Sam, are you expecting a La Nina? Also, it is my understanding that the polar vortex is a characteristic of the winter months. So we wouldn't expect to see one in the south right now. But I may well be confused on this. I do think change is afoot, but I haven't been watching these things for long enough to know for sure how unusual patterns we are seeing are at this point. Any insights from folks who have would be more than welcome.

I just noticed that, at the 10 hPa level, the polar vortex has now split in two. http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/isobaric/10hPa/orthographic=-94.05,77.28,279 Is this unusual? Unprecedented? What does it forebode? At the 70 hPa, it is nearly in two, with a very odd configuration: http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/isobaric/70hPa/orthographic=-94.05,77.28,279

A4R, thanks for that MET report. One thing I'm confused about: They said that both the jet stream and the polar vortex had strengthened considerably. But I had thought that both were supposed to slow down (and that that slowing was the cause of the big meanders in the Rossby Waves) as the temperature difference between tropics and poles reduced. What is it that I am missing here?

Thanks all for your insights into local events. Does anyone have anything to opine about Enno's (implied) query?: "I have not yet seen an explanation for why the N. Atlantic is this extremely stormy this winter." I'm assuming that it is related to the whole wacky wavy jet stream from the central Pacific, up to Alaska, down to the mid US, then back up over the northern Atlantic. That pattern is in the process of falling apart now, apparently, so we'll see. But I'm mostly just talking out of my nether regions here. So any insights on this from the cogniscenti would be appreciated.

Neven, the loop you talked about in the first comment seems to have mostly busted up. http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/isobaric/250hPa/orthographic=-123.84,40.05,328 Parts of the Pacific NW are finally getting some rain. Southern CA is still pretty dry, though. Can any of our UK friends talk about the battering that various parts of your island nation have been getting from incessant storms?

You don't need very high levels of mercury for it to be biologically significant. IIRC, at a few parts per billion disruption fish schooling behavior has been seen. On the high levels of atmospheric chlorine: As they say, it is highly reactive. Could these high levels be reacting with the methane that has been reported coming out of various parts of the Arctic, and could this help explain the seeming mis-match between the vast quantities of methane actually seen bubbling out of the oceans, and the (generally still) relatively slow rate of increase of atmospheric methane concentrations in the general region?

Hey, ASI blog just got a shout out of sorts from Skeptical Science for displaying the Hiroshima Bombs of GW Heat widget. http://www.skepticalscience.com/widget-million.html The second image is of the top of this very thread with the widget next to it! Thanks again, neven, for including this striking presentation of this vital information at the top of your blog. Keep at it!

I don't know whether this has been linked here, but it strikes me as a good (if grim) overview of our current predicament, from the good folks at ClimateCodeRed: http://www.climatecodered.org/p/is-climate-change-already-dangerous.html The second (brief) chapter focuses on the Arctic.

jm wrote: "what else can explain the amount of wacky weather in these last 2 years?" Are the mid-latitude jet stream and the polar vortex really in the process of fusing? Has that process now gone to completion? No more Ferrel Cell? Is anyone publishing on this?

Don't want to drift this thread too far afield, but, while I don't know about effects on currents, the junk certainly is having effects on the bio-chemical level: http://www.latimes.com/science/la-sci-plastisphere-20131228,0,811701.story#axzz2onP6utXg

Thanks for the great graph-gifts. Neven and his elves have been busy!

Mostly weather. There is no "pause."

In the Piomas thread below, some people expressed...concerns about the unit of measurement of GW used in the new widget to the upper right. SkS now has an alternative, kinder, gentler measurement unit: Kitten Sneazes http://www.skepticalscience.com/AGU-2013-in-pictures-with-kittens.html Now we just need some focus groups so we can determine which measure more effectively gets across the gravity of the issue. '-)

Thanks, neven. That makes sense.

So should we be using these CryoSat numbers or the lower PIOMAS numbers when pointing out to people what is happening to sea ice? Which is more accurate? (Of course, both show dramatic ice loss over the decades.)

Apologies if this has already been linked: http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate2079.html Nature Climate Change | News and Views "Atmospheric science: Long-range linkage" James E. Overland Nature Climate Change (2013) doi:10.1038/nclimate2079 Published online 08 December 2013 "Evidence indicates that the continued loss of Arctic sea-ice and snow cover may influence weather at lower latitudes. Now correlations between high-latitude cryosphere changes, hemispheric wind patterns and mid-latitude extreme events are shown for the Northern Hemisphere."

I'm very glad to see this report, and to see it get coverage here. From the Freedman piece: "...“We have almost no observations of the currents, of the census of life” in new areas of open water, NOAA's Kathy Crane said at the press conference. The insights that scientists have been able to glean about changes to the oceans in the Far North show the same thing that is occurring on land — widespread, rapid change..." So we essentially nothing about how currents are changing and little more about how life is changing, except that the changes seem to be very large. "...The report found that 25 percent more heat and freshwater is now being stored in the Beaufort Gyre, which is a clockwise-moving ocean current that circles around north of Alaska and Canada. Much of that heat has been added during the summer and fall, coinciding with the most rapid time of sea ice loss..." 25% (so far) seems like a lot. Is this typical of the whole ocean? Another stupid question: What does 25% mean exactly here in degrees C?

" the clathrates are concentrated far deeper than that" In some places. Meanwhile, CC has a new piece on the Arctic Report Card. http://www.climatecentral.org/news/fingerprints-of-arctic-warming-seen-throughout-region-16835

At about minute 25 of this press conference they mention that there is a large influx of bottom-dwelling creatures farther and farther into the Arctic. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZZsTgl-jHQ These are likely to disrupt the permafrost 'cap' that KON just talked about in ways that it has never been disrupted before, thus accelerating its breakdown faster than the purely physics-and-chemistry-based models would suggest.

I sometimes get the feeling that bob is the "only living boy in NY"--almost no one else seems to be paying any attention to the total sh!t storm breaking over our heads. Thanks bob. Live well and prosper. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1zOj7V95sk "Let your honesty shine on, like it shines on me."

Thanks for posting this, Neven. I was just surprised to see the level of disagreement about whether having a whole new open ocean at the top of the world would have any effect outside of the Arctic, given that a relatively small part of the Pacific drives the El Nino/LaNina pattern that has so much effect. As Francis said in some video or another, how could it NOT have an effect. I'd still like to see more discussion about what is may be happening to the jetstreams and Hadley cells...That seems to me to have the most likelihood of rather suddenly effect the expected patterns of rainfall that our whole global agricultural system is based on, whether it is monsoon patterns, or expected rains in the breadbaskets of the American MidWest and in the Ukraine. The recent NRC report on abrupt change was a great improvement on the relative silence about such possibilities in general. But I still get the feeling that they are not connecting all dots that could reasonably connected as to reasonably possible sudden (within a decade or so) changes in our near future.

Thanks, jd. I really was opposing in this case the approach of putting all ones apples in one tech-basket, in the hope that one technology was going to magically solve all our problems. But certainly some kinds of new tech will be necessary, and we will need to keep developing technology to continue to monitor the unfolding climate sh!tstorm we have unleashed on our only precious blue planet. Mostly, though, we have to stop waiting for the next technical wizardry to get us out of our fixes, and focus on not digging ourselves deeper into our ever-deepening hole. Meanwhile, at least a bit closer to the topic of the thread: http://www.climatecentral.org/news/new-study-adds-to-arctic-warming-extreme-weather-debate-16811 This article really gets into the discussion now going on between Francis and her colleagues, on the one hand, and a number of other top experts in high-altitude atmospheric circulation about what the consequences of ice loss in the Arctic Ocean might be for Northern Hemisphere climate.

OK, I see. You're a nuke enthusiast/techno-fantasist. I've already had too many dead-end conversations with folks of that ilk. I'll plan to not responds to further posts of yours. Not worth wasting the time. Best of luck on whatever you pursue.

Wal wrote: "if the yanks had accepted that plea, a lot more lives would have been saved than continuing hostilities" Agreed. On the other point, I didn't see anyone blaming you in particular for anything. Just folks sharing strategies for most effectively reducing their carbon print. Of course, only doing so as an individual will never be sufficient by itself, just as an ante-bellum White Southerner would not have ended all slavery by freeing all his slaves. But he might have wanted to do so anyway, if he concluded that it was the moral thing to do, even if it didn't end the larger "peculiar institution." But if your strategy is just sitting around "waiting for everyman," well, you go for it. But perhaps you have some actionable strategy for achieving (or at least moving toward) "majority awareness" that you have been working hard on? If so, please do share. Maybe you'll get a recruit or two to help out!

"the willful and calculated decimation of Japanese civilians, men, women and children by their tens and hundreds of thousands is a deliberate CRIME against humanity" Agreed. So is AGW. We know. We have known for some time. There is no longer any excuse. "walking barefeet through Your Fields to pick ecological maize" Sorry, dear buddy. But this howler convinces me more than ever that you are having trouble thinking through even very fundamental differences between: 1)carbon that is part of natural cycles, and 2)the enormous giga-tons per year of extra fossil carbon that we are, yes, willfully adding to the system; giga-tons that are damning ourselves, likely, and our children, definitely, to a future hell on earth. Best wishes to you if you can't make even this most basic distinction. (And if you are as deeply concerned about effective communication as you claim, you might want to consider using spell check on occasion, and maybe not using rAnDoM cApS in your posts. Just sayin'.)