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
There is a (largely) fixed amount of “temperature” in any given area. If one area is warmer than average, another will be colder. Unsurprisingly, the two are correlated.
I am unclear how this is news or science?
How the mighty has fallen (Rutgers)
For sure, if we were having Spring-like weather now, it would be “global warming”. How the Warmists and True Believers handle the cognitive dissonance, I don’t know. Worth studying. They seem to have absolutely zero self-awareness.
I’m not a climate scientist. I don’t even play one on TV…but I’m curious:
If a warmer Arctic causes the US and Europe to be colder, isn’t that a net wash? How, does this constitute global warming?
This is a small thing, but I think that in science it is important to use concepts correctly. Misunderstandings and confusion are often the consequence of incorrect use of words,
«Temperature» can not be hot or cold. It can be high or low. Water can be hot or cold, and so can a lot of other things.
Is there anything wrong with the general notion that polar air displaced by warmer air in the Arctic is carried by the jetstream toward the northeastern U.S., which then interacts with warmer and moister southern air to cause nor’easters? I don’t see anything in the Rutgers statement or in NOAA’s discussion that blames any of this on global warming.
There are plenty of suggestions by others elsewhere (and perhaps by the same authors of the above statement) that the frequency of nor’easters is a symptom of climate change, and many of the comments here are a general reaction to the notion that cold winters are a sign of global warming.
But the general mechanism for a colder, stormier northeast appears to be heavily influenced by what’s happening in the polar region, and that has been characterized by warmer than usual temperatures. There’s much debate on the causation of warmer than normal arctic temperatures. But what’s wrong the description above of the mechanism behind nor’easters?
None of this stuff is new. The Arctic Oscillation is a well known teleconnected system that interacts with the position and shape of the jet stream. All indices point to a normal system which rises and falls relative to the mean.
There are a couple of simple facts that even the Catastrophic Global Warmists don’t dispute: 1) the earth rotates once a day, and 2) warm air rises. This means that 100 plus degree F, warm, moist air, is rising at the equator. The earth’s surface is dragging this air along at roughly 1000 mph. Anything less than that is wind. Cold, dry air, at roughly zero degrees F, is also sinking at the poles, at roughly zero mph. Anything more than that is wind. There is NOT 1000 mph wind at the equator, nor is there 1000 mph wind at the poles. Thus, the “Polar Vortex”, aptly described as somewhat like a yarmulke, is a cap of cold, dry air, roughly centered over the poles. It’s simple science! And like a yarmulke, it may sometimes slip down a bit.
Even so, it will always return to its center over the poles. It’s simple science. This little cap, is where it is, and will always be, tethered to the poles, as long as the earth is spinning, and warm air rises. This is true, regardless of the “Average Global Temperature”. Whatever that is.
Yes and when that cold air moves south it will turn to the right because it is rotating eastwards slower than the ground beneath it while warm air moving north will also turn to the right since it is rotating east faster than the ground. This is the Coriolis effect and the reason weather systems rotate and develop vorticity and the reason there are never hurricanes at the Equator.
NB. For the southern hemisphere change “right” to “left”
Back in the eighties when, climatology was still a science, H. H. Lamb (founder of CRU) studied the changes in the sinuosity of the jet stream and the incidence of blocking highs and found that they increased markedly with a colder climate (see “Climate History and the Modern World”, esp. Ch. 4).
The above posting of the Danish Met North of 80 temp is now out of date.
Rapid drop to the Mean curve. From 264 K to 245, real fast.
Warm temperatures in the Arctic cause the jet stream to take these wild swings
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nope. it is the jet stream that CAUSES the wild swings. they have causes and effect reversed.
Three nor’easters in ten days and they can’t think of why retail sales slowed? I think econ reporting is catching up to AGW reporting.
…
Updated March 14, 2018 10:19 a.m. ET
WASHINGTON—The U.S. job market is booming and worker paychecks are getting bigger, but Americans hunkered down on spending last month, a puzzle for an economy that leans heavily on their willingness to consume.
This phenomena is nothing new and why charlatans promoting this alarmist agenda understand little about our planet’s atmosphere and oceans. Every cold outbreak away from the pole requires warmer air to move here first. Otherwise we are stuck in a positive NAO with the jet stream roughly around the same latitude position around the planet, with the pole staying cold with areas below mild.
This behavior is actually the key cog in the major ice age mechanism. A snow machine that builds up around the Arctic causing huge glaciers covering huge areas of continents. This behavior becomes more frequent with lower solar activity.
“ferdberple March 14, 2018 at 6:53 am
nope. it is the jet stream that CAUSES the wild swings. they have causes and effect reversed.”
The interaction between polar air and subtropical air causes these jet stream boundaries and without these there is no jet stream to create wild swings.
Reblogged this on Confessions of some snowlover's and commented:
Multiple Nor’easter’s we have been experiencing is nothing new, and can’t always be blamed on climate change.
The following article provides some information on how blocking can effect these storms, and it has happened before…