This is wili's Typepad Profile.
Join Typepad and start following wili's activity
wili
Recent Activity
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.
Looking for winter weirdness 2014
There has been some stuff in the past 2 months that could be linked to erratic jet stream behaviour - which in turn could be influenced by Arctic sea ice loss - like a series of storms battering Europe's Northwest, such as the St. Jude storm at the end of October, followed in December by Xaver, ...
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
Looking for winter weirdness 2014
There has been some stuff in the past 2 months that could be linked to erratic jet stream behaviour - which in turn could be influenced by Arctic sea ice loss - like a series of storms battering Europe's Northwest, such as the St. Jude storm at the end of October, followed in December by Xaver, ...
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?
Looking for winter weirdness 2014
There has been some stuff in the past 2 months that could be linked to erratic jet stream behaviour - which in turn could be influenced by Arctic sea ice loss - like a series of storms battering Europe's Northwest, such as the St. Jude storm at the end of October, followed in December by Xaver, ...
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.
Sea ice atlas
Now, this is what I call a cool tool: Researchers at the University of Alaska Fairbanks have developed a "web based atlas to let users view historical sea ice data collected between the mid-1800s and today, and compiled for display on an interactive map of the seas surrounding northern Alaska"...
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?
Sea ice atlas
Now, this is what I call a cool tool: Researchers at the University of Alaska Fairbanks have developed a "web based atlas to let users view historical sea ice data collected between the mid-1800s and today, and compiled for display on an interactive map of the seas surrounding northern Alaska"...
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?
Bromine, chlorine and mercury
After this 2012 blog post on Arctic pollution, it's time to return to the subject, if only because Arctic sea ice is proving to be a significant factor in changes in atmospheric chemistry, leading to increases in mercury concentrations in the Arctic. This happens through sea ice melting during s...
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!
PIOMAS January 2014
Another month/year has passed and so here is the updated Arctic sea ice volume graph as calculated by the Pan-Arctic Ice Ocean Modeling and Assimilation System (PIOMAS) at the Polar Science Center: Whereas last month 2013 volume had crept somewhat closer to top low years 2010, 2011 and 2012, t...
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.
PIOMAS January 2014
Another month/year has passed and so here is the updated Arctic sea ice volume graph as calculated by the Pan-Arctic Ice Ocean Modeling and Assimilation System (PIOMAS) at the Polar Science Center: Whereas last month 2013 volume had crept somewhat closer to top low years 2010, 2011 and 2012, t...
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?
Arctic warming -> extreme weather debate
Andrew Freedman outdid himself on Climate Central with an excellent overview of the scientific debate on the link between Arctic sea ice loss and a wavy jet stream causing weird and extreme weather. Coincidentally (?) there's an "extreme kink" in it right now that just caused the warmest Decemb...
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
Arctic warming -> extreme weather debate
Andrew Freedman outdid himself on Climate Central with an excellent overview of the scientific debate on the link between Arctic sea ice loss and a wavy jet stream causing weird and extreme weather. Coincidentally (?) there's an "extreme kink" in it right now that just caused the warmest Decemb...
Thanks for the great graph-gifts. Neven and his elves have been busy!
Merry christPIOMAS
Santa Claus was worried that his home would soon disappear (it won't, it's safe in Walmart for the time being) and decided to look for information on Arctic sea ice. After all, the best thing you can do when fearing something, is try to understand it. Santa read and thought and read some more f...
Mostly weather. There is no "pause."
CryoSat: Arctic sea ice up from record low
We have monthly PIOMAS updates, a new sea ice thickness product derived from SMOS brightness temperatures was presented earlier this month (see video), and now it's time for some more news from the third of the thickness trident: CryoSat-2. From the European Space Agency website: Arctic sea ice...
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. '-)
CryoSat: Arctic sea ice up from record low
We have monthly PIOMAS updates, a new sea ice thickness product derived from SMOS brightness temperatures was presented earlier this month (see video), and now it's time for some more news from the third of the thickness trident: CryoSat-2. From the European Space Agency website: Arctic sea ice...
Thanks, neven. That makes sense.
CryoSat: Arctic sea ice up from record low
We have monthly PIOMAS updates, a new sea ice thickness product derived from SMOS brightness temperatures was presented earlier this month (see video), and now it's time for some more news from the third of the thickness trident: CryoSat-2. From the European Space Agency website: Arctic sea ice...
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.)
CryoSat: Arctic sea ice up from record low
We have monthly PIOMAS updates, a new sea ice thickness product derived from SMOS brightness temperatures was presented earlier this month (see video), and now it's time for some more news from the third of the thickness trident: CryoSat-2. From the European Space Agency website: Arctic sea ice...
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."
Arctic warming -> extreme weather debate
Andrew Freedman outdid himself on Climate Central with an excellent overview of the scientific debate on the link between Arctic sea ice loss and a wavy jet stream causing weird and extreme weather. Coincidentally (?) there's an "extreme kink" in it right now that just caused the warmest Decemb...
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?
Arctic Report Card 2013
NOAA has released this year's Arctic Report Card. What's new in 2013? There were fewer snow and ice extremes than in 2012. Many regions and components of the Arctic environment were closer to their long-term averages, but the effects of a persistent warming trend that began over 30 years ago ...
" 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
And the wind cries methane
We return with some more info from the land of unknown, the land that is very important for our own land, but of which we do not seem to want to know more, as we are strangely comfortable with the unknown. I'm talking about methane, of course, the potent greenhouse gas of which enormous quantit...
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.
And the wind cries methane
We return with some more info from the land of unknown, the land that is very important for our own land, but of which we do not seem to want to know more, as we are strangely comfortable with the unknown. I'm talking about methane, of course, the potent greenhouse gas of which enormous quantit...
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."
Arctic warming -> extreme weather debate
Andrew Freedman outdid himself on Climate Central with an excellent overview of the scientific debate on the link between Arctic sea ice loss and a wavy jet stream causing weird and extreme weather. Coincidentally (?) there's an "extreme kink" in it right now that just caused the warmest Decemb...
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.
Arctic warming -> extreme weather debate
Andrew Freedman outdid himself on Climate Central with an excellent overview of the scientific debate on the link between Arctic sea ice loss and a wavy jet stream causing weird and extreme weather. Coincidentally (?) there's an "extreme kink" in it right now that just caused the warmest Decemb...
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.
PIOMAS December 2013
Short announcement: I've put up a widget from Skeptical Science in the right hand bar that shows the planetary heat/energy imbalance that is built up due to greenhouse gas emissions. Generate your own customizable widget here if you have some space on your blog. ----- Another month has passed an...
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.
PIOMAS December 2013
Short announcement: I've put up a widget from Skeptical Science in the right hand bar that shows the planetary heat/energy imbalance that is built up due to greenhouse gas emissions. Generate your own customizable widget here if you have some space on your blog. ----- Another month has passed an...
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!
PIOMAS December 2013
Short announcement: I've put up a widget from Skeptical Science in the right hand bar that shows the planetary heat/energy imbalance that is built up due to greenhouse gas emissions. Generate your own customizable widget here if you have some space on your blog. ----- Another month has passed an...
"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'.)
PIOMAS December 2013
Short announcement: I've put up a widget from Skeptical Science in the right hand bar that shows the planetary heat/energy imbalance that is built up due to greenhouse gas emissions. Generate your own customizable widget here if you have some space on your blog. ----- Another month has passed an...
More...
Subscribe to wili’s Recent Activity