Snow And Ice In The Northern Hemisphere Autumn/Winter 2014

[Skullzrulerz]

Latest NOAA snow map.

 

 

I have noted that some of the picture that i put like the one above always changes the next day for some reason?

Edited August 18, 2014 by Skulltheruler

[Gael_Force]

You are putting in the live updating link - need to save the image and paste the link if you want to preserve different daily maps.

[Jakehainton]

Hi everyone, Not been on here for a while. Was searching the posts for anything winter related and stumbled upon this one.

 

Just spent 2 weeks in searing 45c heat in Turkey.

 

Having come home its incredible to notice how we seem to have switched from Summer before I left to autumn. Cold, blustery and I have even notice a tinge on red in some of the leaves!

 

Could we be shifting seasons a tad early? or just my imagination??

 

Jake

[Rollo]

Hi Jake,It happened (autumnal colours and trees shedding their leaves early here as well),I just put  it down to the early spring we had after the mild winter.

[Peter H]

If the charts for the next few days had been in December, January, or February, we'd be having loads of snow and severe frosts, with temperatures by day barely above freezing. If only :(Pity it's the middle of August. 

[Turnedoutniceagain]

A whiff of the Polar Vortex that hit the US last year would be awesome....

[cheshire snow]

Temperature on cairngorm summit is 4c with a -7 windchill

along with frequent sleet/snow showers.

c.s

[Turnedoutniceagain]

Temperature on cairngorm summit is 4c with a -7 windchillalong with frequent sleet/snow showers.c.s

 

Nice one !!

[andy989]

Big earthquake swarm and harmonic tremor in Bardarbunga Iceland, showing signs of an imminent eruption of the volcano. Aviation warning level orange in the area. I wonder if the eruption (if it erupts) will be big enough to influence temperatures and helping ice/snow gains? The 2010 Eyjafjallajokull event was in spring so no noticeable effects as we headed into summer. 

[Skullzrulerz]

August 16th 2014

 

 

August 17th 2014

 

[stewfox]

deleted 

Edited August 18, 2014 by stewfox

[LincolnSnowstorm]

More snow!  

 

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Kyrgyzstan/@42.3265046,78.5446978,3a,30.7y,359.56h,81.23t,359.67r/data=!3m5!1e4!3m3!1s3504940829174886291!2e3!3e9!4m5!1m2!2m1!1smap!3m1!1s0x3897381dfce927f3:0x281058b74e88c433!6m1!1e1

[Ross Andrew Hemphill]

The higher ground and Northern Russia seems to be filling up.

 

[Yarmy]

The higher ground and Northern Russia seems to be filling up.

 

http:////f1.nwstatic.co.uk/forum/public/style_images/tctc91_simplify/attachicon.gifSnowIceCover_Daily.png

 

Looks slightly odd to me. Svalbard appears to be covered in snow, but a quick glance at a webcam shows it is not:

 

http://longyearbyen.livecam360.net

[LincolnSnowstorm]

Looks slightly odd to me. Svalbard appears to be covered in snow, but a quick glance at a webcam shows it is not:

 

http://longyearbyen.livecam360.net

not a good resolution but like the webcam shows  not covered in snow

 

Never mind  there will be 11 hours less sunlight in 30 days and the temp will fall a long way so that should help

Edited August 21, 2014 by LincolnSnowstorm

[feb1991blizzard]

According to Cohen, it's the rate at which snow extent increases in October that's important. There are so many factors though...

 

Cheers, is it not a bit futile worrying about this yet then?

[LincolnSnowstorm]

Cheers, is it not a bit futile worrying about this yet then?

Your right and even a strong extent increase in October does not mean a huge amount but it will be fun watching the progression of the season, seeing the ice make a recovery and getting a taste of what we could have in winter.

Edited August 22, 2014 by LincolnSnowstorm

[Iceni]

Hi everyone, Not been on here for a while. Was searching the posts for anything winter related and stumbled upon this one.

 

Just spent 2 weeks in searing 45c heat in Turkey.

 

Having come home its incredible to notice how we seem to have switched from Summer before I left to autumn. Cold, blustery and I have even notice a tinge on red in some of the leaves!

 

Could we be shifting seasons a tad early? or just my imagination??

 

Jake

 

It's not your imagination. I live in Suffolk and have never known such early red hawthorn and rowan berries. Usually they don't last long because by that time the birds' other food has dried up, and they get eaten, but this year they're still on the trees looking lovely. Noticed quite a few yellow poplar leaves beginning to fall and the chestnuts are loaded with conkers.

 

And I've had to wear a jumper for my dog walks for the past week.

[snowking]

Cheers, is it not a bit futile worrying about this yet then?

 

I think the most important thing to remember about Cohen's theory is that the correlation is between Snow Advance across Eurasia in October, and the overall winter AO index (the faster the rate of advance, the more likelihood of a negative AO index) - and that alone is fraught with difficulty in terms of pinning down the detail for our tiny little island. 

 

You won't need me to explain this one to you but for the benefit of any newbies reading, here's a nice image demonstrating the differences between a Positive and Negative AO index:

 

 

As you can see the biggest effect is a change from net westerlies (positive phase) to net easterlies (negative phase) around the Arctic regions. This infers that high pressure is likely to be in place around these regions given the clockwise motion the flow follows under high pressure in the Northern Hemisphere. You may also notice this ties in closely with a sudden stratospheric warming event, where the winds change from net westerly to net easterly much higher up in the atmosphere and often such an event downwells in to the lower reaches of the atmosphere and leads to a negative AO index.

 

The problem of using this to forecast for the UK alone is that there are plenty of examples in history of a negative AO index being in place but the UK simply being in "the wrong place" (doubtless for any newer members you will see examples once again this winter of one of Nick Sussex's Shortwave horror shows) with regards to the overall longwave pressure pattern setup. Usually this would result from a negative AO but either a positive or west-based negative NAO, leaving the UK out in the warm whilst other parts of the Northern Hemisphere bask in the glory of winter cold.

 

But of course the crucial take-home from Cohen's theory is that a high Snow Advance Index significantly increases the chances of colder than average conditions during winte. That is about as far as we can take it for now.

 

Of course there is also the October Pattern Index (OPI) from Italian researchers to take in to account, but as far as I can see there has been little progress on this over the last few months which is a shame as I believe we were awaiting a true English translation of the research so as to better understand the specific patterns suggested. 

 

Anyway, a little off topic but a fascinating subject and one that deserved further attention I feel

 

SK

[Mark Bayley]

If anyone fancies reading up on the theory here are two relativity accessible papers on the concept and a case study of 09/10. As stated by snowking it has been found greater snow advance equates to increased chances of -AO (by promoting a stronger more expansive Siberian high pressure system, which can later increase the probability of strat warming- see paper one). As highlighted by snowking -AO is never a guarantee of colder winters in our part of the world for reasons outlined, so that is something to keep in mind. Other factors such as the QBO are also important. SSW's tend to occur more frequently in the easterly phase of the QBO. Atmospheric wave activity in the higher latitudes is stronger during easterly QBO and thus a more disturbed vortex is likely. Warming events are more likely to occur at the back end of January and February during westerly QBO. This coming winter will occur when the QBO is in easterly phase. Sorry a bit off topic but wanted to show why some of us are quite interested in the snow advance this coming winter, given a few other background factors (QBO, ENSO) are favourable.

 

http://www.nws.noaa.gov/ost/climate/STIP/FY11CTBSeminars/jcohen_062211.pdf

http://web.mit.edu/jlcohen/www/papers/Cohenetal_GRL10.pdf

 

The warm arctic old continents theory is also interesting to look at (search James Overland). That centres around decreasing sea ice and a warmer arctic, and its interaction with the overlying atmosphere and mid-latitude climate

Edited August 24, 2014 by DiagonalRedLine
Mark Bayley requested a section of his post to be changed.

[gottolovethisweather]

As an aside I've not been reading this thread of late so I apologise if this has been mentioned but how is the Arctic ice faring up this time around compared to recent years and did our run of Northerly winds also have any effect on the conditions in the Arctic circle? Just thinking of the potential ramifications of this moving into Autumn and beyond, if any.

 

Any information on this please.

[Mark Bayley]

As an aside I've not been reading this thread of late so I apologise if this has been mentioned but how is the Arctic ice faring up this time around compared to recent years and did our run of Northerly winds also have any effect on the conditions in the Arctic circle? Just thinking of the potential ramifications of this moving into Autumn and beyond, if any.

 

Any information on this please.

 

Not really been following it this year as i've been busy however current ice extent is 5.688 million km2, which is around 2008/9/10/13. So not a low as 07/11/12. As highlighted in my previous post some such as Overland have suggested that reduced Arctic sea ice has impacted mid-latitude climate (in summer resulting in increased floods and extremes) and in winter cold. We are lucky in that this winter we have not had a strong Arctic dipole anomaly (high pressure over Greenland, lower pressure on the siberian side), which is seen as a major factor exacerbating Arctic sea ice loss. The climate thread is probably a good one to look at!

 

http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph/

[gottolovethisweather]

Not really been following it this year as i've been busy however current ice extent is 5.688 million km2, which is around 2008/9/10/13. So not a low as 07/11/12. As highlighted in my previous post some such as Overland have suggested that reduced Arctic sea ice has impacted mid-latitude climate (in summer resulting in increased floods and extremes) and in winter cold. We are lucky in that this winter we have not had a strong Arctic dipole anomaly (high pressure over Greenland, lower pressure on the siberian side), which is seen as a major factor exacerbating Arctic sea ice loss. The climate thread is probably a good one to look at!

 

http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph/

 

Thanks for the incite Mark and I note netweather has the following thread up and running, should anyone else have similar questions to my own.

 

http://forum.netweather.tv/topic/79928-arctic-ice-discussion-2014-the-thaw/page-16

 

Cheers

 

gottolovethisweather

[bryan629]

Joe laminate floori â€@BigJoelaminate floori  58 mins

Surprise! Glaciers appearing in Scotland http://wp.me/p7y4l-tSY  via @wattsupwiththat

 

not a bad read...

 

on a different note though have you guys been keeping an eye on the CFS model...the potential for good snow cover out to our east is really good for september ... consistently showing this !!!

 

 

A fair agreement even at range for gfs, ecm and cfs

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Polar Maritime]

Only the very start of Glaciers are forming, Non appearing yet only Neve.. It's amazing how many have sensationalised this. Instead of what the scientists were really there for!

Edited August 24, 2014 by Polar Maritime