THE UNDULATING SIBERIAN MONSTER

It doesn’t seem all that long ago that the sun was still high enough to make Siberia warmer than the Arctic Ocean. Those days are done, and now Siberia is a monster, a sort of dragon with a breath of ice rather than fire. It is a huge expanse of snow, bigger than the lower 48 of the USA, and a large amount of Siberia’s north is above the arctic circle.

Between now and early February the parts north of the Arctic Circle experience no sunshine, right down to the circle on the Solstice, and even south of the circle the sun is so low at noon it has nearly no warming effect, unless a slope faces south. It is a situation where the land is constantly losing heat to outer space.  With no warmth coming from the sun, all warmth must be imported. If warmth isn’t imported, temperatures fall continuously, reaching the coldest levels seen north of Antarctica.  -40 is quite common, and -70 is reached most winters.

Snow-cover greatly increases the ability of this landscape to get cold. This year it was established early, and although it has melted back in the very west of Russia, to the east it has increased south of Russia’s borders.

At this point the constantly building cold over Siberia becomes a sort of pulsating, undulating amoeba, a blob throwing out huge globules of deadly chill. It pays to keep an eye on this monster, to see where it is aiming its empty-eyed gaze.

Here is the current cold, from the GFS initial run.  (These maps can be clicked or opened to a new tab for better clarity and enlargement.)

Storms running along the southern boundary of the monster attempt to punch warmth north, as huge storms in the North Pacific sometimes drive milder air up through Bering Strait and attack the northeast. This pressure doesn’t much bother the monster, who merely retracts north and exhales cold over the “warm” ice of the Arctic Sea.  Also the blob-monster can simply undulate west. Look at the map 30 hours from now.

When the blob-monster bulges west, Europe gets nervous. 60 hours from now a sort of counter attack from the west tries to halt the westward expansion.

When the blob-monster is halted, attacked from the west and punched in the gut from the south, he just smiles an icy smile and gets colder. The pink area in the above map in central Siberia shows temperatures dropping below minus 40 (which is a great temperature, as it is the same in Fahrenheit and Celsius).

The final map is 90 hours from now (after which the GFS model has been no good, lately.)

This map shows a victory for Europe, as it shoves the blob-monster east.  However the victory is selfish, and shows they don’t think much of the USA, as a lot of cold pours north over the Pole. However look to the upper left. Some of the cold is curling around the top to the west, and is thinking of sneaking down on Europe from the north.

Various analog years show a pattern where Europe holds winter off for a while, but later in the winter the blob-monster comes oozing west on cruel east winds. I’m wondering if its first attack might be one of these sneak attacks, curling around from the north.

LOCAL VIEW — FLORIDA COLDER THAN BOSTON

I’m up early. It is cold but a little less windy. The wind must be on shore in Boston, for it is up to 33.  (+1 Celsius) Meanwhile in Jacksonville I see it is 28, (-2 Celsius) and in a western suburb of Jacksonville it is 23. (-5 Celsius) In Tallahassee I see it is 25 at 4:00 AM. So they match me, in the hills of New Hampshire, for we are also at 25. -4 Celsius)

I must be a mean sort of fellow, for I always get a snarkie satisfaction when the people who bailed out on their communities to flee the northern cold get chased down by the cold.  However  I do feel for the farmers down there, who must have their sprinklers spraying like mad, to try to beat the frost.

This is the peak of the cold wave, sort of like when the wave has charged up the beach and is all around your sand castle, but the water is just starting to suck back down to the next wave. What weather geeks are focused on is how soon the next wave will come, and how far back the cold will draw before the next wave comes charging.

In the winter of 1976-1977 the cold just kept coming, in some ways more like a stream than a wave, straight down from the North Slope of Alaska, all December. However Joe Bastardi has been examining other analog winters on his blog at Weatherbell, and in other analog cases there was what he calls “a pull back” during December, before winter grew more extreme again in January.

It is a case of pick-your-poison, for if we do get a break in December, the winters seem to last longer. In 1976-1977 the worst was over in early February, though by no means did it become spring-like, until a day I still fondly remember, in mid-March.

We only had a dust of snow last night. At 5:15 AM it is still starry out, with the the starlight slightly dimmed by some sort of high haze. There is still no sign of dawn. An owl gave me a single “Whoo-hoooo” just as I turned to go in. Maybe it was a “good morning”, though it sounded more like something vaguely rude.

Here is a map of the high tide of our first arctic outbreak:

LOCAL VIEW —BURNING LEAVES—

(Click to enlarge and clarify.)

The cold air has charged south, and it is colder in south Texas near the Gulf of Mexico than up here in southern New Hampshire, near the North Atlantic. At 2:00 AM, as I’m stirred by insomnia (and aching muscles due to leaf-raking,) it is fifty degrees warmer here than at the same latitude in Nebraska, 52 here and 2 there. (+11 here and -17 there, Celsius.)

It’s all coming this way. The snow has covered Canada and expanded down into the northern Great Plains in the USA, (though it has retreated in western Russia.)

However despite my dread about the approaching onslaught, I actually did live up to my resolution to avoid worry, and to enjoy the benign weather while it lasts.  This stuff has happened before. An article from The Weather Review in 1896 describes warmth on the east coast, as it hit minus fifty in Montana: http://docs.lib.noaa.gov/rescue/mwr/024/mwr-024-11-0414.pdf  (Article at bottom of page.)

I decided I should take care of the leaves in the pasture, before the snow presses then all down to a brown wad.

Most have to get a “burn permit” to burn leaves, (though many ignore the law), however the bureaucrats haven’t caught up to the farmers yet, and farms require no permit. If I was in the mood to worry, I’d worry about the inevitable fee for a farm-permit which our future will inevitably hold, but maybe I’ll get lucky and die first.

In any case, I took the easy route and burned the leaves out in the pasture, rather than lugging them all to the garden to use as mulch. (Rather than the drifts of leaves becoming a brown wad that kills the grass, the ashes will fertilize.) I was glad I did it, for it never fails to generate a lovely mood at the Childcare.

On the amber autumn afternoons
When the forest has finished disrobing
Before snow’s bed sheets tuck lullaby tunes,
When Geese, who want to spin the globe, wing
Silhouettes in western skies, my rake sighs
Dry leaves to piles, and I lower to light
One leaf with one match. The children’s bright eyes
Spot the sight, and all rush up in delight.

The flames spread, the rake scuffs, and hours pass
With nothing more needed, for few jobs draw
So many helpers as turning a mass
Of rustling leaves to hot, orange awe
And the sweetest smog and the quiet delight
Of sparks swirling up in a deepening night.

 Photo Credit: http://ozarkhomesteader.wordpress.com/2009/11/09/burn-baby-burn-using-fire-in-the-garden/

ARCTIC SEA-ICE RECOVERY —SURGES AND OUTBREAKS—

The very cold air over the Pole and Siberia has moderated.  When there is a rebound of temperatures, one has to do some detective work, and see where the cold air has gone.

Below are the DMI arctic maps for November 7th, 9th, and 11th. (Barometric pressure to the left, temperature to the right.) If you focus on the temperature maps you can see the deep blue fade away north of Greenland, as an invasion of milder air comes north through the Bering Strait.  Whenever there is an invasion of air there is usually an arctic outbreak somewhere else. Seldom do the opposing forces politely mix.

In this case the invading Pacific air split the cold air into two parts, the Eurasian part and the Canadian Part. The Canadian part is stronger, as is shown by the high pressure building there. The Eurasian outbreak is not as obvious, for a lot of the outbreak poured down the east coast of Greenland and out into Fram Strait, giving Svalbard very cold temperatures and chilling the North Atlantic. As soon as such air gets over open water it rapidly  warms at the surface, and appears to “disappear” from temperature maps, though in fact it had a lot to do with the series of storms rolling along the arctic coast of Eurasia.

 

 

The storms that have been rolling along the north coast of Eurasia have been interesting, for beneath them they carried a huge shot of milder temperatures on west winds.  This surge A.) led to some thawing of the Siberian snow-pack along its outer edge, B.) bumped some very cold air into the Pacific where it met a typhoon and became a huge gale, and C.) has a backwash of cold east winds to its north. The current temperature map of Asia still shows the milder air attacking the east Siberian cold from the southwest, as the backwash starts to  build a new pool of cold air in central Siberia. (Map created by Dr Ryan Maue at the Weatherbell site.) (Click to enlarge and clarify)

 

Europe needs to keep an eye on the backwash. As the Siberian cold builds the west-to-east surges settle south, and the east-to-west back wash can extend to Scandinavia and even Britain, giving them their most frigid winter temperatures.

The cold air pouring out over the Pacific is messing with my head big time. I have been relying on my memory of 1976-1977’s brutal winter, rather than digging up old maps, and that is obviously a mistake, as things are not happening as I remember them happening.  Rather than cold air crossing over to North America just north of the Bering Strait, mild air is pouring north in the Bering Strait, but the arctic outbreak is coming south in North America just the same.  It is obviously time to shut up, and just observe.

There was a lot of incorrect blather  in the media about the huge gale that brewed up, incorperating all the juice of a typhoon into one of those amazing North Pacific monster storms. They are so big they make a super-typhoon look small, and though they may not have a core of 100+ mph winds, they can have winds of hurricane force over an area far larger than a hurricane does. (More Maue maps from Weatherbell.) The first map shows the gale near its peak, and the second shows it starting to fill and weaken now. (Click to enlarge and clarify; open-to-new-tabs to compare.)

It is fairly obvious the winds from such monster storms are not going to allow air to cross the Bering Strait west-to-east.  Instead Siberian air charges east beneath such storms, to chill the north Pacific but to be much moderated before reaching North America.

(The winds were so strong as they poured off the Asian mainland that they actually warmed the coastal waters, despite being frigid, for they pushed the surface water out to sea and caused up-welling along the coast. This led to odd sea-surface temperature anomaly maps. While the frigid air chilled the western North Pacific, making parts to the west shift from above-normal to  below-normal, and be tinted blue on maps, right along the coast there was a strip of bright crimson, due to the up-welling. Bright crimson represented three degrees above normal, but normal is very cold in those waters. Usually the sea water is below the freezing point of fresh water and about to freeze. So don’t be fooled by the bright crimson and think that water is hot. However do be aware that the refreeze of those waters, [called “The Sea of Okbotsk,”] may be briefly delayed, despite very cold winds pouring over those waters.)

These giant Pacific gales suck up huge amounts of heat into the upper atmosphere, and all that rising air must descend somewhere, and therefore these storms tend to “pump the ridge” of high pressure in front of them. It is the other side of that ridge that is now delivering the very cold air south through Canada to the USA. However I have to put on my thinking cap, because the origins of that cold air are not from where I supposed.

In like manner huge gales blow up in the North Atlantic, and pump ridges in front of them. This currently seems to be happening over towards Europe. The first map shows the big but diffused gale stalling south of Iceland, and the second map shows the storm still stalled but high pressure building over Scandinavia, with cold air coming south on its eastern flank.

Last year the North Atlantic gales were bringing vast surges of mild air up their eastern sides, and flooding Europe with merciful southwest winds. Although the winter pattern hasn’t locked in, it is starting to look like this winter will be very different.

What does all this mean in terms of sea-ice? (I actually don’t care all  that much, as I have to attend to staying warm here in New Hampshire, and things freezing here matters more than things freezing thousands of miles to the north.) Currently it means there is a delay in the increase.

 

ARCTIC SEA-ICE RECOVERY —BUILDING COLD—

I haven’t been able to study arctic maps to the degree I did last year. I only am able to allot so many hours a day to daydreaming and goofing off, (which is what studying weather maps boils down to, when you don’t get paid for it,) and this year I have other things to daydream about, and to goof off doing.

I figure it isn’t so urgent to study the arctic any more, as the idea that the arctic is in a “death spiral” has been slinking away in shame to the shadows, where it will lurk and await the next thaw, (or perhaps the next warm PDO.)  In fact it now is starting to seem incredible that  the “death spiral” idea was ever taken seriously, and that people became so indignant when I (and many others) dared challenge it.

Those clinging to the idea of the “death spiral” now need to cling to the hope the current “warm” spike in the PDO is more than a spike, and is in fact a freak occurrence of the PDO switching back to a long-lasting “warm” phase a decade earlier than usual. They also must hope the AMO stays in its “warm” phase as well.

This Alarmist dream likely will not come true, but even if it comes true it will not make the arctic be ice-free, as they predicted, but it might result in ice-extents low enough for them to point fingers at, and wave arms about.  Otherwise such people appear to be malingering, (which is, “to avoid work by feigning illness.”) The illness, in their case, is the “fever” the planet supposedly has, and the work they are avoiding involves facing the facts they fail to look at.

Having spent nearly a decade attempting to see the facts, (despite the smoke-screen some Alarmists have created to hide evidence from honest eyes,) I’ve fallen into the habit of observing the planet from the top. Even as it becomes less politically important to do so, I think I’ll continue to do it, for the top-down view possesses a fascination quite free from politics, and owns a beauty all its own.  I won’t do it to the degree I once did, but will continue to be an observer. While I may not demonstrate the rigor of a true scientist, I will continue to be a witness.

Over the past two weeks the extent of sea-ice has increased very swiftly. It always does, as the sun sets for six months at the Pole, but this year has seen the increase be especially fast. We are all set to surpass last year’s levels, because last year the ice extent actually decreased, briefly, at this time:

 (click to enlarge)

Much of this increase is due to the fact a large area of open water north of the Laptev Sea, (which I called, “The Laptev Notch”), and the Laptev Sea itself, froze over.  Compare these two maps, the top being from two weeks ago, and the bottom being the current situation:

It is important not to get too swept up in the hoopla about this increase, for such hoopla is only a response to the hoopla about decreases in ice being a “death spiral.”  The open water of the Laptev Notch was an anomaly largely created by winds, but did allow a glimmer of hope to brighten the gloom of those hoping the Pole would become ice-free and the end of the world was nigh.  The “Laptev Notch” could not last, and it was to be expected that it would swiftly refreeze, that the world wouldn’t end, and that those avoiding getting a real job because the end was nigh would have to get real jobs.

The above maps also show the open waters off the north coasts of Alaska and Canada have rapidly refrozen, adding to the swiftness of the increase in the ice-extent graph. However at this point we are running out of waters easy to freeze. There may even be a “pause” in the refreeze, much like last year’s, as we run out of easy-to-freeze open water.

It should be noted we still have more open water than last year towards Bering Strait, especially in the East Siberian Sea. Without a lick of scientific data, I would suggest this coincidentally matches the “warm” spike of the PDO, and is suggestive of an influx of warmer Pacific waters.

Also it should be noted there is more ice than last year east of Svalbard in the northern reaches of Barents Sea. Without a shred of scientific data, I would suggest this coincidentally matches a down-spike of the AMO last spring and summer into its “cold” phase.  In fact there was more ice along the north coast of Svalbard during the warmest days of summer than there was in the dead of last winter. Now the AMO has settled back into its “warm” phase.  When you compare the two maps above, what do you observe?  You observe there is a little less ice along the north coast of Svalbard, despite the fact ice is growing everywhere else, up in the arctic.  Coincidence? Or proof the AMO governs the amount of sea-ice?  That is not for me to say. I am just a witness.

Sometimes my curiosity gets going, and I yearn for more stuff to witness, and more time to witness stuff with. When I’m rich I’m going to hire a “go-for” to hunt up graphs and charts and old weather maps for me.  Even so, I doubt I’ll qualify as a true scientist. However I’ll be a better witness.

As the Arctic Sea refreezes the refreeze is influenced by the weather, and the weather is influenced by the refreeze. It is a chicken-or-the-egg thing.  Weather patterns influence the snow cover and the ice extent, but the snow cover and ice extent can influence the weather patterns.  For example, a certain pattern will dump snow over Siberia, but, once Siberia is snow-covered, it allows radiational cooling to generate cold high pressure, which must influence the pattern. In the same manner open water in the Arctic Sea allows more warm, moist updrafts, reletive to ice-covered water and  snow-covered land, and such updrafts are far more likely to feed and encourage low pressure systems. Storms have a way of following the edge of the ice, but a week later, when that same area is totally ice-covered, a similar storm will weaken.  So who is controlling whom?  You decide. I am just a witness.

Two weeks ago, on October 22, high pressure had been sitting up near the Pole for a week, and the air beneath cooled until it was the coldest of the season, and then a gale charged up from Iceland to budge the high south towards Siberia. As this cold air passed over the Laptev Sea it had a lot to do with the swift refreeze of the open waters.

As the cold air settled over Siberia on October 26th the flow behind that high pressure, (between its high pressure and the Icelandic low), brought a flood of milder Atlantic air rushing north over Scandinavia, with a tongue of that mildness extending past the Pole on the Eurasian side, however this flood of warmth was about be swiftly pinched off by new high pressure advancing north from Canada.

By October 27th the advance of the Canadian high pressure was starting to divert the flow of Atlantic air back towards Greenland, even as the advancing Icelandic low was shunted away from the Pole towards Scandinavia. This shoved the Siberian cold east. Meanwhile an Aleutian low was squeezing that cold from the other side, before it too was shunted eastward into Alaska by the Canadian high. During the brief period when the Siberian cold was getting squeezed from both sides it poured vast amounts of very cold air into the Pacific, behind the Aleutian low.

(This verifies a pet rule of mine:  If mild air floods up towards the Pole, cold air will be surging away from the Pole somewhere else.)

As the Siberian cold poured out over the Pacific it cooled the water, which has been at “above normal” levels, to levels “below normal,” especially along the Pacific coast of Asia.  I think we shall see this continue this winter, and have a hunch it will end the “warm” spike of the PDO and return it to its more typical “cold” pattern by spring. However it also, (and this strays miles off topic,) apparently exposed some problem with how “above normal” and “below normal” are determined.  The problem manifested in very different sea-temperature-anomaly maps being produced by the same data, and is discussed here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/11/01/on-the-recent-unisys-sea-surface-temperature-anomaly-maps-and-cooling-of-northern-hemisphere-ocean-surfaces/

 

Briefly the Canadian high pressure at the Pole was creating a zonal flow, with low pressures rotating politely around it, but by Halloween it was falling apart, as a new situation developed. The high pressure was settling south over Scandinavia, which was getting north winds, even as south winds approached ahead of the next Icelandic low.  On the Pacific side another Aleutian low approached Bering Strait even as the last one weakened moving east across Alaska to northern Canada.

By November 1 the winds were swinging around to the south in Norway, but this time the flood of milder, Atlantic air is not penetrating to the Pole, but rather is swung back towaeds Greenland. The only significant south winds invading the Pole are from the revitalized low in the Canadian Archipelago, and they are not all that balmy. For the most part the Pole is quiet and calm and losing heat, which creates cold at the surface. So is Siberia.

This brings us to today.  I’m at a loss to explain why the low pressure is extending north of Eurasia the way it is. It is time to simply watch, and be a witness, and be glad my livelihood isn’t dependent on predicting what happens next.

However, as a witness, I’ll note the air over the Pole is the coldest we’ve seen all autumn:

 (click to enlarge)

Furthermore Siberia, which was milder after discharging so much cold air over the Pacific, has recharged itself and is again loaded with cold:

When this much cold air builds up, it seldom sits up there. It is heavy, dense stuff, much heavier and denser than air to the south, so it is likely to sink under the air to the south and cause uplift and storms and arctic outbreaks.  The question then becomes, “Where?”

My guess is a lot of the Siberian air will again spill into the Pacific, but a little further north than last time, as we progress towards a winter pattern that will see Siberian air spilling across the Bering Strait into Alaska and then south.

I also guess a surge of relatively mild westerly wind will cross Europe, hinting at a winter storm track that will see the westerly winds sink south as the cold builds to the north,  until easterly winds north of that storm track start transplanting air from Siberia across the north of Europe, so that Scandinavia, which saw southwest winds from the Atlantic for much of last winter,  will see the east winds of Tolkien’s Mordor freezing their socks off.

Lastly, the cold over the Pole, separate from Siberia, will leak south into Canada behind the low in the Archipelago. I guess this is a temporary event, and part of a transitory autumnal pattern.

I confess this guess-work has great gaps and holes. For example, while I’ve figured out where air will exit the arctic, I know it must be replaced by air entering, but haven’t a clue where that would be. Either side of Greenland?

In the end, guess-work is but guessing, and I’ll likely stand corrected. Actually I look forward to correction, for I would rather stand corrected than fall. And, even without the comments of fellow bloggers to correct me, simply being a witness supplies me with more corrections than a school-teacher with a lot of red pencils, in the form of that great correcter called “Reality.”

 

SIBERIAN SNOW-COVER UPDATE

 

Snow-cover on October 28, available at Rutgers site at:  http://climate.rutgers.edu/snowcover/chart_daily.php?ui_year=2014&ui_day=301&ui_set=0

Snow-cover on Oct 28, available from NOAA site at:  http://www.natice.noaa.gov/pub/ims/ims_gif/ARCHIVE/NHem/2014/ims2014301.gif

Over on his excellent blog at Weatherbell, Joe Bastardi today noted that we are now up among the top three on terms of world-wide snow-cover, at this date, early in the season. Not only is most of Russia covered, but a lot of Canada and Alaska as well.

Then he did something I lack the time to do, which was to check the history.  (It is important to see what the “precedent” is, before you fool about with the word “unprecedented.”) It is also helpful to know what the past shows us, in terms of what happened on other occasions. It hints at what to expect.

What Joe found surprised me, for he found some winters that started out like gang-busters, in terms of world-wide snowfall, and then backed off and became unimpressive winters. He also found winters that began with little snowfall that were late-starters, and became severe later.

This throws a monkey wrench into the works of my idea that snowfall is a feedback, and that a lot of snow in Siberia creates an Asian high pressure of sinking, cold air that creates more ice and snow, and therefore more cold, in a sort of vicious cycle.

Unfortunately I don’t have the maps of the winters that disprove my theory, and therefore can’t study what the heck went on during those years. When I’m rich I’ll hire some eager, young go-for to look all that stuff up for me.

However Joe also mentioned that one of the top three years, in terms of snowfall on October world-wide on October 29, was 1976.  There’s that year again. The winter of 1976-1977 was the worst, in terms of cold, and in terms of sea-ice along the east coast of the USA, that I can remember. So…we definitely shouldn’t lower our guard.

A SVALBARD THAW

The high pressure that was lingering over the Pole, and making things look a little like a textbook “Polar Cell” (which in theory would be like a Hadley Cell or Ferrel Cell), is sagging south over Siberia, and debunking theory once again.  It is putting me in the mood to pick up my textbook and set it sailing like a Frisbee out the window.

The departure of the high pressure is allowing the North Atlantic gale to surge milder air north over Scandinavia. Sometimes such surges run into a brick wall, and one can envision a front must exist, however in this case the temperature map suggests it is flowing right along, and crossing the Pole on the Eurasian side.

The Laptev Sea has all but completely frozen over, as the cold air passed over and down into Siberia, however I imagine the freeze will now slow, due to the warmer air riding north. The area above 80 degrees is now well above normal.

This air is well below the freezing point of salt water in many places, however the refreeze will slow, and in places like Svalbard, where it is above freezing, the freezing must halt.

I’ve seen these warm flows invade the Pole in the dead of winter, and they often result in a Svalbard thaw because they often originate in the Atlantic.  Because the air is mild it often rises at the Pole, and can fuel polar low pressure which defies the textbook existence of a “Polar Cell.”  The cell, if it exists, has traveled down to Siberia.  In this case it is down in Eastern Siberia, where a Maue Map from Weatherbell shows temperatures down near minus thirty.

You can see the mild invasion as a sort of thorn-shape, from left to right at the top of the map.  It will be squeezed south by cold high pressure from Canada, and in turn will push the cold air in Siberia east across the pacific towards Alaska. This is enough like the “short-cut cross-polar-flow of 1976-1977” to make me raise an eyebrow, though it is still too early to speak of a “winter pattern”, I think.

Watching the movement of low pressure around and across the Pole the past year is causing me to rethink a lot of my assumptions. It is really rough, when you are self-taught, because some things you think you have learned can turn out to be pretty much dead wrong. If I was a young meteorologist I would definitely latch on to a weatherman of the old school, such as Joseph D’Aleo or Joe Bastardi, because they could correct false assumptions faster than you do on your own. (Of course, when I was young I had the insolent attitude “don’t trust anyone over thirty” and had to learn things the hard way, but “do as I say and not as I do.”)

One thing I am starting to think I am dead wrong about is the make-up of a zonal flow as opposed to a meridianal flow.  I’ll likely devote a post to this topic at a later date, but will say my preconceptions simply don’t jive with the reality of a positive versus a negative AO.  When my theory says there should be a low pressure at the Pole there is in fact a blocking high.  It puts me in the mood to rumple up all my past posts and trash them.

One thing I’m highly dubious ever exists is a textbook Polar Cell.  Or they don’t exist when the PDO phase is opposite the AMO phase.  Or some such thing.  I have a lot to learn, but have learned the idea of “cells” is way, way, way too simplified, especially at the Pole.

SIBERIAN SNOWS BREEDING BITTER COLD

(Please note that this post is dated October 25, 2014. I have had a number of hits on this old post today, October 19, 2015, nearly a year later, and fear people may be taking last year’s information as being up-to-date and current. That being said, it is indeed interesting to compare the two years.)

(CLICK MAP TO CLARIFY AND ENLARGE) The above map jumped out at me as I prowled the web for news. I found it among the heaps of information Joseph D’Aleo provides at his blog at Weatherbell, and is one of the thousands of maps Dr. Ryan Maue provides at that site. It shows the snow-cover in Siberia building to cover most of Russia by November 2. (Please note this article was written in 2014, though it in some ways also applies to this autumn’s situation [2015]). This year the early snow seems centered more towards western Russia. Check the top of my website for the latest post on Europe.)

This is a lot of snow for this early in the winter, and does not bode well for all northern lands.  Snow-cover allows Siberia to lose heat through radiational cooling, and the area “produces” cold, pressing down as high pressure which then then moves outwards in all directions. The earlier the snow-pack forms, the earlier pools of extreme cold can be created. Already temperatures in east Siberia are touching that magic number of minus forty, where both Fahrenheit and Celsius agree. (The Maue-made temperature-map below is in Fahrenheit.)

 (click to enlarge)

Freezing temperatures (below 32 Fahrenheit) are shown where sky blue turns to pink, and extend from Finland to Manchuria. Where Fahrenheit temperatures change from above zero to below zero (-18 Celsius) are shown by the deep blue areas within the pink turning to gray. When the gray blackens and then turns back to sky blue again, in the very center of the cold, we are seeing temperatures of minus forty.

These areas will enlarge as winter comes on, for Siberia experiences the coldest temperatures seen in the northern hemisphere, and can get down to minus seventy. The Arctic Ocean cannot get so cold, due to the warmer water under the ice, and only gets down to minus fifty on rare occasions due to Siberian air pouring north (and more rarely Canadian cold pouring north.)

This early in the dark days there is still open water along the Siberian coasts, and the temperature contrast is huge. The unfrozen water heats the air to plus thirty as the air over the land is minus thirty, and this sixty degree difference results in a Land-Breeze, with cold air sinking and rushing out over the sea, as the air over the sea rises. This swiftly freezes the sea, but also pushes the new ice north towards the Arctic basin, especially in the Laptev Sea.

The cold air also pushes east over the Pacific,  cooling its waters, and south into China and west into Europe, cooling lakes that, until they freeze over, remember the summer’s warmth and act like small radiators.  Once they freeze over, and once the Siberian coastline freezes over, the cold becomes more able to expand.  To have this process well underway in October is not a good sign.

You can see the warming effect of the sea on the Pacific coast, and north of Scandinavia, and to a lesser degree over the Laptev Sea.  This effect will diminish as the ice builds.  Ice seldom forms north of Scandinavia, due to tendrils of the Gulf stream, but the freeze-up of the Pacific coast is amazing, and extends out for miles. The arctic coast freezes up early, but the winds off Siberia can be so strong that ice is pushed away from land, and slightly warmer water up-wells as surface water is pushed north, and polynyas if open water can form even when temperatures are fifty below, especially in the Laptev Sea.

What I watch for is a cross-polar-flow, which brings the Siberian air to Canada and Alaska.  Though this air is warmed to some degree as it crosses the relatively mild ice on the Arctic Sea,  the warming can be a thin layer at the surface, with the bulk of air entering North America as a frowning Siberian high. This then gets even colder over the American tundra, especially as the northern Canadian Great Lakes, (Greater Slave, Lesser Slave, Bear, and Winnipeg) freeze over in October, and even more when Hudson Bay freezes over later in October into November.  The earlier the lakes and bays freeze the earlier nasty cold can build, and come howling south, and clash with moist air coming up from the Gulf of Mexico, and breed our blizzards.

What you want to see, if you want a mild winter, is a shallow Siberian snow pack that forms late.  You don’t want to see over a foot of snow covering large areas of Siberia when it is still October.

When I was young I’d be clicking my heels and anticipating snowstorms cancelling school, but those days are long gone.

UPDATE—OCTOBER 29

Over on his excellent blog at Weatherbell, Joe Bastardi today noted that we are now up  among the top three on terms of world-wide snow-cover, at this date, early in the season. Not only is most of Russia covered, but a lot of Canada and Alaska as well.

Then he did something I lack the time to do, which was to check the history.  It is important to see what the “precedent” is, before you use the word “unprecedented.” It is also helpful to know what to expect. What Joe found surprised me, for he found some winters that started out like gang-busters, in terms of world-wide snowfall, and then backed off and became unimpressive winters. He also found winters that began with little snowfall that were late starters, and became severe later.

This throws a monkey wrench into  the works of my idea that snowfall is a feedback, and that a lot of snow creates an Asian high pressure of sinking, cold air that creates more ice and snow, and therefore more cold, in a sort of vicious cycle.

Unfortunately I don’t have the maps of the winters that disprove my theory, and therefore can’t study what the heck went on. When I’m rich I’ll hire some eager, young go-for to look all that stuff up for me.

However Joe also mentioned that one of the top three years, in terms of snowfall on October world-wide on October 29, was 1976.  There’s that year again. The winter of 1976-1977 was the worst, in terms of cold, and in terms of sea-ice along the east coast of the USA, that I can remember. So…we definitely shouldn’t lower our guard.

UPDATE #2  —NOVEMBER 2, 2014—

Here is a map of the actual November 1 snow-cover, to compare with the forecasted map I posted above.

Siberia exported its first batch of very cold air largely to the east, out over the northern Pacific ocean. Those waters, which were largely at above-normal temperatures during the summer, have been cooled and now are below-normal towards the Pacific coast of Asia.

A new batch of very cold air is pooling over Siberia:

 Watch to see where this batch of cold air goes. If it heads east again it will be starting to resemble the flow in 1976-1977, which often came across the Bering Strait and down into Canada and eventually the USA. Ar the moment the water in the Bering Strait and East Siberian Sea is open, (likely due to a “warm” spike in the predominately “cold” phase of the PDO),  and the Siberian air is being warmed by that water on its way to North America. Once those waters freeze, look out!

ARCTIC SEA-ICE RECOVERY—THE LAPTEV NOTCH

 

What I call the “Laptev Notch” is the area of open water which juts up nearest the Pole, from the Laptev Sea on the Siberian coast. The above Russian maps (lifted from the blogger “Brian D’s” comment over at an excellent post at Real Climate http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2014/10/21/spectacular-growth-of-arctic-sea-ice-during-nasanoaa-s-hottest-year-ever/#comments ) show how swiftly it is now freezing over. However the notch still remains.

The notch was created by a strong cross-polar-flow from Siberia to Canada last winter. The Laptev Sea always “exports” a lot of ice, as winds howl north from high pressure in Siberia. At times these winds push so much ice away from shore that open water called a “polynya” is created in the dead of winter close to the coast. As the wind coming off Siberia can be as cold as minus 70, this open water swiftly freezes over, only to again be pushed off shore. The amount this happens can vary, with four times as much ice “exported” north into the Arctic Basin during a productive year as during a less-productive year, though even during a less-productive year a lot of ice heads north. (We are talking about a quarter million km2 during a less productive year, a half million during an average year, and as much as a million during a hugely productive year.

It should be remembered that when you are talking about km2 of “exported” ice you are talking about area, and not thickness.  As too often is the case with arctic ice, the actual volume of ice exported is hideously difficult to measure.  It could be argued that a million km of six-inch-thick ice is less ice than a quarter million km2 of three-feet-thick ice.  The counter-argument, which I think is valid, is that more water freezes when exposed to sub zero winds than is frozen when the water is sheltered by ice.

In any case, last winter a huge amount of ice was transported across the Pole to crush up against the north coast of Greenland and Canada, producing pressure ridges so impressive that one of the adventurers (who swarm out over the Pole in March and April, when the ice is safest,) described it as “crazy ice.” However this surplus on the Canadian side was paid for by a deficit on the Siberian side, where the ice was quite thin as the summer thaw began, resulting in swift melting and an area of open water extending towards the Pole I dubbed “The Laptev Notch.”

It should be noted that, while such open water does absorb more of sunshine’s heat than reflective ice during July and early August, it starts to lose more heat than ice loses from late August on. (When the sun gets down near the horizon open water can reflect more sunshine than ice, especially when the water is glassy.) Once the sun sinks below the horizon the open water loses a huge amount of heat to the atmosphere, which can then lose it to the darkness of space.  Although the open water of the Laptev Notch likely has a lot to do with the air temperatures being warmer than normal this autumn up at the Pole, it is likely the temperature of the water itself is plunging, due to exposure to the air, even as the water is churned, due to exposure to the wind. Here is the DMI graph for polar temperatures:

It is interesting at this point to compare last year’s map (Oct 15; lower left) with this year’s map (Oct 22; lower right.) and see the differences.  Despite the fact last year’s map is from a week earlier, The Laptev Sea is more frozen and the East Siberian Sea is entirely frozen.

This year the Laptev Notch remains open, though it is shrinking fast.  It’s open water has (and is) likely losing a huge amount of heat from arctic waters.  Meanwhile the Kara Sea is far more frozen than last year, and the Barent’s Sea, (which remained open deep into last winter), already is frozen to the north coasts of Svalbard and Franz Josef Land. Things are very different.

Last year the Siberian coast froze up in a nice, orderly progression, zipping-up from east to west, with the seas freezing starting with the East Siberian, then the Laptev, then the Kara, and lastly parts of the Barents.  This year the large Laptev Notch has things out of kilter, and the Kara Sea seems likely to freeze first. What this may do to subsurface currents I can’t begin to imagine. I think it demonstrates how many variables are involved with sea-ice, and how people who pretend to understand it are basically talking through their hats.

In a most general sense, the shift in the location of sea-ice once again demonstrates how responsive the ice is to every twitch of the PDO and AMO.  The PDO has spiked “warm” and less ice is on the coast of the East Siberian Sea. The AMO spiked “cold” last summer, and this is remembered by the ice against the north coast of Svalbard and Franz Josef Land.

The Laptev Sea is far from both the Atlantic and Pacific. There is debate about how much water from either sea reaches its coasts, and how regular the flow is, and also about the effects the regular and amazing summer flood of the Lena River has. Just to make things even more complex, I’ll throw in the idea that the Laptev Notch likely effects storm tracks, and perhaps even the upper air circulation, and has a part to play in whether the flow at the Pole is zonal or meridianal.

Currently the flow is more zonal than it has been in a while, as high pressure parks over the Beaufort Gyre.  Earlier this autumn storms went wandering up to and across the Pole, and the flow was more meridianal, however the high pressure and its ridge across Scandinavia has made things zonal for over a week now.

Models suggest that high pressure and its ridge will slide south to Siberia, as the Icelandic low attempts to bulge north to the Pole, but then a new area of high pressure slide north from Canada, keeping the zonal flow alive. (As the Icelandic low bulges north Scandinavia could get into a southwest flow of mild, Atlantic air which might even briefly reach the Pole.)

I myself wonder if that high pressure could return, and the zonal flow could persist, without the Laptev Notch’s open water supplying spin to one side. Models tend to do a bad job when it comes to handling the changes caused by open water turning to ice-covered water.

The cold air building under that high pressure is down to minus 25 over the Beufort Gyre.

If that cold air slides south towards Siberia as forecast it will likely swiftly freeze up the remaining open water in the Laptev Notch. This will result in a amazing increase in the extent of sea-ice.  There will be all sorts of talk about the rate-of-increase. For a week or so the rate-if-increase may even approach record levels. However a better measure is to compare the current levels of ice with prior years. Using this measure it can be seen levels are becoming greater than we’ve seen in recent years.

 (click to enlarge)

Though this new ice will quiet the waters and allow stratification to begin in the waters beneath, the sea continues to loose a lot of heat through the thin in, until it thickens.

I’ll be watching to see if the flow remains zonal, which will keep the cold locked up at the Pole, or whether it  becomes meridianal as soon as the Laptev Notch is gone, which will allow cold air to charge south and annoy the heck out of us.

GONZALO TO VISIT BLACK SEA

I find a bit of fun in tracking hurricanes after everyone else stops paying attention. Just for the fun of it, let’s follow what Gonzalo is forecast to do.

The first map is last night’s, and shows Gonzalo as an ex-hurricane just east of Newfoundland, being absorbed into a system of fronts beneath a North Atlantic gale. (Keep an eye on the dull-looking front settling down into France.)

The forecast map for 1200z today sees Gonzalo already halfway across the Atlantic, as a mere southern lobe of a Icelandic gale. (The dull front continues to sink south across France.)

By 0000z Gonzalo is crashing through Scotland.  Though it is but a lobe of the Icelandic low, it holds a tremendous amount of humid air from the Gulf of Mexico, which covered the entire east of the USA last week, but now is bundled up and largely aloft. (The dull front over France shows the slightest kink, as it feels the approach of Gonzalo.) 

By 1200z tomorrow the forecast map shows Gonzalo visiting the blonds of Norway and Denmark. The Icelandic low is no longer kicking it ahead, but instead is starting to drag it back in a sort of Fujiwara dance, however the cross-Atlantic onrush is kicking ahead into France.  I call such an onrush, which can move east even as the low itself occludes and stalls, a “zipper.” (The dull front over France has a definite wave developing in northern Italy.)

By 0000z on Wednesday some would see Gonzalo as being stalled over Denmark, however my eyes follow the “zipper” which holds the juice and momentum of the storm, and see it crashing into northern Italy and making a ruckus there, with high winds in the Alps.

By 1200z Wednesday some will see Gonzalo still occluded, its moisture high above Denmark, but I see Gonzalo in the zipper, now north of Greece and approaching the Black Sea.

By 1200z Thursday Gonzalo is relaxing on the east coast of the Black Sea, after receiving a hefty pay-off from Russians for trashing Bermuda, and forcing people to vacation at Black Sea resorts instead.

Of course more sensible people will have forgotten all about Gonzalo, and will be focused on the Fujiwara dance of twin Icelandic lows. But who ever said fun was sensible?

If you insist on being sensible, look north of Gonzalo and the Black Sea, and see a cold east flow developing and shifting Siberian air back towards the Baltic, which is an ominous thing to see if it becomes “a pattern.” Sensible people might focus on that, and argue whether that east wind, or the southwest wind over Ireland, will dominate West Europe this winter.  (It could be a blend of both, with bitter Siberian cold and north Atlantic gales alternating.)