Saturday, January 30, 2016

Three warm January Arctic storms aim to unfreeze the North Pole again this week

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Arctic cyclones are more common during the summer than winter; however, summer cyclones tend to be weaker than the storms that batter the region during the winter.
Robert Scribbler:
It’s worth re-stating. The Starks were wrong. Winter isn’t coming. Winter, as we know it, is dying. Dying one tenth of a degree of global oceanic and atmospheric warming at a time. Steadily dying with each ton of heat-trapping greenhouse gasses emitted through our vastly irresponsible and terrifyingly massive burning of fossil fuels.
Scribbler warns that “we’ve never, not once, seen this kind of heat set up at the North Pole during January.” Blame this coming event on the media named Winter Storm Jonas. The storm left 19 dead in the United States and now has Britain and Wales in its sight before getting sucked up in a northern low next week.
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(UCAR’s North Pole temperature data record since 1948 per Bob Henson shows no above freezing days at the North Pole during January through late April. But it could happen next week.)
This is remarkable and should have us biting our nails in terror. This coming Tuesday, remember that temperatures "may push the North Pole up above freezing on a, black as night, January day”:
According to Global Forecast Systems model reanalysis by Earth Nullschool, it appears that a record warm Earth atmosphere and ocean system is again taking aim at the High Arctic. Another synoptic daisy chain of storms funneling warm, south-to-north winds — dredging them up from the tropics, flinging them across thousands of miles of North Atlantic Ocean waters, driving them up over Svalbard and toward the North Pole — is predicted to set up by early morning Monday.
The anchor of these dervishes of Equator-to-Pole heat transfer is the very Winter Storm Jonas that just crippled the Eastern US with record snowfall amounts and storm surges that have beaten some of the highest seas seen during Superstorm Sandy. A second, hurricane force low in the range of 950 mb is predicted to set up between Iceland and Greenland. But the tip of this spear of record atmospheric heat pointed directly at the Arctic is a third, but somewhat milder 990 mb, storm.
And it is this northern low that will draw a leading edge of record warmth into the Arctic. An anomalous, ocean-originating heat front that will spread its pall of air warm enough to melt sea ice during Winter north of Svalbard tomorrow. A swath of near and above-freezing temperatures spreading inexorably Pole-ward. Reinforced by the supporting lows and the synoptic wave of warmth in train, this storm is predicted to drive near or slightly above freezing temperatures into the region of 90 North Latitude by late Tuesday or early Wednesday. An event that would be unprecedented, at least in modern meteorological reckoning. One that may well be unprecedented for the whole of the Holocene.
To put such extraordinary temperatures into context, this predicted record polar warmth is in the range of 55 degrees (F) above normal for January. And for such a typically frigid region, these temperatures are more usual for June, July, or August. Or, to make another comparison, for Gaithersburg, Maryland it would be like seeing readings above 94 degrees (F) for the same Winter day.
The fossil fuel industries need to pay the bills for climate catastrophe. It is only fair and just that they do.
Live Arctic wind patterns can be seen here.

end quote from:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/01/24/1474483/-Unprecedented-Three-warm-January-Arctic-storms-aim-to-unfreeze-the-N-Pole-again-this-week

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