From the University of Washington:
‘Warm blob’ in Pacific Ocean linked to weird weather across the US
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.
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Could it have been caused by subsea volcanoes?:
Has anyone counted the number of submarine volcanoes and hot springs? The oceanic rift zone aggregate some 46,000 km in length.
Does this result in more heat loss from the ocean therebye ultimately cooling the ocean more??
Alf yes he weather pattern has a rapid cooling effect on the Atlantic.
Because when it drives aload of cold air down across North America it means you have a large pool of cold further to the south which then meets up with the warm air down there. lts this what makes the jet stream stronger which then powers up the Atlantic storms and winds. So leading to the rapid cooling of the Atlantic.
Sorry should have been “the” not “he”.
Reblogged this on Sierra Foothill Commentary and commented:
Some insight to our strange weather patterns. The question is how long will it stay around?
OT Russ besides having an awesome last name, where in the SIerra foothills are you?
I live in rural Nevada County. I was borne in Nevada City before WWII. Spent 20 years as Air Force Officer and then retired to Nevada County. I read your book and refer to it often.
OT I will be driving through Nevada City in late May to teach in the Sierra. It would be good to meet fro lunch. If interested email me at jsteele@sfsu.edu
We may be distantly related, Russ.
The Steeles came out west back in the frontier days (in Arizona, that was until the early 1920’s!), my parents gave one of my brothers ‘Steele’ as a middle name. All our relations last names were our own middle names.
What’s the names of the papers?
Also, they said the blob was caused by reduced cooling, but what is the origin? A kelvin wave that was trapped along the coast or warm water due to La Nina and higher trade winds delivered via the Kuroshio ?
You will find it here, Jim, if I understand your question about paper:
http://www.eurekalert.org/climatechange/
Thanks Bubba. But I was looking for the papers Hartmann had published. I believe I found them on his website and the paper was Pacific Sea Surface Temperature and the Winter of 2014 http://www.atmos.washington.edu/~dennis/Hartmann_NPM_2015.pdf
Circulation is consistent with the magnetic field, and this will continue because the solar activity decreases.
http://www.geomag.nrcan.gc.ca/images/field/fnor.gif
http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/geomag/data/mag_maps/browse/F_map_mf_2010_large.jpeg
The first part of winter 2008-2009 has been characterized
by a stable and cold polar vortex which allowed
the persistent formation of PSC particles. In
mid-January of 2009, however, the most intense sudden
stratospheric warming (SSW) ever observed occurred
[Manney et al. 2009, Di Biagio et al. 2010]. SSWs strongly
affect the dynamics and thermal structure of the Arctic
stratosphere causing the breakdown of the eastward
winter circulation, the build up of a westward circulation,
and the reversal of the latitudinal temperature
gradient. As the 2009 SSW developed, the stratopause
lowered, the mean zonal circulation reversed, and ultimately
the polar vortex in the lower stratosphere split
in two (see Figure 12).
Figure 13 shows the lidar backscatter ratio (both
parallel and cross polarized components) and the depolarization
ratio on January 17 and 18, when the lidar
detected a PSC layer. The layer extended between 16
and 23 km altitude on January 17 and then it moved to
slightly lower altitudes (16-20 km) on January 18. The
observed PSCs can be classified as type Ia due to their
low backscatter ratio and moderate depolarization values
[e.g., Browell et al. 1990, Toon et al. 1990]. This indicates
that their particles are liquid and composed of
nitric acid trihydrate (NAT), as also suggested by the
temperature values at the altitudes of the observed PSC
layer (not shown) which are below the NAT threshold.
Lidar and GBMS measurements at Thule observed
the occurrence of the major SSW, sampling air inside
the polar vortex at first and following the propagation
of the SSW down to the lower stratosphere afterwards.
The contour plots in Figures 14, 15, and 16 show the
changes of the atmospheric chemical composition over
Thule and temperature associated with the SSW. Figure
14 shows a sudden increase in N2O mixing ratio
(mr) which occurred on January 24 at around 35 km altitude
and over the whole stratosphere between days
26 and 28. At higher levels, the vortex splitting and the
vortex edge transit over Thule was marked by a rapid
decrease in CO mr. CO data (not shown) indicate that
in the upper stratosphere (45-50 km) the vortex broke
up over Thule on January 19-20.
http://oi60.tinypic.com/11hzz7m.jpg
http://www.annalsofgeophysics.eu/index.php/annals/article/view/6382/6368
Ignacy, Interesting. Are you aware that all atmospheric gases are diamagnetic (pushed away from a strong field) except oxygen which is paramagnetic (weakly attracted to a strong magnetic field)? Could this be a (small) factor? I realize the forces are small and wind would continually act to mix the gases.
Let’s see pressure forecast lower stratosphere. You can see that the circulation pattern will continue.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat_a_f/gif_files/gfs_z100_nh_f240.gif
Sorry Ignatius is the name of my grandson. Ren.
“The blob’s influence also extends inland. As air passes over warmer water and reaches the coast it brings more heat and less snow,”
This type of warming is what almost all of the warming in the land surface temperature data set is, when you look at the derivative of temp at regional levels.
math derivative (time) ? or derivation?
sorry I’m just learning about this stuff
I’ve looked at the temperature change per day for each station, so degrees F per day. Since most data sets collected have as a minimum of Min and Max, you can then look at how thousands of station are changing daily. In this case I think yesterday’s rising temp compared to last nights falling temps are appropriate, and what I was referring to.
Here is the GSoD summary of the daily change averaged over a single year. The year to year differences are not directly comparable, as the stations each year changes some, but they these are only stations that have a full year of sample, to the rise and fall are directly comparable, and represents the energy balance at the surface where we have stations.
Why this is relevant is you can see that most years show it cooled more at night that it warmed the prior day, this would imply that temps are falling, noticeably falling since the 50’s. And this always confused me, I know these numbers represents the very best analysis of the data collected because I don’t do anything to them. But what I recently realized is that this heat accumulates in the tropics, and it’s stored as water vapor, which is then transported over land by the atm, where it cools off, this data shows exactly this, and this articles validates the exact same process.
So, when we have big swings in the ocean oscillations, that has “warm” spots in a new place, the warm air coming off those warm spots impact land surface temps, I think this change was enhanced in the surface data by using a GHG “surface” model that is used to aid infilling process and all of a sudden a simple movement of warm water becomes a global AGW crisis.
[Inserted “pre” and “/pre” in html to display the table in fixed font format and spacing. .mod]
You missed the next bit following “and less snow”; namely “… helped cause current drought conditions …”
There is simply less precipitation when the winds do not blow as to push water vapor over the mountains. The wording in the paper implies there ought to be more rain and less snow. That would be a timing issue. When winds do not blow across the region (roughly west to east) not much happens except the character of the air in place (in situ) changes.
California has experienced two ‘mega-droughts’ over the last millennium or so (Wikipedia): 850 AD – 1090 AD (240 years) and 1140 AD – 1320 AD (180 years). This spread coincides with the Mediaeval Warm Period. Then there is the 800 year lag between warming and rising CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere that have been evident in recent times.
Older than humanity. First documented
by such Greats as Namais etc. in the 70’s.
Mayhem. Now, that’s a word which should only be used in reference to a teenager’s bedroom
The warm blob should be affecting west coast temperatures only. The East US cold is because the series of lows east of Svalbard turn counter-clockwise and so drag cold Siberian air across the pole down into central Canada and points onwards. It’s been doing that for the past 2 winters.
Last year the blob was more offshore and was noted:
http://geosciencebigpicture.com/2014/01/24/a-new-feature-of-the-pacific-decadal-oscillation/
This year it is coastal. Bill Illis may have it right, but you must remember that we are dealing with anomaly. What really is absent along the western North American coast is the upwelling that usually keeps the waters “anomalously” cold.
Steve Hare in 1997 discovered the Pacific Decadal Oscillation because he was studying the pattern of salmon catches in the Pacific, and he noticed that the catches had a decadal pattern to them. The pattern in 1997 was seen to be nearing the end of one of the decadal phases, which became known as “regimes”. THAT phase then was COLD. It was projected early in the 2000s that the warm phase would look (as I took it) pretty much like what that map is showing. So my reaction to this is, “Yeah, so what is new in what they are saying?”
This is just the PDO and one of its particulars. BIG F-ING DEAL.
This was a waste of a journal’s space and a waste of WUWT’s time.
What we are seeing is not in line with the fish. No Salmon are groovin’ today. Yet nobody ever said there were NO Niño episodes during a cold PDO. Heck, one can see Niño episodes begin and then falter during a Niña YEAR.
We don’t know Jack. We can’t even ignore the pabulum published by the one true path because every bit of evidence is a bit we don’t have, no matter how badly they misconstrue it.
yes.
contrary specialists conferencing, isolated.
lost in ever new narratives spurred by discrete, ‘singular’ events – sort of reapeatedly, common noticed!?
sure ground for the layman:
stay agnostic. Hans
/ let the gods sort them out.
no one knows them gods personally, but every tourist photographs the gold in theyr temples. /
It’s warm because of all the Fukushima radiation that’s building up along the West Coast.
(Not sure if I should add “sarc” tags because I’m not sure if I’m being sarcastic)
Red spot on Jupiter? In a non linear, chaotic system, there doesn’t need to be any new conditions to create anomolies that can last a very long time.
You needed a press release for this??? Joe D and I based our winter outlook in 13-14 on the winters of 17-18 and 93-94 which had almost identical “warm blob” I dont get how universities research something private sector points out over a year before, in many cases years before, makes an applicable forecast based on it, and then the big press release comes from them. Most of you saw what we had in 13-14 and this year. IN 2011 I CUT A VIDEO explaining how a series of 3 major winters in a row would evolve in these seasons. I dont think by any means it was perfect, but it sure as heck warned people to look out.
I dont think I should get any press release, just smiling clients. But not all research is being done in universities and confirming what everyone that actually makes a living out of this knows, that this is a perfectly natural event with similar events before producing similar events now is not major news. In fact it shows exactly how absurd this AGW argument has gotten, that something like this needs an article like this
93-94 is not that close to solar minimum?
http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/images/Cycle22Cycle23Cycle24big.gif
Yes, I agree with this post. Also, something like this is found and called “weather” or “the blob” and it’s big news because the media has conditioned everyone to think that all weather/climate is now human caused. At least anything “extraordinary”. Now someone comes along and calls it natural. But, Joe D and Joe B do great work on teleconnections and LRF. They are correct, not all the good research is being done in the Universities, and I’m a university guy. I listen when they say something, they’ve been at it as least as long as I. Based on Joe’s discussion it’s not even clear we’re leaving the negative PDO phase. 17-18 occurred in a long term negative, and 93-94 occurred after a brief negative in an overall positive. Time will tell if we’re going back to PDO +. Yes, this is not news.
I agree 100%. The AGW argument has conditioned everyone to think all weather/climate, at least extraordinary events are somehow human caused. So when someone comes along as sys it’s natural it’s a media event. Also, there is good work (Joe D and Joe B) on teleconnections and LRF outside the Universities, and I’m on the inside. I pay attention when these guys say something. They do good research. They’ve been right quite a bit!
Ozone is a greenhouse gas that is created by Solar EUV. When there are extreme Solar EUV events, the Ozone layer in the troposphere, stratosphere can warm enough to expand. This is monitored by NASA, and warning messages are sent to satellite operators to move their satellites to prevent atmospheric drag. Less Solar EUV and we get Ozone holes. Ozone holes are like heat openings directly to space.
Solar EUV also directly [through various absorption re-radiation processes] warms the Oceans at the Equator. Even though this was not a large Solar Cycle, but since the Oceans were already warm; some regions warmed more, and the “blob” moved north. As previously stated it take about 3 years for the ocean waters to circulate.
Now we are entering a time period of less Solar Activity. Solar EUV will be at minimum levels for at least 10 years. Watch the ocean temperatures and the size of the Ozone holes as predecessors of “Global Temperature”.
The “warm” blob isn’t actually warm, just warmer than average. An unprotected person will still get hypothermia immersed in it in a short time.
This pattern is nothing new, but the minimum solar activity significantly strengthens it. I suppose that the AMO will rapidly fall and rise ice in the Arctic.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.anomaly.arctic.png
My thoughts are the warm blob has been responsible in large are part for the ridge pattern in the Western U.S.A versus the trough pattern in the Eastern U.S.A and I do not see this pattern breaking down overall until the warm blob dissipates, although it will wax and wane and shift from time to time as it is presently doing but it will most likely establish itself once again going forward as has been the case for the past two years.
The warm blog is a reflection of the sea surface temperature structure of the Pacific Ocean most likely and could persist going forward, since I think ENSO will be near neutral territory overall rather then an extreme El Nino or La Nina condition going forward. In other words the basic Pacific Ocean temperature pattern should stay as is for at least the next several months.
The shape of the polar vortex circulation explains.
The temperature of the ocean may affect the temperature of the atmosphere only to the tropopause, particularly in the area of the polar vortex.
Visible inhibiting polar vortex at the height of 27 km at the beginning of November 2014.
http://oi58.tinypic.com/153sbi8.jpg
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat-trop/gif_files/time_pres_WAVE1_MEAN_ALL_NH_2014.gif
I can see how the blob can influence west coast N.America, but a 2 million sq km pool of warm water with a number of matching pools of cold water on a 500 million sq km globe seems a stretch. How is it going to warm the rest of the world when it can’t reach across the continent to warm the winter on the east side? I think this idea and the ENSO itself may even need some rethinking in a quantitative fashion.
Gary Pearse commented
The way I see it is it sets an obstacle to the jet stream, that is already on the edge between laminar and turbulent flow, just like watching the smoke rise from a cigarette, it switches between laminar and turbulent. So this warm spot is one obstacle, the Atlantic (and the rest of the surface making the “polar loop” will have it’s own obstacles, it can be as simple as the different in SST and Land temps, but they act on the path, which acts on the weather systems, which if long enough lasting show up in climate.
From what I can see, “the blob” emerged and began forming immediately following the deep cold hit in March 2013.
ulriclyons commented
Maybe, the area that deep cold came from was missing a lot of heat that became the blob somewhere else?
Wind driven by southerly excursions of the Jet Stream. Compare to March 2012:
http://squall.sfsu.edu/scripts/nhemjet_archloop.html
Define “Weird Weather” and for what time period and geographic location.
Yeah, the warmist cheerleaders are trying to capitalize on this big time. While on the other side of their mouths, they criticize skeptics for joking when the weather is cooler than average (which happens to be about 50% of the time…). Shameless two-faced bastards!
Please stand by for a profound statement, “it’s a mystery to me I just don’t know”
Soon we shall see. Solar activity drops significantly. Appears few of sunspots. We’ll see how winter will be in the southern hemisphere.
That is an interesting blob, quite large and almost symmetrical too. Its origin is clearly in the area of the Indo-Pacific Warm Pool as the blue trace it left behind itself proves. At the moment, the warm pool itself is bereft of warmth which very likely resides in the blob. The trace of the blob follows the expected path of the westerlies that clearly have provided the motive force across the ocean. The trace is blue, indicating cold water. As the blob crossed the ocean. water level behind it dropped, and cold water from below welled up to fill the vacuum behind it. At this moment the blob is pushing up against the coast, still under the influence of the westerlies. To unravel its history we would have to track back its past motions as well as the past motions of the air masses that have influenced it. Satellite records undoubtedly exist but we have not been told anything about it. Give it two or three years to cross the ocean and start looking near the intersection of the two oceans for any unusual happenings there.