Global Surface Air & Sea Temperatures: Current Conditions and Future Prospects

[Summer Sun]

 

[Blessed Weather]

 

[Gray-Wolf]

Well NOAA go for forth warmest october in the record and NASA go for second warmest in their records. This would make it the warmest non ENSO month in both series

[Gray-Wolf]

https://phys.org/news/2017-11-added-arctic-global-didnt.html

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-017-0009-5

Well we saw how well Cowtan and Wray went down in some quarters so this further confirmation of continued, and accelerating warming over the denier slowdown/pause will probably also set some folk clucking? That this study is release amidst renewed record rates of warming might have the public pay more heed though?

Most folk passing through this section will have a good idea as to what occurred over the Arctic through the noughties and this should have raised concerns in them with regard to temps even if the tropical Pacific was playing oddski? 

The impacts of Arctic Amplification need now be married in with the latest papers by the Shakhova team looking at pressurised methane reserves in the East Siberian Sea permafrost deposits and the rapid degradation of the 'cap' there...........

[DAVID SNOW]

5 hours ago, Gray-Wolf said:

https://phys.org/news/2017-11-added-arctic-global-didnt.html

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-017-0009-5

Well we saw how well Cowtan and Wray went down in some quarters so this further confirmation of continued, and accelerating warming over the denier slowdown/pause will probably also set some folk clucking? That this study is release amidst renewed record rates of warming might have the public pay more heed though?

Most folk passing through this section will have a good idea as to what occurred over the Arctic through the noughties and this should have raised concerns in them with regard to temps even if the tropical Pacific was playing oddski? 

The impacts of Arctic Amplification need now be married in with the latest papers by the Shakhova team looking at pressurised methane reserves in the East Siberian Sea permafrost deposits and the rapid degradation of the 'cap' there...........

What should  the "Public" Actually do about this then? Genuine question.    Apart from worrying themselves sick?

[Gray-Wolf]

Well this is the thing David, what could we ever do but demand that we treat our home with more care and respect?

From my limited experience it would appear everyone wants 'positive change' but no one wishes to change or be made to change?

The sad reality is that we will be made to change by circumstances but we will, by then, have allowed things to become so bad as to all but guarantee such circumstances will occur?

Whilst the kind of capitalism we see ruling our world is allowed to continue then the only driver will be profit no matter the human/environmental costs. We , here in the UK, just voted a bill through saying we no longer believe animals can 'feel'.

Each and every one of those who voted should be made to kill a cow with a pen knife then they'd know if it was able to suffer as you or I would or not !

What chance of such folk turning their backs on profit in favour of environmental security?

 

[Gray-Wolf]

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2018/jan/02/2017-was-the-hottest-year-on-record-without-an-el-nino-thanks-to-global-warming#comments

So second warmest behind the super nino but hotter than the two failed nino years ( the ones with the record KW's pushing out in Feb.

I have been warning on here , since the mid noughties, that once the natural neg's ( and human augmentation of those negs) worked out we would be on a faster warming curve than the 80's/90's. Those meg naturals failed in 2014 and what have we seen since?

Will 2018 take the crown from the super nino year of 16'?

[Blessed Weather]

Not sure where to post this as it doesn't fit the thread titles 'Global Temps' or 'Arctic Sea Ice'...... anyway, here's Arctic Air Temps and they remain on a depressing upward trend:

 

[PersianPaladin]

It's pretty clear that the planet is running a fever. The door to the Arctic freezer has been left open and it's hemorrhaging out into the northern hemisphere, producing additional winter temperature extremes elsewhere. For example I am living in Istanbul these days and ive never known a winter with such sustained mild weather. The arctic has gone crazy, there is vicious circle of feedback of evaporation, moisture build up and further ice melt from the greenhouse effect of the latent heat. These sort of extremes look set to continue and I think even the peak oil crisis won't even be enough to force a change.

[Singularity]

I have gained the impression that tropospheric vortex organisation has changed significantly now that the high-Arctic (i.e. north of the continental boundaries) is so much warmer than it used to be. What follows is just me throwing some observations and thoughts onto the forum - feel free to either add support or take them apart; either is enlightening .

 

So, just from studying the evolution during each of the past few Oct-Dec periods, it appears that more frequent anomalously high heights over the high Arctic, where once a slack high pressure regime with very cold surface inversions reigned supreme but now strong ridges keep developing, are forcing the vortex to locate further from the N. Pole, which has negative impacts on its structure.

As far as I can interpret, with the slack high-Arctic highs of old, the polar vortex typically sets up not far from the Pole over a cold surface region such as Greenland or Siberia and can become large and strong enough to sustain a relatively flat jet pattern that circles much of the globe - sometimes even all of it, when other teleconnections support such a thing.

In recent winters, however, it has been repeatedly knocked off its pedestal and shoved equatorward, and at these lower latitudes it would need to become extraordinarily - and most likely impossibly - large to have a single periphery (the polar jet) encircling a large part of the globe. With this option not available, it seems to either become confined to a relatively small area of the hemisphere, or split into multiple circulations. Both outcomes see the tropospheric vortex weaker than it would otherwise have been.

 

These displacement and weakening events do greatly resemble those that can be forced by wave breaking events (either troposphere upward or stratosphere downward). This makes sense as increased Arctic highs are a feature of such events, but it's also possible that the weakened temperature gradient between the Arctic and lower latitudes is enabling more frequent wave breaking events which are leading to minor warming in the lower levels of the stratosphere with these then feeding back on the tropopshere and increasing the geopotential heights over the Arctic,

So I'm not sure whether the warmer Arctic directly forces tropospheric vortex displacement, does so via stratospheric interplay.

 

I have searched for free-access scientific articles on this matter but with little success. I've not even seen much behind paywalls in fact - which seems a bit odd to be honest, given how pronounced the Arctic changes have been in recent years.

[Gael_Force]

12 minutes ago, Singularity said:

I have searched for free-access scientific articles on this matter but with little success. I've not even seen much behind paywalls in fact - which seems a bit odd to be honest, given how pronounced the Arctic changes have been in recent years.

There were some new papers presented at the recent AGU conference. Suppose most will be paywalled but it's a starting point to see if any of the authors have more details online.

https://agu.confex.com/agu/fm17/preliminaryview.cgi/Session22423

 

 

 

 

[Singularity]

Thanks Gael_Force, I will have a look around when I find a bit of time 

 

GW - the N. Atlantic is particularly eye-catching at the moment. It has warmed by 1-3*C in central parts since this time last year, finally bringing a clear end to the 'cold pool' period. If this manages to sustain itself until and through the next El Nino event to come along, global (oceanic in particular) temps could leave plenty of jaws on the floor.

Pending on no major changes elsewhere of course, which is a big assumption given how anomalous large parts of the N. Pacific continue to be.

Edited January 10, 2018 by Singularity

[Gray-Wolf]

I think we are in for another top 3 year even though we will probably see a Nada year over the Enso regions.

Nino's will still spike Global temps I'm sure but the other factors that are helping us on our warming spike look to continue and intensify their impacts? As it is we will see year on year increases more rapidly overtake these nino spikes than we saw over the suppose 'pause' with the 98' nino spike taking 10 years for background to catch up?

2017 came in second highest to the last super nino (only the year before) overtaking 2015 which saw Nino like conditions over a significant portion of the year?

[knocker]

An explanation of 2017 global temperatures

http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2018/20180118_Temperature2017.pdf

[knocker]

 

[knocker]

Prospects for 2018.

Quote

Each year now when results for the previous year are in, I post some graphs (2017 here), and invite discussion about the coming year, which can be maintained on that thread. Reader Uli follows the prospects for GISS; readers JCH and WHUT remind us about ocean periodicities, and there are many other interests. I don't have strong prognoses myself; I just expect it to get warmer, with variations.

I think 2017 predictions worked out fairly well, mainly because the chief unexpected event, the strong warmth in Feb/March, came early. It created some possibility that 2017 might exceed 2016, but by August that was starting to look unlikely. That left the question of whether it would beat 2015, and that was close in most indices, with those that gave proper weighting to the polar temperatures putting 2017 ahead.

On the prospects for ENSO, Australia's BoM expects a weak La Niña in the short term. The NOAA has been silenced by the shutdown, but the IRI forecasts tend to see this going away fairly soon, with a fair chance of El Niño conditions later in the year.

https://moyhu.blogspot.co.uk/2018/01/prospects-for-2018.html

[Summer Sun]

5-year forecast from the met office predicts 2018 to be slightly cooler than the last couple of years. But this is likely to be followed by warmer years, possibly record-breaking warmth again

https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/news/releases/2018/decadal-forecast-2018

[mike Meehan]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2018/04/11/the-oceans-circulation-hasnt-been-this-sluggish-in-1000-years-thats-bad-news/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.9d08d561ce30&wpisrc=al_environment__alert-hse&wpmk=1

My take on this is what has been suggested for a long time now, is that increased melting of Arctic Ice Cap would slow down the North Atlantic Drift because of the different specific gravities between saline sea water and fresh sea water. 

This would appear to be happening now and as it progresses the warming effect on North West Europe would gradually decrease. 

I wouldn't expect it to stop just there because the normal sinking of saline water in the Arctic is one of the main drivers of the global sea currents, so I would expect a knock on effect. 

Quite what the results of that would be, I don't really have the foggiest - it is well beyond my pension grade to work out. 

I can only guess that with a decreased speed of general circulation would allow tropical waters to get warmer whilst northern waters cool. 

[johnholmes]

A very interesting read, leaving some questions unanswered.

[knocker]

March 2018 was One of Six Warmest Marches on Record

https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/news/20180416/

[Sky Full]

On 17 April 2018 at 16:36, knocker said:

March 2018 was One of Six Warmest Marches on Record

https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/news/20180416/

Very interesting - especially the Seasonal Cycle graph which is one of the clearest statistical demonstrations of the warming atmosphere I have ever seen.  It would be quite ironic if the effects of melting sea ice on the Atlantic circulation brought colder conditions to Northern Europe while most other parts of the world continue to warm up.

[cheeky_monkey]

On 4/18/2018 at 14:05, Sky Full said:

Very interesting - especially the Seasonal Cycle graph which is one of the clearest statistical demonstrations of the warming atmosphere I have ever seen.  It would be quite ironic if the effects of melting sea ice on the Atlantic circulation brought colder conditions to Northern Europe while most other parts of the world continue to warm up.

im not sure where they get the data from..but the prairie provinces had a March well below normal..for example it was 6c below normal here yet on the map it says it was above normal

[DAVID SNOW]

Inaccurate data? Someone will be along to explain this....

[BornFromTheVoid]

On 19/04/2018 at 21:39, cheeky_monkey said:

im not sure where they get the data from..but the prairie provinces had a March well below normal..for example it was 6c below normal here yet on the map it says it was above normal

I downloaded the weather station data for Alberta from here: http://climate.weather.gc.ca/prods_servs/cdn_climate_summary_e.html
Seems there are not many stations with a long enough history for a 30 year average. Of the stations that report an anomaly to 81-10, the average anomaly is -2.4C.

The NOAA SOTC report, which uses the 81-10 average, appears to agree with this.

The linked report above, by NASA, used the 51-80 average, which may explain why they show the temperature as close to average

[cheeky_monkey]

Interesting..because over here there is still a big ho ha over data manipulation particularity concerning North American data