary to the Coriolis force. Determines the temperature difference. The same is true in the winter. The local temperature rise ozone affects circulation and speed of the jet stream.
http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/isobaric/10hPa/orthographic=-57.74,72.01,454

ignacy
Reply to  ignacy
April 10, 2015 4:20 am

Current temperature in North America. This is the inhibitory effects of circulation in the stratosphere over Canada.
http://oi61.tinypic.com/330fk76.jpg

ren
Reply to  William Astley
April 10, 2015 3:39 am

Let’s see fairly unusual behavior of the solar magnetic field. Magnetic activity as in the previous cycle increased at the end of the cycle.
http://services.swpc.noaa.gov/images/solar-cycle-planetary-a-index.gif?time=1428285002000

taxed
April 9, 2015 7:48 pm

This weather pattern only becomes a worry if it hangs around too long.
Because as l have suggested over the last week or two its when this pattern gets “stuck” over many years it leads to climate cooling over the Atlantic side of the NH. The reason been that it sets off a chain of events where huge pools of cold air over North America flow across the northern Atlantic which in turn cools down the northern Atlantic. Which then reduces the amount of warm air reaching Europe, which then leads to climate cooling in Europe. lts just such chain of events should it happen over a enough years is what l believe lead the Atlantic side of the NH into the last ice age.

Alx
April 9, 2015 7:59 pm

“This is a taste of what the ocean will be like in future decades,” Bond said. “It wasn’t caused by global warming, but it’s producing conditions that we think are going to be more common with global warming.”

Have no idea what the point of this statement is, other than to get global warming mentioned. Is it just lazy speculation, the results of a crystal ball that can make predictions decades, centuries into the future, or just a phrase required to keep the funding going. It is a non-nonsensical statement; A is not caused by B but B we think causes A. Insert anything in place of “global warming” and it makes just as much sense.
“This is a taste of what the ocean will be like in future decades. It wasn’t caused by unhappy unicorns, but it’s producing conditions that we think are going to be more common with unhappy unicorns.

Mac the Knife
Reply to  Alx
April 11, 2015 10:32 pm

Alx,
He meant to keep his paycheck and grants coming in regularly.

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