NOAA Relies on ‘Russian Collusion’ to Claim January Was Hottest Month on Record

Stephen Wilde March 2, 2020 at 1:17 am
Hi WX “When you refer to stratospheric air descending into the lower [troposphere] what do you say happens to the tropopause?”
—

Hi Stephen.

One of the first things I noted when the northern-hem subtropical jetstream accelerated to ~410km/h in late Nov and early Dec 2019 was that the altitude of the core of the fastest jets had fallen from 34,000 ft down to 30,000 ft, approximately a 5k ft drop. At the time I presumed this meant the tropopause must have fallen lower as well (by which I meant the troposphere above mid-lats to sub-tropic). I have not confirmed that. Evidence of it should be present in ADS-B data from jet flights recording humidity, and also radiosonde, but I’m too busy since observing the dynamics to check on this aspect. But yes, that’s what I supposed had occurred. Have noticed and logged a drop in altitude of the upper-level humid layer during the past 3 to 6 months?

“… Descending air will always cause clouds to dissipate. In winter less clouds will allow more energy to escape to space and in summer will allow greater surface heating at the surface from insolation so the net outcome depends on location and timing. …”

Yes, agree all.

“… Also, descent and less clouds in one place causes uplift and more clouds in another place so again the net outcome depends on location and timing. …”

I began to suspect sinking stratosphere might be involved during early December. I got some push-back about that suggestion and explanation for steeper pressure gradients accelerating jets, initially. Criticism was along the lines of how can a rarefied cold gas sink into a much denser lower-troposphere convecting atmosphere? But since then I have showed in detail how this was occurring, both in observations, and how it could be tracked in detail in ECMWF runs. It clear now that it is occurring.

However, I originally envisioned that it would be falling fairly uniformly but very slowly close to the polar region. And in mid to late Dec I did clearly identify it falling from just above the inversion layer above the about -85 deg S Lat, down to the south polar tropopause level, where it pooled over the top of the polar circle, and then fell into the tops of cold-core lows in the southern mid-Lats, and then into highs in the mid-level sub tropics.

It was never clear if the 0.0% rh air (sinking-stratosphere) actually descended over the polar cell region itself, though the high which began at 39,000 feet (3k ft below inversion altitude) did fall all the way to the ice-sheet. But the bright pink ultra dry air was never seen depicted below the polar tropopause, which was at about 28,000 ft.

Of course in the North-Hem the situation was completely different, with almost no sinking stratosphere over the polar region due to vertical wave disturbances that displaced the pink in-falling stratosphere mostly over northern Russia to the east of the Urals, and over eastern North America and Greenland, and more rarely over northern Europe.

But in both hemispheres the 0.0% rh ultra-dry air sinks from there equatorward. It can be tracked sinking through several mechanisms. It almost always surrounds the fastest of the accelerated jets on the poleward side near the top of the jet. Plus it enters and mixes into the jet flow, and also sinks under and then equatorward of the jets, at around the 24k to 18 k ft level, where it usually enters a sub-tropical High which quickly sinks it to the lower troposphere near to 25 to 15 degrees latitude.

It often sinks to 5 k ft over water before convective dilution mixing with moist air, but I’ve seen it down to 2k ft over ocean, and all the way to ground level over land (usually just after sunset). The OLR will be very high and resulting rapid cooling allow it to sink quickly, dropping surface temps fast as well after sundown.

“ … It would all net out to zero as a result of adjustments/changes in convection UNLESS global albedo also changes because albedo determines the proportion of incoming solar energy that can get into the oceans. …”

I agree it will probably net to zero without other factors being involved, like albedo. What it does do though is amplify the variability range (i.e. what moderated during the warming, when this sinking stratosphere was either absent, or was occurring at a much slower volume per unit time).

“ … So, we are forced back to the issue of jet stream configuration which affects total global cloudiness. Key to that is the gradient of tropopause height between equator and poles.”

Now this was very surprising indeed Stephen. I did read your ideas a few years back so was half expecting something along those lines, but what I found was surprisingly much more structured, quasi-stable and had a lot less meridianal character and fluidity to it.

What I discovered was that the in-falling sinking ultra-dry stratosphere was not falling in generally or very slowly at all. Instead it was more localized and intruding much faster, and in more volume than I’d anticipated.

During Christmas to New Years I was toying with a means to display if ultra-dry stratosphere was even present and falling into the troposphere, and if so, how to display that and map it out. Being familiar and skilled with coding custom WX displays I developed a relative-humidity display for ECMWF to display all humidity from 0.0% rh to 2.2% rh in shades of hot pink, superimposed on my normal full range rh display.

I tried this out in early Jan and the new display immediately detected these slivers and areas of ultra-dry air within the ECMWF observations which are included in the front of each run’s initiating input data. This was amazing as such humidity levels as 0.0% rh could only have sunken into the troposphere from the lower stratosphere, and quite recently, as it would dilute away from 0.0% relative humidity fairly quickly. So it had to be a continuous in-fall of stratosphere if it was getting into the lower troposphere. And I was amazed to find a large patch of 0.0% humidity air at 3,000 west of the Western Australian coast in the observations data. There was another patch west of California at 3 k ft as well.

OK, so that’s what I found was occurring.

But as January progressed I discovered that the in-falling areas were quasi-stable in location! Now why would that be? This in-falling ultra-dry air was falling in only certain locations. However, these ‘locked’ or ‘blocked’ locations were also began to lock and block the Jetstream through mid-Jan, and it became especially prominent in February 2020, as the very fastest NH jets occurred around the middle of the month in the north Atlantic.

What occurred is the jetstream flows within both hemispheres became almost identical in their intensity. Both looked like deep winter jetstream flows (but the south was Summer!) plus very strong and ‘swollen’ flows plus more equatorwards. They were swollen vertically, not just in longitude and speed.

After new years the jets began to take on an induced global STRUCTURE. The structure in the ‘locked’ jet flow pattern was the result of the structure that was present in the sinking ultra-dry air paths! Now what on earth could cause such a quasi-static pattern or ‘structure’ to emerge globally, in what I had fully expected to be a randomized stratospheric sinking process and its locations?

The sinking wasn’t random! The result was the much amplified jetstream pattern also ceased to be random, soon after new years. A prominent long lasting pattern emerged by early and especially mid-January, and it remained more or less in place until this week where it has finally begun to weaken out. That was of course completely unexpected.

I logged this ‘structure’, took many screens of its features, and posted these into Jo’s Unthreaded posts as jetstream updates.

But several amazing new features emerged from this sustained structure.

(1) The first was a massive strongly zonal tropical to subtropical jet, which extended 2/3 of the way around the planet, from west Africa to the Persian gulf, south Asia, then on to southern China, and ten half way across the Pacific, where the zonality ended and it abruptly diverged, north-south. That divergence structure remained in place almost 2 months. That 2/3 hemisphere zonal jet and its central Pacific divergence structure are still there presently, but not as impressive looking as ~1 month ago, not quite as zonal and not quite as strong.

(2) The central Pacific where this ‘divergence’ of the zonal jet occurred, the southern jet drops to the equator region in the first week of January, while traces of jet winds in the southern hemisphere moved northward to meet and join with it, in the central Pacific’s Equatorial zone! And these two tentatively joined to form an EQUATORIAL JETSTREAM from 18k to 45k feet, with the higher speeds around 180 km/h at about 39k feet. This occurred during the second week of January. Yes, this really occurred. I have copious screens of it since early January to now. A true jetstream directly above the equator! This is not supposed to be possible! This jet became about the size of Australia on most days, and covered the same locations were El-Ninios usually occur. I was stunned by this and made sure it was reported fully on Jo Nova’s site. But the most amazing thing of all is that it was STABLE! Like the zonal jet and its divergence, it wasn’t moving much. It wasn’t fading away either. It was maintaining its strength at around 180 to 200 km/h at 39k to 45k feet. It was at higher elevation presumably due to the extra convection below lifting it and the tropopause higher.

No what on earth could do that?! I was astounded.

I investigated the pressure systems driving that novel equator-jetstream and it was driven by two cold-core lows, one on each side of the equator within the upper and mid-levels of the tropical zone. They extended from the stratosphere to about 15,000 ft where they lost their identity in the convection. Then an associated High formed east and polewards of these lows, that dropped from 30k ft down to the surface, in the near sub-tropical zone. When I looked at those structures with the relative-humidity overlay I’d made optimized to detect 0.0% rh ultra-dry air these pressure systems were loaded up with it, descending to near surface levels within them. I made screens of all this an posted them online at Jo’s.

(3) At the same time there were hints of an ATLANTIC equatorial-jet forming as well. And by the end of January one had indeed formed and joined to the massive zonal jet across Africa. Which again was completely full of 0.0% humidity sinking air and was driven by the same complex of two cold-core Lows descending from the stratosphere either side of the equator. And this jet was also stable! I was have in a hard time believing my eyes, but this had really occurred.

This is an image from the initiating observation to ECMWF at noon today. In it you can see the weakening zonal jet, the divergence and the weakening remnant of the pacific equatorial jet and the remnant of the Atlantic equatorial jet at 39,000 ft.

I think you don’t need to feel bad about not predicting this structural Jetstream’s emergence Stephen, no one could have predicted this.

“… The interesting feature of the faster jets is that it necessarily follows that there has been an increase in temperature differentials at the height of the jet stream between polar and tropical air masses. …”

Oh for sure, there was. I captured the temps of the sinking stratospheric cold air, that of course warms as it’s compressed via altitude decrease, but it stays colder than that air around it as it gets to the lower troposphere (not above there though). This is probably due to increased OLR, due to that air containing almost no water compared to the air all around it, so it is generally a cooler to colder air parcel nearer to the surface (at least until rh rises from mixing and thus OLR outflows decrease).

“… The wavier the jets get, or the more equatorward they shift the more clouds increase, global albedo rises, less energy gets into the oceans and eventually the system cools. …”

The sinking air dominates from +/- 45 degrees of the equator, especially from 10 deg to 30 deg latitude regions. It dries out air under Highs and equatorward of them, and this suppressed the lower and mid-level cloud in the tropics. Plus the tropical lows and monsoon, where it even existed (temporarily) had much less rain in it during this Summer’s wet-season. Which has been a bit disappointing. These conditions favor drought so a La Nina would be useful. However, it is my view that this stratospheric air was present in the last cold period in the 1970s and the period from late 1973 to early 1976 was some very rough weather, with coincides with strong La Nina.

In fact all though January I was thinking that if we get a strong La-Nina with these steeper pressure, temp and humidity gradients in the troposphere (which remember, are not following seasonal patterns) this could become really messy fast. Variability is what this dry air brings, and a strong La Nina would add stormy variability to that.

Now add a swollen jetstream that almost reached down to ground level, locked in place for months over some unfortunate country downstream … That would be … BAD.

However, the much stormier southern ocean (remember the cold is amplifying the deep cold-core Lows there, it’s still roughly like winter storms there, right now) is where an albedo spike should be present. Combine that with more ice and more snow for more of the year, and UI think what is where the cooling will come.

However, take note also that the very large pool of ultra-dry air in the upper and mid-levels polewards of the subtropical jets, will lead to increased OLR from the drier air in the mid-level, and this may be a much weaker effect than OLR flux at the tropics, but it will cool the upper levels more and an increase in albedo below should keep it cooler. There are a lot of implications to figure out.

Anyway, I’d enjoy discussing this further with you over at Jo’s threads rather than go on tangents at WUWT Stephen. But as you see, the jetstream is very much the culprit within this vast Russian warm-anomaly, and much will be made of it, for all of the wrong reasons.

But we can carry on this present discussion on a bit more in here if you like, hopefully it doesn’t go to the mod bin again.

WX,
I noticed this particular:

“But in both hemispheres the 0.0% rh ultra-dry air sinks from there equatorward. It can be tracked sinking through several mechanisms. It almost always surrounds the fastest of the accelerated jets on the poleward side near the top of the jet.”

Which fits my hypothesis well because the descending warming air over the poles envisioned in my hypothesis pushes the polar tropopause downwards which then forces the upper troposphere beneath the tropopause unevenly outwards towards middle latitudes where it enhances the temperature differentials along the jet stream tracks.
So, in my view the sinking stratospheric air over the poles is directly accelerating the speed and distorting the tracks of the middle latitude jets.
You also note that the energy released by the process eventually finds its way into the subtropical high pressure cells where the excess energy finally dissipates.
The jet stream track is where the increased energy crosses (via turbulent mixing) from the poleward stratosphere above the lowered tropopause and into the equatorial troposphere below the lowered tropopause.
You are watching the thermal effect of solar variability moving from poles to equator across the middle latitude jets.
It is nothing to do with TSI changes but rather solar effects on upper atmospheric chemistry primarily involving ozone which is why the so called ozone hole has now largely recovered.

Stephen Wilde March 2, 2020 at 8:21 am
“ … In other words, GHGs have zero effect on surface temperature but contribute a miniscule shift in convective activity which is swamped by natural variability. …”
—

I would not agree that GHGs have zero effect on surface temp. I live in the tropics on the coast at ~19S latitude and the ghg effect from water vapor on surface temp reins supreme especially around 9 PM at night during mid-Summer, cloudy, or not cloudy. The 90% water vapor rh at 30 deg C is palpable. The result since the 1970s has been steadily rising MINIMUMS in northern Australia.

But this was associated with a general rise in rh since about 1980 to now, punctuated by ENSO of course, but generally higher with time.

Now, in retrospect, I can interpret this as being due to sinking ultr-dry stratosphere in-falling during the 1960s and 1970s, which largely ended around 1980. And this lack of drier air in-falling after 1980 lead to what we interpreted as a “warming phase”, when we should have been seeing it as a “wetting phase”. i.e. the ‘global-greening’ was the global-wetting of the troposphere, due to a reduction in drying in-falling sinking stratosphere.

In other words, humidity with altitude rose globally (even in the lower-stratosphere by 15%) over several decades, because it was being diluted less and less by lower levels of in-falling ultra dry stratospheric air.

But suddenly the ultra-dry in-falling stratosphere returned during 2019 (why a record just speed was set in Feb 2019 preceding this) and that infalling accelerated very strongly during the past 3 months.

The result is the global rh level must not precipitate out faster than replacement until a new lower equilibrium or water vapor level is reached. We will progress to global browning and the desertification phenomena discussed by alarmists in the 1970s. Thus the minimum night temps, from +/- 30 deg lat of the equator, will attenuate (though BOM will keep levitating them) as the humidity begins to drop, and my Summer evenings will become much more comfortable again.

But the dry air in the tropics will allows more heating of ocean by Sun and a greater contrast from ocean surface to the top of the troposphere—thus the moderated variability will sharpen once more as the atmosphere is entering the “Drying-Phase” (not cooling phase).

As I see it, the sharp increase in OLR with this ultra dry air falling to ground level overland is adding to the normal winter coolness, making the minimums drop faster and to a lower level on average, before the Sun’s photons return.

And that is how the diurnal nights in this colder (Drying) phase are being produced. It means the Sun starts from a lower coldness each morning, and near to its highest rh level of the diurnal rh cycle, which works against faster warming of the surface by the Sun. i.e. it is driest at and just after sundown (so OLR maxes out and cools fast) and moistest just before dawn when it is the coldest.

I have found much more on this but that will do for now.

So I agree that sinking air, GHG and OLR effects may NET out, but the variability shoots up to very high levels in the rh drying-phase and falls to its lowest level during the rh most humid phase (again, punctuated by ENSO and other ocean cycles).

Last night while my post was stuck in the mods-bin I made two eye-opening animations for you to give in a reply post. Here they are, firstly I wanted to show you the incredibly strong and swollen structure of the strongest jet I found in the initiating observations part of the ECMWF runs in February 2020. This is quite possibly the strongest sub-tropical jet ever observed. It extends from surface level (coupled with a surface trough and Lows) all the way to the lower stratosphere at 45K feet (at this latitude and alt in winter it’s going above the tropopause and altering it).

Firstly, here’s a single image of the fastest max speed I found in the observations in Feb:

And here’s the animation of this same jet, at the same location and time, from surface to 45k feet and down once again.

Take particular note that these ultra fast and very deep jets directly alter the surface weather over a large area for most of a week and increases variability and intensity of waves, wind, rain and snow. This is what occurred to the UK, it was not the names storms, those storms were coupled to these mega-jetstream flows that reached the surface, and many of these crossed the UK during late Jan and through February. This one was the strongest but fortunately all of them were decaying when they crossed the UK. It was these that blew the lower level oceanic Atlantic air to the East of Moscow and produced the massive warm anom over Russia.

And here’s an animation which shows the amazing structure of the completely novel E Pacific “Equatorial-Jetstream”. Note the Lows driving it on either side of the equator in the tropical upper and mid-levels, plus the immediately adjacent Highs poleward and mostly east of the Lows which sink the 0.0% humidity air onto Southern Cali, Nevada and N Mexico (arid to desert), plus on Chile and east of Andes (cold dry desert). Why here? I have more to say on this but that will do, here’s the equatorial jet structure from 10,000 ft to 45,000 feet. It has no expression below about 15,000 ft due the convergence zone convection throttling it. But the dry air under it also throttles the convection (and I’m wondering if this feature will lead to a strong counter-wetting La Nina full of the precipitation that must be rained out via ENSO punctuation?).

Wild huh? That structure has been continuous and quasi-stable there for almost 8 weeks! Se how the north and south hem jets ‘cooperated’ to create it? i.e. when the stratosphere begins to sink in, in very high volume per unit time, this is what it does to enable that to occur most quickly.

My speculation on a mechanism:
The question now is, what is this non-visible ‘structure’ which has caused and directed this locked insitu stratospheric sinking pattern, which produced this extraordinarily stable structure in a jetstream flows over the Equator? I currently suppose such a ‘locked’ unseen mechanism controlling sinking in the stratosphere and troposphere, could only be due to a standing geomagnetic field anisotropy (probably a concentration of geo magnetic lines). Which then leads me to ask, does a quieter sun allow the geomagnetic structure to re-establish its full enchilada of features, and this generates this locked sinking stratospheric air? What if photochemical induced thermal variations are not the source of such sinking? What if it’s not thermal but geomagnetic controlled, once the solar activity level falls far enough for long enough, for its own structure to be expressed and have an effect on the stratosphere causing it to sink along ‘locked’ field-line concentrations? i.e. What if TSI and wavelength variation were not the mechanisms all along? And that ozone variation was a significant dynamic artifact of the process, but was not its cause?

Geomagnetism seems to be the best explanation of the emergent structures, so it has to be taken seriously as a cause of the sinking, if it controls the sites of the sinking, and probably is volume per unit time.

I’m interested in your take on that mechanistic proposition.

Lots to think about there so we’ll both have to keep watching developments.
A simple process such as that which I propose can play out in a highly complex fashion and at this stage I don’t see anything in your observations that is wholly inconsistent with my proposition.