Guest Post by Bob Tisdale
The weather pattern that created Siberia’s well-below-normal land surface air temperatures in October 2016 …
October 2016 Land Surface Air Temperature Anomalies (GHCN-CAMS through KNMI Climate Explorer)
…has apparently extended eastward. It is now influencing the sea surface temperatures of the North Pacific and creating an atypical large swath of cooler-than-normal observations that stretches almost fully from eastern Asia to western North America. See Animation 1, which is a gif animation of daily sea surface temperature anomaly maps from CMC Environment Canada for the past 30 days. Depending on your browser, you may need to click on the animation.
Animation 1
If (big if) those below-normal anomalies persist in the North Pacific, they should influence reported global sea surface temperatures in coming months. Then again, they could well result from a short-term weather pattern like the one that caused the recent resurrection and demise of THE BLOB.
Time will tell. Sure would be fun to report on if they persist.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
i notice that also the north atlantic it’s cold pool is growing…. i wonder if the warm waters are just shifted polewards…. THAT can be a worry as then it will massively cool…. no ice = no insulator = above normal heat loss
The Anti Blob?
Then again, if sea surface temperatures plunge, the data will need to be “corrected” to reflect the proper conditions, as forecast in the models.
I have been watching the North Pacific for the last several weeks as a stream of dense atmospheric rivers have been building up at middle latitudes. The last typhoon which ended up south of Japan around 3 weeks ago appeared to be the start of the process. That enhanced stream is then being carried eastward towards the PNW. Note the wind movement set right above Hawaii that then arcs northeastward towards the PNW. That looks to me like it is setting up for a Pineapple Express system to plow into the PNW. The blue wv stream which is heading towards lower Canada is carrying over triple the normal wv ratio for the area. Three years ago I had predicted that this winter would be a likely candidate for the next PNW flood. In another month or so, I will find out if I was correct or not…Three years ago I had predicted that this winter would be a likely candidate for the next PNW flood. …https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/overlay=total_precipitable_water/orthographic=-163.75,32.13,497/loc=-172.106,33.189
re: “Sure would be fun to report on if [those below-normal anomalies] persist.”. No fun if it gets seriously cold. As so many people have been saying for so long (and have been consistently la-la-la-la’d), warmer is better.
The canary in the coal mine is the Athabasca Glacier. If it starts advancing, that will be a “thing”.
so what is happening there/?
Receding at 5m/year.
I was looking at the snow extent as it increased across Siberia, Russia, and Scandinavia as far south as northern Afghanistan and Iraq. Most impressive! Not so many years ago, this detailed and up-to-date information was surely not available. I, for one, am glad to see it; and I can surely see the advantages of having all this info to aid in forecasts and in explaining current and recently past weather.
Thanks Bob
I’ve speculated over the last couple of years that the blob is due to slowing of poleward ocean heat transfer in general and the North Pacific gyre (as well as the Atlantic Gulf Stream) in particular. This could be part of a cyclical oscillation in the ground state if the oceans. In this scenario, warming e.g. the blob would be the initial transitory result but the longer term consequence would be ocean driven cooling. Following this paradigm further, it would make sense that Arctic downwelling and cold water formation, in the Norwegian sea and probably somewhere in the far North Pacific also, is also slowing and thus “drawing” less warm water from the equator.
It is interesting that this near-Arctic cold ocean blob is appearing first in the Pacific – a similar one can be expected to form in the far North Atlantic within a year or two.
Could this be cyclical ocean driven cooling just in time for the Trump presidency?
Now Hillary knows where all the blue went on her electoral college election maps.
winter is coming.
I told you
“See – told ya” – a quote that always reminds me of Brad Pitt in Twelve Monkeys
Here is my take. Oceans become net evaporators after a prolonged period of net absorption, warming the atmosphere with both water vapor and CO2. Eventually ocean heat becomes depleted, reducing evaporation, which results in a cooler, dryer atmosphere. Rivers and streams begin to dry up from lack of precipitation but that makes them more prone to freezing up, which they do, creating thick slabs of ice that slowly build up, creating ice sheets. Under this condition, oceans become net absorbers (no clouds or water vapor to get in the way) leaving us cold, until the oceans are once again filled to overflowing with heat and then switch to evaporation mode again. This process takes a tremendously long time stair stepping up and then down, due to the capacity of oceans to absorb solar heat and short term variations prolonging each phase. The work of long term evaporation likely takes a while, and the work of absorption quickly leaves us cold. This scenario would only be maintained under the present continental positions and ocean currents. Which could explain the seesaw of the past 800,000 years.
Pamela
Why do you leave out Milankovich forcing?
I find it hard to see how something as evanescent as cloud cover and its variations could drive millenial scale ocean heat cycles. As you yourself often argue here – the cycles are no doubt in large part intrinsic. However intrinsic cycles can be periodically forced from outside – either strongly or weakly.
The temperature patterns that you are seeing in the Pacific north of 20 deg. N are those you would expect for a positive PDO.
The PDO starting turning positive around January 2014. The Blob was first detected in late 2013 and continued to strengthen in 2014, and 2015. It still persists in 2016.
No mystery here.
If NASA / NOAA want to hide this, again, by changing the Pacific SST baselines, again, they’ve got till January to do it.
Because of map projection this anomaly may not be as comparatively large as it appears. The similar anomaly along the equator may be more significant
Take a look at the South Atlantic and come up with an explanation for why it’s all cold. Combined with that big cold swath across the North Pacific (as of 11/13/16 on UNISYS) and the South Pacific turning cold, the only warm spot left is, ironically, the North Atlantic.
I’m just hoping we have the wet version of La NIna (meaning, the rain line is well down into California as opposed to being near the CA – OR border).