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As promised I have piece together macroscale developments of sea-surface temperature and regional wind/pressure anomalies to provide a preliminary forecast for the coming winter.During October the global winds, pressure and temperature-patterns across the Northern Hemisphere gravitate towards their winter states, which they will tend to retain until late March. First thing though we need to list what we know so far: 1) Sea surface temperatures are, in general well above normal across the North Atlantic with anomalies close to 4C for early October in the European Arctic section with anomalies of +6C off the eastern coast of the USA and in the Baltic. The section is part of the mid-North Atlantic about 45 to 55N and 20 to 40W where sea surface temperatures are up to 2C colder than usual. Such warmer than usual waters around the UK would directly warm any winds blowing over them more and would tend to support milder weather and more evaporation from the warmer seas would support increased rainfall. The cool patch in the North Atlantic is sufficiently far west for it to cause the southern part of the strong upper Westerlies to re-curve south over it and just to the east whilst the upper air would be encouraged to "re-curve" northwards having crossed the warmer waters around Britain: This would place an upper trough near to the UK and enhance wet, windy weather. 2) The North Pacific north of 20N is substantially warmer than normal with sea surface temperature anomalies generally 3 to 4C warmer than normal for early October. However the Equatorial central and eastern Pacific is colder than usual with anomalies up to 2C below normal. The development of La Nina with cool equatorial waters would promote weaker north-easterly Trade Winds over the Pacific between the Equator and a weaker subtropical high-pressure belt centred over warmer than usual waters of the North Pacific around 30 to 35N: Weaker NE Trade Winds impart less westerly atmospheric angular momentum (AAM) to the Northern Hemisphere's atmospheric circulation through frictional interaction with the sea-surface- particularly as less wind means a calmer sea-surface with very low coefficient of friction. There is correspondingly need for less of a sink for accumulated westerly momentum in higher latitudes which implies weaker westerlies reaching Britain with a correspondingly higher chance of cold-air outbreaks from Russia or the Arctic. 3) Arctic sea-ice extent has recovered remarkably during September and it's extent is close to the seasonal norm east of Greenland but the sea-ice extent remains some 500 km north of its normal October extent north of Alaska and the extreme east of Siberia. Open waters in the Arctic Ocean surrounding the sea-ice remains substantially (i.e. widely up to 4C warmer than normal for October however): This is likely to encourage the Circumpolar Vortex to be contracted as well as displaced towards the UK by up to 200 km, however the warmth of Arctic seas would encourage the strong baroclinic gradients to be shifted towards the Arctic. This lends support to deeper depressions encircling the Arctic close to 70N, particularly in the North Atlantic sector and the warmth of the oceans just to the south of them means rather more moisture latent-heat potential to fuel these storms. The northwards displacement of the Westerlies is likely to encourage them to be strong in any case because they have to blow harder closer to the axis of the Earth's rotation to offset the tropical, subtropical and polar easterlies as required by Conservation of Angular Momentum laws. 4) Also supportive of a mild wet and windy winter is the fact that the Quasi Biennial Oscillation (QBO) at 30mb high above the Equator remains in Westerly phase. During August these stratospheric Equatorial Winds averaged just over 10 metres per second (23 mph) from the west. These stratospheric winds feed down into the general circulation and reach the mid-latitude jet-streams and Westerlies over three or four months. This suggests (strongly) that the coming winter will be mild wet and stormy. 5) The Sun is now entering the quiet phase towards the end of Schwabe cycle 24: Indications are that the Sun is indeed going quieter than it has been for a few years. An active Sun produces Solar Flares which interact with the atmospheric circulation to increase the strength of the Circumpolar Vortex. Instead few (if any) magnetic storms from the Sun will be interacting with the Earth's atmosphere and instead (if anything) that just leaves tidal friction due to the Sun and Moon which affects the atmosphere as well as the oceans. The tidal effects on the atmosphere are very weak but these act to reduce the Earth's rotation by very mall amounts (these are significant over time, which is why Leap Seconds are added at the end of each year). The net effect of all this (weak phase of Solar Cycle, atmospheric tidal friction) would be to weaken the Westerlies a little. 6) At least until mid November, the fact that sea-surface temperatures in the tropical Atlantic and Pacific just north of the Equator is likely to enhance tropical storm activity. More hurricanes and typhoons with strong easterlies on their northern flanks that enter the Northern Hemisphere circulation add Westerly AAM to the global atmospheric circulation. This increases the need for stronger Westerlies in higher latitudes to counter-balance them: This strongly hints to late autumn/early winter being wet, mild and stormy. However, from late January onwards the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) will be south of the Equator and the fact that sea-surface temperatures in tropical waters just south of the Equator are also warmer than normal now suggests more tropical storms will occur there; Southern Hemisphere tropical depressions (sliding westwards along the ITCZ) have strong westerlies on their northern flank and it is these that will affect the Angular Momentum Budget of the Northern Hemisphere circulation by removing Westerly AAM through frictional impact with the underlying surface: This points to weaker Westerlies coming across the North Atlantic in January/February which would, other things being equal, increase the chances of much colder, drier spells reaching Britain from the east. We can now put all this together to get some sort of prediction for Winter 2016/17: (Continued below)