Steve, That paper on Arctic Amplification in the Pleiocene looks very interesting. I've asked HeisenIceBerg if s/he can get a copy. SATire, Thanks for the words of explanation and caution.

Lawrence Solomon is a double digit IQ dolt. That's not an ad hominen. It's an insult, verging upon fact backed up by observational evidence.

Neven, Comment in the spam folder again.

Neven, Beware of using PICT as a measure of thickness, this time of year it's about 1 to 3% off PIOMAS, by late summer it can be 30% off due to concentration being low.

Most of mine were neutral too, but science is not a popularity ranking. Alexander, I did that one with some jerks on a message board once, IIRC the samples they were saying were the correct ones were all from locations typically downwind of, or in the middle of, major industrial centres, and had been rejected by real researchers. Steve, Camel racing? More like Elephant mating: Starts with a lot of stamping and trumpeting, and takes 18 months to produces results. ;)

PS. This post has been mentioned in Stewart Stanniford's 'Early Warning' blog.

Susan, Thanks for the suggestion. I use Typepad as a separate ID for this blog only. Otherwise Blogger uses Google ID. I have no presence on, or interest in, things like Facebook or Twitter.

David Madsen, My understanding is that this isn't a rise of warm air at all but a planetary scale wave causing warming in the stratosphere. The Wikipedia article on SSWs confirms it's the 'breaking' of waves in the stratosphere that causes the warming, and I think that Michael Splitt's helpful interjections really put a hole in the idea of warm influxes into the stratosphere. This is just another occasion when the importance of waves in the atmosphere has been made clear to me. Steve, Thanks, I'll still be over at the Forum, and will still read. But having posts appear post dated out of the flow of the conversation is just too frustrating. The problem is whenever I use links. And I find it hard to say things without reference to evidence. You'll probably find my making 'drive by' comments but not getting into discussion. As always if you need to get my attention there's my blog. Vukcevic, I am not Chris Colose, for the record I have the greatest respect for him and his opinion. The discussion was years ago, likely at Realclimate, I may have posted as Chris R back then. I can't recally what your claim was but I ended up suggesting I'd consider it further when you had it published in a peer reviewed journal. Which is my way of saying 'I'm bored and this is not a valuable use of my time'. Which is my attitude when arguments don't impress me.

Neil, I didn't misunderstand you. It was just a relevant interjection that might prove to be of use for anyone faced with the "It's the sun." rubbish.

Steve Bloom, I've read your paper and there's nothing but handwaving. Handwaving from Vukcevic? No! Shurely Shome Mishtake! ;) For those who don't get the sarcasm - I too have dealt with Vukcevic. The impression I got was of a rhetorical windmill.

Thanks Neven, Idle musing, I think I'm getting a bit more of a handle on what's going on. This isn't an issue of warm air moving around. With regards the animated gif in the post. The issue is that Rossby Waves are radiating from the disturbance in South Central Asia and are breaking into the stratosphere where their dissipation causes the warming (due to adiabatic heating). This seems to be similar to the mechanism I suspect may be at play in the summer circulation pattern centred on Greenland, where the post 2007 accentuation of the Greenland ridge interacts with zonal flow and causes a ring of low pressure tendency at 3000km distant. Now if the Arctic sea ice would just stop doing what it's doing for a few years I'd put understanding planetary waves at the top of my list. Now I will stop waving my hands around and leave the discussion to those who know more.

Michael, "adiabatic expansion outweighs the advection of warm air upward in the atmosphere" Thanks I wasn't aware of this, I had thought that upward northerly advection would warm the stratosphere with air abnormally warm for the latitude overcoming abiabatic cooling. Given the location and timing, desert/tundra in winter at high altitude, it doesn't seem like latent heat would be a big player. My meteorology is just what I need to grasp the issue of sea ice, SLP and air temps. So I'll step back for a moment and see how this pans out before deciding to email anyone else. PS - there is a speculative comment from me about the Jetstream in the spam filter at present.

Michael, I'm referring to the animated gif in the post showing a warm penetration into the north, and the warming at the stratosphere implying lift. R Gates, I can't give a link or my post will be spam filtered (after this thread I'm quitting this site for that reason). But check Wikipedia, it's confirmed in the final paragraph. I'm really rather puzzled now. Using NCEP/NCAR I've been looking at the evolution of the 25/12/2002 event. There seems to be a pocket travelling up through the atmosphere northwards who's meridional flow is _south_. It got me so puzzled I opened up an ECWMF plot for a few days ago and checked to see if my orientation of +ve and -ve merid flow was correct, it is. I need to do some thinking. I've been in touch with Dr Cohen and Dr Francis previously and may ask their opinions.

Michael, How then is the high (+ve) omega at times of apparent uplift to be interpreted?

Remko, It was on topic, Ardnt's claims were just b_____ks.

Neil T, When I was a sceptic of AGW one paper trashed my last bastion - solar influence. Impact of global dimming and brightening on global warming. http://www.iac.ethz.ch/doc/publications/2006GL028031.pdf Subsequent research has shown a complex regional pattern, but the broad message of that paper remains. As a worldwide average, surface insolation reduced in the last part of the twentieth century, due to changes of aerosols in the atmosphere. So regardless of whether one claims clouds, aerosols, or actual radiation from the sun, one cannot claim AGW was caused by changes in sunlight. Here's the killer quote from the paper. Despite the fact that surface insolation at the turn of the millennium is rather lower than in the 1960s, land surface temperatures have increased by 0.8
C over this period (Figure 1). This suggests that the net effect of surface solar forcing over the past decades cannot be the principal driver behind the overall temperature increase, since over the past 40 years, cooling from solar dimming still outweighs warming from solar brightening. Rather, the overall temperature increase since the 1960s can be attributed to greenhouse forcing as also evident in the BSRN data outlined above. Thus, speculations that solar brightening rather than the greenhouse effect could have been the main cause of the overall global warming over the past decades appear unfounded. One denialist said I wasn't being scientific if I allowed one piece of new evidence to change my opinion. I won't repeat my response.

Lillybrown, There is still a jetstream during the summer, so it is reasonable to presume that the jetstream will not cease. However the changes in the Arctic have the potential to establish a new normal or 'baseline' of behaviour of the jetstream. As the Arctic transitions to a sea ice free state, what is happening in summer is that the ice is still keeping most of the Arctic Ocean cold. Just as a drink with ice in it stays cold until all the ice is melted, so the Arctic Ocean is cooled even as the ice melts during the summer. However just as in a car battery, the melt of the ice is actually storing up potential energy. This potential energy is release in the autumn(fall) and early winter as new ice grows in the cold during those periods. The growth of this new ice involves release of a lot of energy (effectively the energy that went into melting ice during the summer), so there is a strong warming in autumn and winter. However there is also warming from warmer air coming into the Arctic, this is year round but strongest in the autumn. So the current effect on the atmosphere is very seasonal, and the changes to come will be very seasonal. At present the autumn warming of the Arctic seems to be causing more snowfall over Eurasia, which is in turn driving the northern hemisphere circulation into a pattern called the 'negative Arctic Oscillation' during winter. On the following page the graphic at the bottom of the page shows the impacts: http://nsidc.org/cryosphere/arctic-meteorology/weather_climate_patterns.html In Canada this tends to be outbreaks of Arctic air, with interuption of the jetstream - more cold events and less storms/rainfall. However this probably won't apply every winter, just more often. In decades to come the Arctic will experience longer periods of open water during the summer, how fast this progresses depends on how much the winter warms, because that governs how much ice grows in winter, which determines how much ice needs to be melted in the spring/summer to expose open water. The point is that the open water can warm to above the freezing point of water (like a drink where the ice has melted). Furthermore in winter thinner ice, and less ice in places like the Barents and Kara seas will continue to impact mass airflow. So the existing pattern of colder winters should remain for a period at least, but to it will be added summer impacts. The modelling studies I have read show Arctic outbreaks will be less cold because they project up to the end of this century when the globe (and Arctic) will be much warmer. However change in the Arctic is well ahead of that schedule, so until the Arctic warms enough to reduce the severity of cold outbreaks we can expect the pattern of recent winters to remain. I have not read studies which make clear the summer effects of an early loss of Arctic sea ice. If the Arctic warms enough during winter then it is possible that sea ice will not form. The effects of this state on winter northern hemisphere will be very great. What studies there are imply that in the past one factor was probably increased warm airflow from mid latititudes into the Arctic, keeping the region above zero. This would imply a change in winter precipitation and storm track patterns. However there would still be relatively cold air in the winter over the Arctic, and relatively warm air to the south, so a jetstream would still exist. I don't think anyone has a clue as to where the jet would be and which areas would be warmer/colder, or wetter/drier.

Where do you get these plots for past years?

Heisen, I have considered this, it's a minor reason why I haven't been too worried about getting a profile that matches PIOMAS volume. However I perhaps wasn't clear enough about length of tail. I don't expect decades of tail. One flaw with my approach is that it doesn't factor in system energy gain due to large amounts of open water, at what would probably be progressively earlier dates in the year. So when the 'model' shows an oscillating tail it should not be taken as indicating reality. What I see the tail as indicating is a state where autumn/winter ice growth is able to at least match spring/summer ice loss. With the growth being determined by thermodynamic ice growth, which under current winter temperatures is around 2m thick. So until the region had warmed enough to reduce winter thermodynamic equilibrium thickness, allowing summer to open up more water, the rapid volume loss would reduce and there would be a tail. Actually, if the modellers are right and CO2 is the main issue in winter I suppose that could persist. Then again there would be some residual warming of the ocean... So much to consider. I posted that post before having seen the recent PIOMAS gridded data. With sight of that it shows that this year included the apparent levelling in volume hides potentially significant declines in thick ice. However I still wonder if the autumn/winter thermodynamic growth has the potential to draw things out. Or if we will see a succession of crashes culminating in a sea ice free state. SATire, Crandles has been talking about trying to make a 'toy model' that's more physically based than my attempt using curves derived from data. I still think that re-doing PIOMAS or NAME would be futile. But Crandles may have a point - what has deterred me is that when I tried a similar approach around the time I changed opinion on a rapid loss, everything I did either crashed to zero, or zoomed to +/- infinity. I keep meaning to do a further blog post, but have been pondering doing a thread over on the forum.

Remko, SSW's may be a precursor to blocking patterns, but they also may not. Agreed. R. Gates, Sorry, was rushed this morning. To explain in more detail: Here's figure 1 of Cohen et al 2010. http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6056/6258042947_048260c174.jpg The process Cohen outlines proceeds as follows, using the numbered points in that diagram. Stage 1 is the massive snowfall across Siberia during the last two weeks of October. Stage 2 is the initial atmospheric response to that; surface temperatures in Siberia went from being above average to below, this lead to the development of a region of high pressure over the region. Stage 3 is shown in panel b; this was an upward moving train of atmospheric waves that translated the surface high pressure into impacts upon the stratosphere. By stage 4 the process was affecting the stratosphere substantially, leading to a dipolar pattern of warming centred on the Canadian Arctic Archipelago and cooling over Siberia. At stage 5 the stratospheric temperature and pressure changes lead to changes in the atmospheric column that propagate downwards into the troposphere, until at... Stage 6 a negative index AO becomes apparent in the surface pressure fields. The process then repeated a second time leading to the second cold wave that affected the mid latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere during January. I haven't had the time to follow closely what you've been posting. And as I cannot follow the wave activity flux linkage I can't strongly argue w.r.t. your recent work. But you might want to look at 2009/10's winter in terms of your approach.

Arnd, But the mixing is surface mixing, not throughout the whole column of >300m in the bulk of the ocean. Bottom line; warm water rises, the energy input into the oceans is from the sun at the surface. That's why the deeps are still holding relic cold from the last glacials. The major force mixing the oceans at depth is overturning circulation, and that is slow. You list disparate facts, then conclude something that is not a forcible conclusion from that list. No comment about your claim that the Baltic being warmer than the North Sea is contrary to my claim about easterlies, when the easterly zonal wind clearly didn't cover the Baltic? No comment about Wunch' arguments, in particular his presentation of ERBE data which demonstrates the main warming factor at the latitude of Europe is the atmosphere, not the ocean? A few more loose ends like that and I will conclude you don't have a serious argument and that I should stop wasting my time. Actually, before posting this I thought I should have a dig around your links to see what you're saying. You say: Since December 1941 huge sea areas were churned and turned up-side-down over depths even hurricane wind force do not have any compareable equivalence. Ah! I see.

R Gates, Cohen's work shows that SSWs are an intermediate part of a process starting with snow advance over Eurasia. Arnd Benaerts, e.g. Hadley/Walker - no need to include ocean as a driving mechanism. When ocean water heats it forms a warm cap, not convection throughout the ocean column. So it cannot drive the net meridional transport. Unlike the atmosphere. Take the Atlantic - the atmospheric gyre formed by the trade winds due to modification of net poleward atmospheric heat flow drives the ocean gyre in the Atlantic. The ocean is not driving atmospheric flow. Take figure 10 of the Wunsch paper I showed you: Ocean Heat Flux falls off before entering mid latitudes due to heat loss. The bulk heat transport into mid latitudes is from the atmosphere.

R Gates, Do you think the winter of 2009/10 was due to SSWs? If so I strongly disagree. Cohen et al, GRL, 2010, "Winter 2009–2010: A case study of an extreme Arctic Oscillation event." http://web.mit.edu/~jlcohen/www/papers/Cohenetal_GRL10.pdf And part of that process was SSWs triggered by Wave Activity Fluxes from the surface. As I don't know how to get NCEP/NCAR to give me WAF information I can't investigate the role of WAFs in this winter, but we've seen SSWs associated with cold outbreaks, we've had a strong snow advance last autumn, and the same WACC pattern has been active, so I presume that the same mechanism has been at play. I've been in email discussion with Dr Cohen previously. I can ask him if that would help.

...and another post goes missing...

Correction - wasn't Connelly, was James Annan.