From Rutgers University and the “Nor’easter’s weren’t as bad before global warming” department comes this “story I’ve been telling for a couple of years now…”. See the commentary after this article.
Warm Arctic means colder, snowier winters in northeastern US, study says
Rutgers scholar says warming Arctic’s connection to US weather is ‘no coincidence’
Scientists from Rutgers University-New Brunswick and Atmospheric and Environmental Research (AER) have linked the frequency of extreme winter weather in the United States to Arctic temperatures.
Their research was published today in Nature Communications.
“Basically, this confirms the story I’ve been telling for a couple of years now,” said study co-author Jennifer Francis, research professor of marine and coastal sciences in Rutgers’ School of Environmental and Biological Sciences. “Warm temperatures in the Arctic cause the jet stream to take these wild swings, and when it swings farther south, that causes cold air to reach farther south. These swings tend to hang around for awhile, so the weather we have in the eastern United States, whether it’s cold or warm, tends to stay with us longer.”
The research is timely given the extreme winter of 2017-2018, including record warm Arctic and low sea ice, record-breaking polar vortex disruption, record-breaking cold and disruptive snowfalls in the United States and Europe, severe “bomb cyclones” and costly nor’easters, said Judah Cohen, director of seasonal forecasting at AER and lead author of the study.
In their study, Cohen, Francis and AER’s Karl Pfeiffer found that severe winter weather is two to four times more likely in the eastern United States when the Arctic is abnormally warm than when the Arctic is abnormally cold. Their findings also show that winters are colder in the northern latitudes of Europe and Asia when the Arctic is warm.
Paradoxically, the study shows that severe winter weather in the western United States is more likely when the Arctic is colder than normal.
The researchers found that when Arctic warming occurred near the surface, the connection to severe winter weather was weak. When the warming extended into the stratosphere, however, disruptions of the stratospheric polar vortex were likely. These disruptions usually cause severe winter weather in mid- to late winter and affect large metropolitan centers of the northeastern United States.
“Five of the past six winters have brought persistent cold to the eastern U.S. and warm, dry conditions to the West, while the Arctic has been off-the-charts warm,” Francis said. “Our study suggests that this is no coincidence. Exactly how much the Arctic contributed to the severity or persistence of the pattern is still hard to pin down, but it’s becoming very difficult to believe they are unrelated.”
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Of course, Nor’easters are nothing new. Even before climate numptys like Cohen and Francis tried to carbon-spin the reason for them, they were bad. For example:
Ash Wednesday 1962: The Most Extreme Nor’easter on Record to Hit the Mid-Atlantic Coast
Ash Wednesday is remembered by some on the East Coast as more than a Christian holy day. In 1962, it brought the most extreme nor’easter on record to the mid-Atlantic states.
The March 1962 Ash Wednesday Storm pounded the mid-Atlantic coast for nearly three days, battering the shoreline, sweeping beach homes, hotels and boardwalks into the ocean, while bringing near-blizzard conditions to inland areas.
“The Ash Wednesday Storm … was probably the largest East Coast winter storm in terms of land loss and number of homes damaged or destroyed,” the U.S. Geological Survey says.
The nor’easter reached the mid-Atlantic coast on Tuesday, March 6, 1962, and continued into Thursday, March 8, with huge waves and ferocious winds up to 60 mph. Protective dunes and sea walls crumbled because they could not withstand this storm’s fury, and that left the coastline unprotected.
High-pressure systems have a clockwise circulation, while low-pressure systems have a counter-clockwise circulation, so this setup allowed for a long path of the air over the ocean before reaching the coast, better known as the fetch. As a result of this disastrous setup, water and high waves were driven toward the shoreline.
more here: https://weather.com/storms/winter/news/march-1962-ash-wednesday-storm-noreaster-mid-atlantic
TWC’s Stu Ostro seems concerned that the 1-2-3 effect might be a sign….
1-2-3 pic.twitter.com/wvbAUTUSEq
— Stu Ostro (@StuOstro) March 13, 2018
Joe Bastardi gets the last word:
https://twitter.com/BigJoeBastardi/status/972603421588180992
Oddly enough, the nor’easters sped by the mid-Atlantic area of DC, and this is one of the least snowy winters in DC. Local media reported: “with just 3.7 inches of snow falling in measly dustings at Reagan National Airport, this winter ranks as the 11th wimpiest winter on record.” Is that “global warming” too?
To me, it makes more sense if the Arctic is cold and exports the cold air to the US.
Cheers
Roger
http://www.thedemiseofchristchurch.com
Rog you are right the Arctic was warm -30 instead of -60 still bloody cold.
People in Europe and UK better get ready for another visit from the ‘Beast from the East’, because it arrives on Saturday morning and dissipates into Wednesday next week.
https://www.windy.com/?temp,52.000,30.000,3,i:pressure
I’ve been watching the European pattern developing in the models since last Saturday, and it has only gotten more established with each run. Sunday into Monday looks the worst.
It looks more like a hamster from the east. Forecast temperatures dropping from around 12C now to 7 C Saturday 3C Sunday and back up to 9 C on Monday. Mind you, forecasts and reality are not necessarily the same thing. If only they had more money….
tonyb
wow! We’ve gotten much more snow than that in central NC. Probably at least a foot or so, all told.
When weather is climate, “whether it’s cold or warm”……like winning a race, even in last place.
Poetic and funny.
Here in New Hampshire, we’re being battered by the third nor’easter in 12 days, this one bringing a heavy dose of snow of possibly 20″ or more. Damn “global warming”! Or is that “climate change”? “Global weirding”? But fossil fuels, which are keeping us warm, and keeping the lights on are “evil”. Yeah.
“but it’s becoming very difficult to believe they are unrelated.” Believe. Exactly. She cannot even go back to cross-reference weather in 1962. And weather was ‘happening’ 100,000 years before that. And 100,000 years before that. And…
These are climate scientist children with a very narrow vision, most of it focused on justifying their existence in time for the next funding round.
Just imagine what might have been accomplished in important research areas if the time, effort and money had been put into them instead of this utter waste of resources.
Last Sat (3/10), I was talking to a local farmer here in S. VT, we were marveling on the recent 20+ incher. Hadn’t had one in years. Now another one within 3 days. I do like this weather.
Why do climate prognosticators seem to have absolutely no knowledge of basic thermodynamics? Shouldn’t a good course on thermodynamics be a core requirement of anyone studying climate?
Precisely David L:
They gaze at their computers and puzzle how the clouds work and none of them appear to have a clue how the Rankine Cycle works, where the 680 WattHr/ kg
agent heat of water goes or how all that ice growing in the cirrus clouds gets there.
I was associated with a climatology professor/scientist. He came to us one day to ask a very fundamental question about meteorology and thermodynamics. We were quite amazed he did not have even this most basic understanding. He knew how to manipulate equations and do programming. However, the extent of many climatologists’ knowledge about atmospheric physics seems rather limited.
They seem to all be mathematics, economics and statistics refugees looking for a job very few of them come form any actual hard science background. Even the big names often commented on here in the field Gavin Schmidt degree in Mathematics, Michael E. Mann degree in geology and geophysics there isn’t a science degree among them all. Among the critics I know Roy Spencer and Judith Curry both have science degrees so it would be interesting to actually list the credentials of all the climate zoo personalities.
There are thousands of PhD atmospheric scientists in every university and government agency( that is remotely associated with climate and environment) in the world. The problem is that the ones that started to believe in global warming started to take over all the faculties of Atmospheric science in the 1970s. Once they became department chairmen of those departments ; to get your PhD in Atmospheric science you had to be a believer in global warming. They then spread and infiltrated the meterology, geology, and environmental professions. Today every Atmospheric science faculty at any university is actually THE FACULTY OF GLOBAL WARMING. Non believers are shunned and have their careers ruined and they cant get published. After the warmers took over the universities; government agencies had no choice but to hire these global warmers (Where else would they be able to hire an atmospheric scientist from?). After that it was child’s play to have the media fall in line and then school boards all across the world started teaching AGW as well. Soon after that the politicians fell in line. So we have a new generation entering the global warming faculties in the universities having been indoctrinated in AGW from a very early age. What a mess!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And not for the first time, I am pleased to point out that, according to NOAA, recent winters in the Northeast have been un usually mild:
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2018/01/04/noaa-erase-anomalously-cold-winters/
So either NOAA’s adjustments are fraudulent, or Jennifer Francis and her chums are talking through their hats!!
I thought that this “unnatural” mildness was PROOF of AGW. Weren’t we all suppose to worry and fret about coming generations of children who wouldn’t know anything at all about snow?
(the “lack of knowledge of snow” claim may be true in a different sense, the government schools are such ministers of propaganda and indoctrination that they might pervert the minds of children to consider the snow they play in to be pixy magic or ash from a far away planet)
“Warm temperatures in the Arctic cause the jet stream to take these wild swings,”….
.the jet stream taking these wild swings is causing warmer temps in the Arctic
“”These disruptions usually cause severe winter weather in mid- to late winter and affect large metropolitan centers of the northeastern United States.””
…and she just said without “these disruptions” it causes severe winter weather in large metropolitan centers of the western United States
…I swear you can’t make this up…..sh1ts gonna happen somewhere sometime
“…talking through their hats!!”…..of course they are….they went looking for something a warmer Arctic causes…not what causes a warmer Arctic
“The researchers found that when Arctic warming occurred near the surface, the connection to severe winter weather was weak. When the warming extended into the stratosphere, however, disruptions of the stratospheric polar vortex were likely.”
A weak vortex will cause surface warming…..a strong vortex will suck it up into the stratosphere
How is it any different than what happened in the 60s. Just returning to past weather patterns? We used to call it an Arctic front. The jet stream stays north or moves south. As it always has
Yes, in the words of Glenn “Instapundit” Reynolds, its time to embrace the empowering word “and”…
“Exactly how much the Arctic contributed to the severity or persistence of the pattern is still hard to pin down, but it’s becoming very difficult to believe they are unrelated.”
Correlation does not imply causation, except when climate change might be involved. But even if there is a causal relationship, it might be the reverse of what is assumed. Instead of a warmer Arctic causing colder, snowier winters in the northeastern US, it might be the cold air heading south that is leaving the Arctic a bit warmer than it otherwise would be. In other words, what’s being observed could be a periodic weather event rather than climate change. Time will tell.
The warmer Arctic was caused by a large flow of warm air moving into the eastern side of the arctic region. So was that flow being pushed or pulled? When that warm air moved north into the region does the expansion of the warmed air in the region cause the cold out pouring of air to the south?
Hooray! It another study based on computer models.
————————
Warm Arctic episodes linked with increased frequency of extreme winter weather in the United States
Recent boreal winters have exhibited a large-scale seesaw temperature pattern characterized by an unusually warm Arctic and cold continents. Whether there is any physical link between Arctic variability and Northern Hemisphere (NH) extreme weather is an active area of research.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-02992-9
Happy anniversary of the Great Blizzard of 1888.
… and the Blizzard of ’78
Nor’Easters are all caused by human CO2 emissions, didn’t you know?
little surprise its been clear for sometime they been looking for ‘any’ way to link a cold winter with AGW. but when your ‘scientific approach ‘ is really heads you lose , tails I win , you can always fund the ‘proof’ you need,
If not intentional, “fund the proof you need” is most fitting.
It looks like, at this particular moment, the arctic temperature is just about bang on normal. link Maybe the timing is another example of the Gore effect.
It’s the other way around, a colder US creates a warmer arctic.
When arctic air slides south, southern air moves north to replace it.
This is what Marcel Leroux described in his paper The Mobile Polar High: a new concept explaining present mechanisms of meridional air-mass and energy exchanges and global propagation of palaeoclimatic changes. Global and Planetary Change, 7 (1993) 69-93.
My take on this is as follows:-
Type 1 circulation is zonal in character and is characterised by climatic periods of mid-latitude warming as the polar regions are isolated from the general circulation and therefore retain their cold air.
Type 2 circulation is meridional in character and is characterised by climatic periods of mid-latitude cooling as warm maritime air is preferentially advected into the polar region where the arctic warms and the transported heat is then lost to space. Subsequently the now cooled arctic air is advected south over the adjacent continental land masses of Canada and Siberia leading to bitterly cold winters.
I may have been conceived during this storm. We lived in Philadelphia PA. I was born on Dec 10 of that year?
Mac
“I may have been conceived during this storm”
Is this a good thing….or a bad thing ?
Well,
From my perspective it was a good thing.
From Dad’s perspective it would have been a good thing.
Mom says she does not remember, that might be a good thing.
Mac
Well, wouldn’t it make sense that in order for the great ice sheets to come into being the temperature would have to have been warm enough so that there was plenty of open water to provide the source of the precipitation that would fall that far from the coasts?
Anytime air-masses move out of the high Arctic toward mid-latitudes, air must move north into those Arctic areas to replace it. So the effected mid-latitude areas will be colder-than-avg, and the evacuated Arctic areas not as cold as avg. So their “claim” has cause and effect backward. An amateurish error.
I was thinking that it was the warm surface winds entering from the Atlantic side which pushed the cold air to the south. That is what appeared to be happening at the time. That was also the last push of surface winds to move up the North Atlantic since then. This new pattern has held for 15 days so far. It is a cooling pattern. …https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/overlay=temp/orthographic=-49.03,71.14,672/loc=-40.160,70.041
goldminor
Also of interest when looking at the photo above. ls the amount of cloud cover over the northern Atlantic.
Which will certainly add to the cooling.
Plus clouds around the South Pole, I started a new folder for saving daily pics of clouds, …https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/overlay=total_cloud_water/orthographic=168.56,-92.34,672/loc=50.927,-79.800
It’s sad to see what’s happened to Rutgers’ meteorology department. I recall a TV show regarding AGW 15 or 20 years back where Rutgers’ Alan Robock, in response to a mention of the LIA and trying to defend human-caused warming, said something like, Yes, temperatures are rebounding from the LIA, “but what does that mean?” Embarrassing. How do these current researchers explain the historically active periods of extreme nor’easter and winter storm frequency and severity in earlier years, such as the 1910-1920 period, the 1830s and 1840s, and the 1730s and 1740s? That it was just colder, and the arctic was colder then too? How would they know about the arctic then? And wouldn’t that be contradictory? Apparently cold causes storms, and warmth causes storms. It seems to me that this has been a standard winter, where the Pacific-North American pattern has become entrenched, and, while we haven’t had the serious cold we had in the northeast and upper Midwest that occurred in December (and which was theorized to recur in February but didn’t), we retained an active PNA pattern which resulted in several nor’easters in a short time, but a series which is certainly far from unprecedented. It’s not just Rutgers; it seems most if not all western academia and research institutions have metastasized. Maybe the Russians have better atmospheric science education.
one thing that comes out loud and clear in this debate is there appears to be a problem within the learning establishments responsible for the output of climate scientists and in turn their output.
i thought university was supposed to teach critical independent thinking ? where are the big debates within the tenured community, the up and comers with the new ideas to challenge the current paradigm ? is climate science populated by drones all singing from the same hymn sheet ?
The job of a teacher is to instruct and to teach you how to teach yourself. Any other method is propaganda.
Soon the AGW believer’s children won’t even know what weather looks like…..
But, their lives will be a whirlwind of climate change. The present gauge of climate in the media has shrunk to only include last years hurricanes, floods and drought, so this kind of confusion will be a factor for the millennials, especially when the hot gulf waters and polar air excursions combine to produce a high ACE index again this year. climate ambulance-chasers will have a heyday of hindsight!
Makes you wonder….
Was the Arctic region not warm — subjected to series of SSW events with a southerly tracking loopy jet stream, and a anomalously warm Gulf Stream at the start of the last LIA — maybe, maybe not? And was there not a reduction in Arctic ice at the North pole when the LIA started?
Who ever said that a warm Arctic indicates a warm planet? Perhaps they were grasping at political straws instead of science.
Answers on a postcard to J. Hansen.
Does the curiosity of warm water freezing faster than cold have any significance with regard to Arctic Ocean surface heat transfer into the atmosphere?
It’s all in the spin, my good man.
Duh. Every time a huge cold air mass from the arctic slides down to cover the lower latitudes, a warm air mass replaces it in the arctic. It has NOTHING to do with global warming. It’s called weather.
Cardin, it has more to do with pressures than temperatures, geopotential heights- to sound technical. You can be reassured that nobody has yet connected CO2 to that yet, but history provides plentiful precedents for the present patterns (man, I gotta P again).
ln the last few days temps in the Arctic have dropped sharply lower. Should that remain the case, then NE America could be in for a stormy spring. As that colder air will add power to any storms that form, and with the way the jet stream is looking at the moment.
That could be quite often.
I have a peck of problems with the idea of displaced cold.
Particularly when Weatherbell cited the analog years for the present pattern and has predicted this scenario so successfully, it’s spooky.
All cold weather (currently US northeast) is blamed on Arctic warming.
Arctic warming is blamed on CO2
All other extreme weather events are blamed on CO2.
In other words, people need to keep believing in global warming.
People need things to believe in. The goddess, God, Allah, global warming, factual scientific proof of a theory, he environment, weed, computer games, facebook.
It is part of the human condition. We need to have faith in something. We need something to put our energy into. The warming crowd is fully committed until we give them something else to put their commitment into.
My only faith is belief in the scientific method. I worship at the alter of logic. I have no false gods ( or gods of any kind).
You might want to run that through a spill chucker.
Or rephrase it.
Or join the IPCC!
it always ends the same way. Kill the unbelievers!
Ah, more circular logic from the – climate change causes everything, and everything causes climate change crowd.
It’s sure to be the last bastion of “all-inclusive” living.
In late March of 1745, a fleet of New England colonists sailed up the coast to beseige Louisbourg, Cape Breton Island, where the French fleet was harbored. It was used as a base so that the French Navy could sail out and attack the English fishermen, the Bastonnais as the French called them, to destroy their fishing fleets.
On the way the New England fleet ran into a Nor’easter. “A terrible northeast storm” had fallen upon them, and, he says, “we lay rolling in the seas,with our sails furled, and among prodigious waves.” “Sick, day and night,” writes the miserable gunsmith, “so bad that I have not words to set it forth.” The gale increased and the fleet was scattered, there being, as a Massachusetts private soldier writes in his diary, “a very fierce Storm of Snow, some Rain and very Dangerous weather to be so nigh ye Shore as we was; but we escaped the Rocks, and that was all.”
The weather around here today isn’t significantly different from 300 years ago. It’s been snowing now for 12 hours which means I’ll have to plow out my two feet of global warming in the morning.