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A New Arctic Feedback


knocker

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Posted
  • Location: Camborne
  • Location: Camborne

This is something I've always suspected maybe playing a key role this winter

An interview with Dr Jennifer Francis (Rutgers University) at the AGU 2016 Fall Meeting this past December:

 

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Posted
  • Location: Mytholmroyd, West Yorks.......
  • Weather Preferences: Hot & Sunny, Cold & Snowy
  • Location: Mytholmroyd, West Yorks.......

I have to agree Knocks!

I'm also ruminating on the notion that all of that heat spilling into atmosphere, above Barentsz/Kara come refreeze this past 15 years, is messing with the strat and so impacting faster weather formation across the n. Hemisphere?

If 10hpa vortices, spilling off a displaced Polar Vortex, hammer into the equatorial flow we might well see disruptions in the QBO..... oh wait! we did.

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Posted
  • Location: Mytholmroyd, West Yorks.......
  • Weather Preferences: Hot & Sunny, Cold & Snowy
  • Location: Mytholmroyd, West Yorks.......

Being into the weather before I ever dabbled in Climate change so I always wondered when the changes became so impactful as to be part of a forecasters skill. I made a punt at Summers end that we'd see another WACCy winter with a lot of moisture again being thrown around the Hemisphere. I hoped that low solar would keep a high pressure shield over the UK so we didn't see much of that moisture un like our floods last Christmas. I cautioned that if those storms were deflected then someone else would cop them. It has mainly been the Arctic that has 'copped' for them!!!

I did also wish for the high to be positioned so as to keep us mild....... it was only a wish!!!!! )LOL)

If someone of my low skills can have a reasonable punt at Two seasons worth of weather by knowing just 2 forcings it surely says something about the 'strength' of those forcings?

Sadly they are still using the QBO/MJO as if nothing had changed?

My biggest and scariest realisation is the amount of energy , in the form of heat and moisture, these storms carry into the Arctic? It is looking very much like the Arctic will only see Autumn/spring temps this re-freeze cycle and so I dread to consider what this could mean for next Autumn/Winter?

We should be seeing even stronger 'low solar' forcing and so might be spared the extremes but just how extreme must things become if we see even more energy milked into the climate system via the Pole?

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Posted
  • Location: New Forest (Western)
  • Weather Preferences: Fascinated by extreme weather. Despise drizzle.
  • Location: New Forest (Western)

Here's a very speculative yet seemingly logical theory I've had on the brain lately;

  • Low sea ice supports greater jet stream meandering.
  • Resultant increased poleward heat transport aids in unprecedented weak polar vortex mid-late autumn (initially via tropospheric vortex disruption and then by stratospheric disruption due to interaction with high terrain, surface cold pools etc. (vertical wave activity flux occurs)
  • Canadian Warming (or close to it) is able to manifest and shifts the vortex over to Siberia's north slope or thereabouts.
  • Typically unless the Atlantic jet stream is weaker than usual, this sets up a southwesterly flow through N. Europe, but this season there is such low sea ice that the polar front locates closer to the pole and hence the typical storm track is more toward the Arctic ocean.
  • This sets up a chain of intense lows racing NE, these ferrying a large heat (and moisture) flux right into to the Arctic from the mid-latitudes, sometimes even the subtropics. 
  • Sooner or later, more vertical wave activity flux occurs and stratospheric warming displaces the vortex again. In early 2017 it appears this will be toward Siberia again - coincidental maybe given that poleward heat flux has also been very active from the Pacific side at times this season so the angle of 'attack' seems not to be responsible.
  • Another chain of intense lows can race NE, transporting a lot of heat and moisture into the Arctic... and so on until the polar vortex has undergone the springtime warm-out.
  • This positive feedback potentially means the Arctic amplification process is already beyond effective mitigation.

Again, this is speculative i.e. without rigorous scientific testing behind it, but it does stand on a lot of emerging theories about the atmospheric response to climate change hence I feel bold enough to post it on here and let others rip into it (well okay, you don't have to do that exactly... ha).

I genuinely want to know what others make of it, good or bad. TIA :hi:

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Posted
  • Location: Mytholmroyd, West Yorks.......
  • Weather Preferences: Hot & Sunny, Cold & Snowy
  • Location: Mytholmroyd, West Yorks.......

Hi Singularity!

What you describe does cover the impacts we are witnessing. Since 2012 we have been seeing 'clearer' impacts from A.A. but this year surely they are unmistakable to anyone interested in the weather?

This upcoming SSW? Is it what it is masquerading as or is it merely a continuation of what we have been watching since October? As the Sun rises higher it impacts the southern edges of the polar strat ( sun rose over Barrow on last sunday pm so where is the sun now reaching in the atmosphere above?) and this must drive some changes even if just chemistry ( Ozone destruction?)?

I think the SSW will just be a general disruption of the PV and I believe it will Favour the snow fields of W. Siberia. If this occurs then the AA driven 'lake effect Snow' that buried W.Siberia in October ( 5 months snow over the course of that month in parts of W. Siberia!) will have driven the destructive WAA all winter long near guaranteeing another terrible year for the ice as slow growth/low extent/record low volume means less energy to melt out ice there and the opportunity for fragmentation into the dispersed pack we ended the summer with in 2016.

Next year we will be even further into low solar so will we see more Blocking over the UK and so more storms driven NW across the Atlantic Basin blasting our side of the Arctic basin again. 

Edited by Gray-Wolf
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Posted
  • Location: Mytholmroyd, West Yorks.......
  • Weather Preferences: Hot & Sunny, Cold & Snowy
  • Location: Mytholmroyd, West Yorks.......

Over summer wind speeds in the Polar Jet have been falling so low as to not register on the plots so the Jet does just disappear around regions of the N.Hemisphere.

The other thing we are seeing are the sub tropical and Polar jets nearly running into one another. What happens when this occurs? Does it open the door for tropical air incursions to the north?

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Posted
  • Location: Isle Of Lewis
  • Weather Preferences: Wild!
  • Location: Isle Of Lewis
2 hours ago, Gray-Wolf said:

Does it open the door for tropical air incursions to the north?

Oh  Gray Wolf. The possibility of summer for the western isles!!

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Posted
  • Location: Mytholmroyd, West Yorks.......
  • Weather Preferences: Hot & Sunny, Cold & Snowy
  • Location: Mytholmroyd, West Yorks.......
4 hours ago, snowbunting said:

Oh  Gray Wolf. The possibility of summer for the western isles!!

I spent four months living on Seil Island ( Ellenabeich) and when the weather was fine and sunny it's like living on the Greek islands!

30c would suit it!

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Posted
  • Location: Mytholmroyd, West Yorks.......
  • Weather Preferences: Hot & Sunny, Cold & Snowy
  • Location: Mytholmroyd, West Yorks.......

Well we are seeing changes , ongoing right now, that we have never witnessed across the basin? From the constant onslaught of Storms into the basin ( bringing moisture and heat) to the changing Atlantic ingress into the Basin. These changes will have real time impacts on our weather here in the UK which is why I cannot understand why so many 'weather nuts' treat this as though it cannot be occurring and scurry back to the old ways things used to operate and then act miffed that things no longer seem to conform to old expectations? 

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Posted
  • Location: New Forest (Western)
  • Weather Preferences: Fascinated by extreme weather. Despise drizzle.
  • Location: New Forest (Western)
On 1/24/2017 at 14:49, Gray-Wolf said:

Hi Singularity!

What you describe does cover the impacts we are witnessing. Since 2012 we have been seeing 'clearer' impacts from A.A. but this year surely they are unmistakable to anyone interested in the weather?

This upcoming SSW? Is it what it is masquerading as or is it merely a continuation of what we have been watching since October? As the Sun rises higher it impacts the southern edges of the polar strat ( sun rose over Barrow on last sunday pm so where is the sun now reaching in the atmosphere above?) and this must drive some changes even if just chemistry ( Ozone destruction?)?

I think the SSW will just be a general disruption of the PV and I believe it will Favour the snow fields of W. Siberia. If this occurs then the AA driven 'lake effect Snow' that buried W.Siberia in October ( 5 months snow over the course of that month in parts of W. Siberia!) will have driven the destructive WAA all winter long near guaranteeing another terrible year for the ice as slow growth/low extent/record low volume means less energy to melt out ice there and the opportunity for fragmentation into the dispersed pack we ended the summer with in 2016.

Next year we will be even further into low solar so will we see more Blocking over the UK and so more storms driven NW across the Atlantic Basin blasting our side of the Arctic basin again. 

Hi Gray Wolf,

I'm seeing an increasingly volatile situation evolving as the increased 'blanket' between the layers allows the polar stratosphere to become colder while the polar troposphere becomes warmer. While the polar vortex may reach top-end strength without much trouble for a time in the winter season, the warmer troposphere and reduced sea ice promotes a generally more poleward polar boundary that tends to result in storms travelling to very high latitudes where vertical wave activity flux can occur as the advected warm and moist airmasses interact with the native cold ones plus on some occasions bordering mountainous terrain. This means a lot of energy to go into large later-season warming events such as we're seeing for the second winter in a row. The intense vortex finds its days of glory are numbered.

Interestingly back in Oct-Nov we seemed to have a lot of left-over stratospheric warmth from the enormous final warming event of last winter, which overpowered the cooling trend with climate change, suggesting that it's still possible to start the winter season with a vortex that's vulnerable to early attack. If that had happened this winter, with all the poleward heat flux going on, we might have seen a pretty dramatic December before a likely sharp rebound as the vortex joined forces with the westerly QBO; when the vortex is severely disrupted, flux into the stratosphere tends to be shut down for a time so the stratosphere can cool and balance be restored.

Whether sea ice is helped or harmed by these  stratospheric warming events seems to be strongly related to whether the vortex is displaced (bad for ice as cross-polar flows are encouraged) or split (good as Arctic highs can develop with surface inversion and convergence of ice floes etc.). I'm not quite sure how a displacement followed by a split, as we seem to be headed for at the moment, will play out for it though!

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