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Stratosphere and Polar Vortex Watch


Paul

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Posted
  • Location: Longden, Shropshire
  • Location: Longden, Shropshire
19 hours ago, sebastiaan1973 said:

We speculated about this back in October: another QBO disruption. EOF analysis of NCEP/NCAR 10-100hPa equatorial zonal winds shows no QBO progress since January. It will be fascinating to see where it goes from here.

 

Another E-QBO failure or will it get there eventually?  Wait and see I suppose?

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Posted
  • Location: Coniston, Cumbria 90m ASL
  • Weather Preferences: wintry
  • Location: Coniston, Cumbria 90m ASL
7 hours ago, Don said:

Another E-QBO failure or will it get there eventually?  Wait and see I suppose?

Maybe reduced air travel may impact positively? Again...wait and see...

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Posted
  • Location: Longden, Shropshire
  • Location: Longden, Shropshire
13 hours ago, JeffC said:

Maybe reduced air travel may impact positively? Again...wait and see...

Perhaps.  Strange things going on in the atmosphere at the moment, I guess likely due to climate change?

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

When we saw the first 'QBO fail' folk would not believe it as it was outside of their model for 'How the World Works'..... now it's failing again......

Still , looks like our F.W. will be benign this year?

Full steam into Summer I say!

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Posted
  • Location: Longden, Shropshire
  • Location: Longden, Shropshire
5 hours ago, Gray-Wolf said:

When we saw the first 'QBO fail' folk would not believe it as it was outside of their model for 'How the World Works'..... now it's failing again......

Yes, it would seem something is upsetting the QBO 'rhythm'?!  There was speculation that the super Nino of 2015/16 may have been the cause of the 2016 failure, but what would explain the potential failure of the coming E-QBO?

As for the coming summer, one fly in the ointment is the forecast of a developing La Nina?  All very interesting to watch various developments during the coming months!

Edited by Don
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Posted
  • Location: Coniston, Cumbria 90m ASL
  • Weather Preferences: wintry
  • Location: Coniston, Cumbria 90m ASL
15 hours ago, Don said:

Perhaps.  Strange things going on in the atmosphere at the moment, I guess likely due to climate change?

Agreed, will be interesting to see if there are any collateral improvements with reduced output generally in 2020

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On 11/04/2020 at 08:56, knocker said:

Rapidly

ecmwf-deterministic-nhemi-z10_anom-7427200.thumb.png.a824371295e577005607763e68e92666.pngecmwf-deterministic-nhemi-z50_anom-7427200.thumb.png.ee8778d70789cb0cebb973d603d29059.png

Maybe not, the 06z GFS today has +ve 10mb winds til April 28th, then a few days weak reversal then weakly +ve again. Normal reversal by about April 12th, so much for the theory that it happens earlier in years without SSW lol.

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

The polar vortex of 2020 is so exceptional that the models can’t resolve its full resilience beyond about 10 days range... I suppose that’s to be expected really, much like how you’d not expect a record-breaking heatwave to be reliably predicted at 10 days range.

The slower it decays, the more I wonder whether we’ll see a legacy of low height tendency in the Arctic troposphere until at least July. That led to interesting results when we had the slight Nina-like swings to the atmosphere in May-June 2018. This time around we may be more Niño like at least in May - so perhaps a less stable pattern, lengthy dry weather exchanged for thundery breakdowns to warm/hot air plumes.

Mainly speculation, usual caveats apply!

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Posted
  • Location: Mytholmroyd, West Yorks.......
  • Weather Preferences: Hot & Sunny, Cold & Snowy
  • Location: Mytholmroyd, West Yorks.......
sample.png
EARTH.NULLSCHOOL.NET

See current wind, weather, ocean, and pollution conditions, as forecast by supercomputers, on an interactive animated map. Updated every three hours.

I take it we can call it a day for the 2019/20 PNJ?

It appears to have been a very gentle 'wind down' ? ( and from one of the strongest PNJ's we've ever measured?)

See you all again for the 2020/21 PNJ!

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Posted
  • Location: Leeds/Bradford border, 185 metres above sea level, around 600 feet
  • Location: Leeds/Bradford border, 185 metres above sea level, around 600 feet

GFS now forecasting the final warming, just a few days later than last year.

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Posted
  • Location: Cambridge, UK
  • Weather Preferences: Summer > Spring > Winter > Autumn :-)
  • Location: Cambridge, UK
10 hours ago, summer blizzard said:

GFS now forecasting the final warming, just a few days later than last year.

Good, we can finally mothball this thread for 4 months until it starts spinning up again at the end of August. What a complete let down winter 19/20 was, one of the worst ever.

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Posted
  • Location: Windermere 120m asl
  • Location: Windermere 120m asl
59 minutes ago, mb018538 said:

Good, we can finally mothball this thread for 4 months until it starts spinning up again at the end of August. What a complete let down winter 19/20 was, one of the worst ever.

Yes up there with recent woeful winters such as 15-16, 13-14 and 88-89, 89-90.. in the worse league.

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  • 4 weeks later...
Posted
  • Location: Longden, Shropshire
  • Location: Longden, Shropshire
3 hours ago, sebastiaan1973 said:

 

Gavs Weather Vids touched on this in his last few Sunday roundups.  His opinion was that we would probably still go into a mature E-QBO.  However, this may not be the case with NASA’s latest update? E-QBO over before it’s barely started?  Not good and strange things going on within the atmosphere!

Edited by Don
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Posted
  • Location: Coniston, Cumbria 90m ASL
  • Weather Preferences: wintry
  • Location: Coniston, Cumbria 90m ASL

Apart from the previous failed E-QBO is there any kind of precedent for this? 

I'm wondering if it's anything being driven by solar minimum?

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Posted
  • Location: Leeds/Bradford border, 185 metres above sea level, around 600 feet
  • Location: Leeds/Bradford border, 185 metres above sea level, around 600 feet
4 hours ago, JeffC said:

Apart from the previous failed E-QBO is there any kind of precedent for this? 

I'm wondering if it's anything being driven by solar minimum?

None if it really fails completely but there are examples like 88/89 which were very slow to get going.

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Posted
  • Location: Brighton (currently)
  • Location: Brighton (currently)
21 hours ago, Don said:

Gavs Weather Vids touched on this in his last few Sunday roundups.  His opinion was that we would probably still go into a mature E-QBO.  However, this may not be the case with NASA’s latest update? E-QBO over before it’s barely started?  Not good and strange things going on within the atmosphere!

Basically, anything that can go wrong will go wrong to prevent us from getting a cold winter. 

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

 

Unlike the current event, the 2015-15 QBO disruption took place when it was already in the westerly descending phase (but right on the cusp of easterly decendin). It resulted in a sort of 'double westerly descent'. 

This time, we were about halfway through easterly decent when the QBO started to go off script.

It's interesting that in both cases we see a split of the easterlies between two levels, but in the current case it's lower down and across a narrower height range.


There are signs in the April data that the effect may be similar, though - the easterlies above deflecting away back upward while those below descend and fade out as usual.

It will be fascinating to observe how much the neutral layer expands and turns more westerly afterward.. if at all. We're in uncharted territory, really!

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Posted
  • Location: Leeds/Bradford border, 185 metres above sea level, around 600 feet
  • Location: Leeds/Bradford border, 185 metres above sea level, around 600 feet
19 minutes ago, Singularity said:

 

Unlike the current event, the 2015-15 QBO disruption took place when it was already in the westerly descending phase (but right on the cusp of easterly decendin). It resulted in a sort of 'double westerly descent'. 

This time, we were about halfway through easterly decent when the QBO started to go off script.

It's interesting that in both cases we see a split of the easterlies between two levels, but in the current case it's lower down and across a narrower height range.


There are signs in the April data that the effect may be similar, though - the easterlies above deflecting away back upward while those below descend and fade out as usual.

It will be fascinating to observe how much the neutral layer expands and turns more westerly afterward.. if at all. We're in uncharted territory, really!

spacer.png

Difficult to tell from such a crude chart but its worth saying that in 88/89 we did have a full 8 months at a standard deviation of neutral-negative because 30hpa values started to rise before returning to normal. It's also worth saying that from the monthly layered values in the 2015 cycle the 20hpa and 30hpa values never got lower than +9 before rebounding whereas in this cycle we are at -7 and -3 meaning that we do have easterlies throughout the atmosphere (while they've weakened at 20hpa they are still in slow decline at 30hpa) so i'm not sure this one will fail in totality. 

 

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Posted
  • Location: Longden, Shropshire
  • Location: Longden, Shropshire
5 hours ago, summer blizzard said:

spacer.png

Difficult to tell from such a crude chart but its worth saying that in 88/89 we did have a full 8 months at a standard deviation of neutral-negative because 30hpa values started to rise before returning to normal. It's also worth saying that from the monthly layered values in the 2015 cycle the 20hpa and 30hpa values never got lower than +9 before rebounding whereas in this cycle we are at -7 and -3 meaning that we do have easterlies throughout the atmosphere (while they've weakened at 20hpa they are still in slow decline at 30hpa) so i'm not sure this one will fail in totality. 

 

With the westerlies already descending, wouldn't this make it unlikely we will still be in an E-QBO come next winter, or is it very much a case of wait and see?

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Posted
  • Location: Longden, Shropshire
  • Location: Longden, Shropshire
6 hours ago, karyo said:

Basically, anything that can go wrong will go wrong to prevent us from getting a cold winter. 

Well, you know how it is! 

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Posted
  • Location: Beccles, Suffolk.
  • Weather Preferences: Thunder, snow, heat, sunshine...
  • Location: Beccles, Suffolk.
21 hours ago, JeffC said:

I'm wondering if it's anything being driven by solar minimum?

TBH, Jeff, I don't think so; I suspect that changes to the QBO, are more-likely linked to AGW: the expansion of the Hadley Cell, perhaps?:unsure2:

I suspect (and always have suspected) that many of the 'effects' of Solar minima may be highly exaggerated? 

Cheerio, Elvis!:oldlaugh:

Edited by General Cluster
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Posted
  • Location: Longden, Shropshire
  • Location: Longden, Shropshire
54 minutes ago, General Cluster said:

TBH, Jeff, I don't think so; I suspect that changes to the QBO, are more-likely linked to AGW: the expansion of the Hadley Cell, perhaps?:unsure2:

That my thoughts as well with AGW likely causing the disruption to the recent QBO cycles.  Shame isn’t it!

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Posted
  • Location: Leeds/Bradford border, 185 metres above sea level, around 600 feet
  • Location: Leeds/Bradford border, 185 metres above sea level, around 600 feet
1 hour ago, Don said:

With the westerlies already descending, wouldn't this make it unlikely we will still be in an E-QBO come next winter, or is it very much a case of wait and see?

Well as i highlighted (if you click on the tweet image and then click in again) the westerlies are technically not descending because there are not any. It's possible though that we may see a westerly burst at 20hpa. The two possibilities essentially being that we repeat 88/89 and its just temporary or we repeat 15/16 when we saw the easterlies closed off and then dissolved closer to the surface. 

Right now i'm suggesting the 88/89 model is more probable in which case the other chart in the tweet will just loop and descend again.  

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Posted
  • Location: Delph, historic West Riding of Yorkshire, 225m asl
  • Weather Preferences: All 4 seasons and a good mixture of everything and anything!
  • Location: Delph, historic West Riding of Yorkshire, 225m asl
48 minutes ago, Don said:

That my thoughts as well with AGW likely causing the disruption to the recent QBO cycles.  Shame isn’t it!

It will only be a 'shame' if it's true and it comes off

Right now none of us can possibly have any idea what's going on with it

All I do know is that we are indeed in an Easterly QBO right now - let's not forget that

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