Stratosphere Temperature Watch 2015/2016

[feb1991blizzard]

3 hours ago, Grimsby Snow Lover said:

Could someone explain what the wave 2 activity posted above would mean for our winter weather. I'm  a complete novice when it comes to the strat. 

Not sure if you meant my post with the 2009 SSW or the latest wave 2 berlin charts quoted by chiono, posted by S4lancia, the chart I posted is (in my opinion) probably the best Strat chart you can get, ironically though it resulted only in a brief albeit potent easterly on feb 1st / 2nd 2009, now if I saw that chart at any point but particularly late Jan, I would assume that it would finish the vortex off for the rest of the meteorological winter and would be predicting (with decent downwelling) that the following month - month and a half would be very blocked, wave 1 can do damage, there is a post by ruben Amsterdam a few pages back with a link to a you tube video showing the 2013 event but my understanding is (although a relative novice myself) that wave 1 is like pushing a balloon (the balloon representing the vortex over the pole / Greenland), you have no control where it ends up, wheras with wave 2 its like squeezing a balloon from both sides until it goes pop, if these events downwelled into the trop with exactly the same wavelength pattern as they are in the strat then forecasting cold spells would be easy, actually that 2009 SSW almost mirrors the trop pattern in the cold spell around 20 months later!!

 

 

 

[Dorsetbred]

7 hours ago, Snowy L said:

Latest Cohen

https://www.aer.com/science-research/climate-weather/arctic-oscillation

 

Still expects a significant weakening of the vortex in January.

It interesting that the likes of Cohen, say such similar comments as frequent this forum..

 A strong pulse of energy transfer is now consistently being predicted for next week by the weather models.    This will start to weaken the polar vortex but by itself is not predicted to be of sufficient amplitude to significantly weaken the stratospheric polar vortex. 

However, if the additional energy pulses are of insufficient duration and amplitude to force a meaningful change in the polar vortex, there is little reason to anticipate any long term deviations from the mild to very mild temperatures in eastern North America and/or Europe.

 

This "Vortex" seems to be well controlled in it's nature (not prepared to make long reaches) and with the existent El Nino, it seems more like 'clash of the titans' this year. Still very much all to play for..

Edited December 15, 2015 by Dorsetbred

[MPG]

2 minutes ago, Dorsetbred said:

It interesting that the likes of Cohen, say such similar comments as frequent this forum..

 A strong pulse of energy transfer is now consistently being predicted for next week by the weather models.    This will start to weaken the polar vortex but by itself is not predicted to be of sufficient amplitude to significantly weaken the stratospheric polar vortex. 

However, if the additional energy pulses are of insufficient duration and amplitude to force a meaningful change in the polar vortex, there is little reason to anticipate any long term deviations from the mild to very mild temperatures in eastern North America and/or Europe.

 

Still very much all to play for..

Thats not how I read it.....the first paragraph says 'not predicted to be of sufficient amplitude to significantly weaken the stratospheric polar vortex'. Then says 'if the additional energy pulses are of insufficient duration and amplitude'......then to me it seems we are in for more of the same pattern for a good deal of winter yet.

[Glacier Point]

Unbelievably strong sceuro ridge on this morning's EC EPS from Boxing Day onwards (gaining strength at end of run). If that is anywhere near the mark, wave 2 would be serious player and very troublesome for the vortex 10th Jan onwards.....tick tock

[Ruben Amsterdam]

36 minutes ago, Glacier Point said:

Unbelievably strong sceuro ridge on this morning's EC EPS from Boxing Day onwards (gaining strength at end of run). If that is anywhere near the mark, wave 2 would be serious player and very troublesome for the vortex 10th Jan onwards.....tick tock

Repeated on both yesterdays 18z and todays 00z. Just a wild idea: this sceuro ridge is the result of wave action we are seeing now, only to develop a tropospheric pattern that will annihilate the vortex from the bottom up. Dream mode off.

[knocker]

13 minutes ago, Ruben Amsterdam said:

Repeated on both yesterdays 18z and todays 00z. Just a wild idea: this sceuro ridge is the result of wave action we are seeing now, only to develop a tropospheric pattern that will annihilate the vortex from the bottom up. Dream mode off.

It's there on the EC32 update but quickly disappears after the 3rd I notice.

[feno13]

1 hour ago, knocker said:

It's there on the EC32 update but quickly disappears after the 3rd I notice.

Genuine question. I thought weatherbell members only had access to the control run only. please correct me if wrong.

[Catacol]

2 hours ago, Glacier Point said:

Unbelievably strong sceuro ridge on this morning's EC EPS from Boxing Day onwards (gaining strength at end of run). If that is anywhere near the mark, wave 2 would be serious player and very troublesome for the vortex 10th Jan onwards.....tick tock

Hehe - you keep popping in Stewart and dropping sufficiently positive comments into the mix that make me wonder what extra data you may be sitting on with regards to a slow burning vortex breakdown. Top  long range forecasters in here for me have always been you and RJS.... and there seems to be some alignment on a late Jan and into Feb pattern change - possibly substantial pattern change. Hope so.

[knocker]

13 minutes ago, feno13 said:

Genuine question. I thought weatherbell members only had access to the control run only. please correct me if wrong.

You are wrong.

[feno13]

Just now, knocker said:

You are wrong.

Short and blunt , but thank you anyway

[knocker]

6 minutes ago, feno13 said:

Short and blunt , but thank you anyway

Access to the ens means as well.

[MJO]

Hi guys 

i'm a new member 

i want to ask a question...

i have a problem reading the zonal wind charts. I know that red means westerly wind and blue means easterly wind, so how can i use this chart to predict the strat temperature and AO index ? Thank you 

[Nouska]

3 hours ago, feno13 said:

Genuine question. I thought weatherbell members only had access to the control run only. please correct me if wrong.

For those without access to the subscription sites, IMO gives a limited view of the 360 hour mean Z500 from ECM.

A strong signal there.

[chionomaniac]

1 hour ago, MJO said:

Hi guys 

i'm a new member 

i want to ask a question...

i have a problem reading the zonal wind charts. I know that red means westerly wind and blue means easterly wind, so how can i use this chart to predict the strat temperature and AO index ? Thank you 

Hi MJO and welcome to NW. This is a mean zonal mean wind chart for day 10 and is not the best chart to use to predict strat temperature with - there are many others on the berlin website that can be used to predict this. You can roughly guess the AO index from this chart by looking between 60-90N at 1000hPA and the more easterly component(blue) the more likely we are to see a negative AO. But that is only a rough measure.

[MJO]

12 minutes ago, chionomaniac said:

Hi MJO and welcome to NW. This is a mean zonal mean wind chart for day 10 and is not the best chart to use to predict strat temperature with - there are many others on the berlin website that can be used to predict this. You can roughly guess the AO index from this chart by looking between 60-90N at 1000hPA and the more easterly component(blue) the more likely we are to see a negative AO. But that is only a rough measure.

Thank you so mush Chionomaniac  

I have another question 

what does this charts mean ? And what does this chart use for ? 

And what do Wave 1 and 2 mean ?

[chionomaniac]

10 minutes ago, MJO said:

Thank you so mush Chionomaniac  

I have another question 

what does this charts mean ? And what does this chart use for ? 

And what do Wave 1 and 2 mean ?

Hi - the wave 1 and 2 question seems to be the most asked this year. It has already been answered in this thread a number of pages back - if you have missed this then it is always worth going back and rereading the thread in full - at that point it may be easier to explain the wave chart that you have posted!

[bobbydog]

just as a matter of interest, polar stratospheric clouds (or nacreous clouds) have been seen within the arctic circle. they are rare and form at around -85c. they are also known to react with CFCs to destroy ozone. just shows how cold the strat vortex is. we have a mighty beast to slay this winter.....

[MJO]

5 hours ago, chionomaniac said:

Hi - the wave 1 and 2 question seems to be the most asked this year. It has already been answered in this thread a number of pages back - if you have missed this then it is always worth going back and rereading the thread in full - at that point it may be easier to explain the wave chart that you have posted!

Hi - i have searched all the pages and i can't find the answer of my question. how can i read the charts and what is the impact of the waves on strat and AO index ? i'm sorry for asking too mush question 

[chionomaniac]

A question regarding wave 1 is answered in this post and the following one after it gives a link to a great explanation in a thread by vorticity regarding wave 1and 2.

[chionomaniac]

5 hours ago, MJO said:

Thank you so mush Chionomaniac  

I have another question 

what does this charts mean ? And what does this chart use for ? 

And what do Wave 1 and 2 mean ?

The above chart the change in geopotential height in metres that the wave 2 creates over any indicated latitude and pressure. For example the height at which the pressure of 10hPa is experienced is not constant and differs. This chart shows the difference in height that the wave creates for any given pressure level.

[Recretos]

CFSv2 ENS mean from 4 yesterdays runs, still going at a wave 1, with a modest temp wave. Tho its good enough for an ENS mean.

 

   

 

 

 

Looking further ahead, till around 20th, the pattern does continue to evolve, but not by much actually.

 

Edited December 16, 2015 by Recretos

[Singularity]

How much worth is CFSv2 when it comes to Kelvin Waves I wonder?

I'm hoping it's just being a bit slow to come around to the idea of amplification building a Sceuro then Scandi ridge etc. Lots of finger crossing going on with me at the moment.

[Recretos]

Was just doing this for twitter, so I decided to drop it here too, since it is a nice example how cool the strat looks like on a decent grid, in this case 0.125°.  And even this doesnt do it justice. The strat in reality is far more complex than we can see on those low res. charts at Instant weather maps, and others, or the 1° grid from ECMWF at FU Berlin.

 

     

 

Edited December 16, 2015 by Recretos

[MJO]

On 12/15/2015 at 11:54 PM, chionomaniac said:

The above chart the change in geopotential height in metres that the wave 2 creates over any indicated latitude and pressure. For example the height at which the pressure of 10hPa is experienced is not constant and differs. This chart shows the difference in height that the wave creates for any given pressure level.

Hi- thank you so much and thanks for the helpful topics in your previous comment. So the waves affect the PV by split or displace it ? But how that affects europe ? 

By the way there is a sign for a weaker PV i think !

Edited December 16, 2015 by MJO

[mezzacyclone]

28 minutes ago, MJO said:

Hi- thank you so much and thanks for the helpful topics in the your previous comment. So the waves affect the PV by split or displace it ? But how that affects europe ? 

By the way there is a sign for a weaker PV i think !

I wouldnt be so sure according to the atmospheric & enviro research centre mjo?

"The polar cap geopotential height anomaly plot continues to show a strong stratospheric polar vortex into the foreseeable future"

Yet further into their latest report it becomes ambiguous?

"the models predict a fairly robust pulse of vertical wave activity flux (WAFz) or vertical energy transfer next week that is predicted to perturb the stratospheric polar vortex and cause it to begin weakening" 

Just a bit 'chicken & the egg' syndrome to me?