Does this help explain why the US and Europe have been relatively cold recently?

Question

According to NASA's Earth Observatory:

"Part of the answer lies in the stratosphere, some 20 kilometers (12 miles) above the Earth’s surface.

Starting in January and extending into early February 2009, wind and temperature patterns in the stratosphere changed dramatically. In just a few weeks, temperatures climbed by about 50 degrees Celsius (90 degrees F) on average, with larger spikes in places, and winds flipped direction, changing by nearly 100 meters per second (200 miles per hour). That change influenced weather patterns lower in the atmosphere. These images and the associated animation [see link] show how the stratosphere changed and help illustrate why the United States and Europe were in the grip of such odd weather."

"In Europe, the split in the air mass actually changed the direction of winds in the lower atmosphere. The second piece of the polar vortex was centered east of Western Europe, as shown in the lower left image, and it too was surrounded by a jet of strong wind moving counterclockwise. Like the segment of the polar vortex over North America, this piece of the polar vortex also had a deep reach into the lower atmosphere. It caused cold continental air to blow in from the east, replacing the warmer air that typically blows in from the west. As the frigid air moved over the North Sea, it picked up moisture, which fell over the United Kingdom and parts of France as heavy snow."
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=36972

Some cool images at that link. Does this help explain why Americans and some Europeans are focusing on cold temperatures despite the hot global temperatures?
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata/GLB.Ts+dSST.txt

Answer 1

And that is what I was getting at when I wrote a month ago-

``The polar high for the past few weeks has been sitting further south over northern Canada than would normally be expected and is pushing extreme record breaking cold into the Canadian Prairies and points further south. It appears that this is being caused by an exceptionally strong southerly flow over the central Atlantic Ocean into the arctic over Greenland. This would explain the unusually mild temperatures that were seen in northern Greenland and eastern Arctic late last week.``

https://answersrip.com/question/index?qid=20090104202642AAhcNY0&show=7#profile-info-bc1a10f4df223596a7823cf0ba6ac3e1aa



And it explains what was going on when I brought up the strangely warm temperatures in Thule Greenland-

http://greenhome.huddler.com/forum/thread/946/what-the-heck-is-going-on-with-the-arctic-sea-ice-this-year



I’m wondering why they failed to mention the influence of the North Atlantic oscillation.

http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/ (The reason for the pause in January average ice extent change)

If you had been watching the pressure patterns in the Arctic you would have seen that the NAO was if not the cause, it definitely influenced the split and forced the cold air south over North America.

Today I took the time to download and plot the NAO date from ftp://ftp.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/wd52dg/data/indices/tele_index.nh and I notice there has been a slight but definite rise in the strength in the NAO since 1950



So what does it all mean? Well we have an la Nina off the South American coast, the PDO pumping cooler air over the northern Pacific and a strong NAO pushing warm air north into the Arctic. We have an excess of energy in the earth’s systems that effect climate http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/do_nmap.py?year_last=2009&month_last=01&sat=4&sst=0&type=anoms&mean_gen=01&year1=2009&year2=2009&base1=1951&base2=1980&radius=1200&pol=reg . So it’s colder than normal in one area of the planet and warmer in other areas within the same hemisphere and all that energy wants to do is equal out. Is it an effect of global warming? Well that would be my guess.

Answer 2

I suspect this part of the reason why Europe and the US have been cold recently. But I believe there is much more to it that we would need a further understanding of the earth determine. Also I believe that there are other factors involved in this climate shift.

Answer 3

wow that is very interesting. is this the top of the weather, causing it, or being caused by it? or all three?

this science thing, it's like peeling an onion and finding each layer is bigger than the last.

Answer 4

I don't know. Short term weather is very chaotic and unpredictable. That's why even professional weather forecasters have trouble forecasting it.



Long term climate is a bit easier to track and predict, because all of that sort of regional noise is removed in long term averages. The system's ins and outs are simpler too... some measurable quantity of energy from the sun in, some quantity of infrared radiation heat escapes back out, with some minor adjustments for albedo (reflectivity, some initial energy reflected back out by ice sheets and clouds).

Answer 5

DaveH: Here's the data just for the arctic:



http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/temperature/30mb9065.gif



Data from here:



http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/temperature/



If you look at zonal temperatures, you find the temperature increase was really confined to the arctic, which is why it doesn't show up on the global average MSU product.



As I said, if the arctic is exporting cold air, warm air has to be coming into it from somewhere. This gives the mechanism.

Answer 6

I think that explains a lot ! Especially those high speed straight line winds that slammed the entire Mid West, and East Coast.

My feelings are, this NEW phenomena in climate is the "smoking gun" needed to prove ABRUPT CLIMATE CHANGE ! The polar vorticity has NEVER split apart this way ! Just like it doesn't take a big change in the Arctic to begin to melt sea ice, it doesn't take a big change to make it snow in New Orleans or Houston. These swirling Arctic air masses WILL continue to bring severe and deadly weather events,as they clash with warmer, moisture laden Tropical air masses.

The other dramatic effect of this recent split, is the area at the pole, is now MUCH warmer, and sea ice may disappear TOTALLY this year ! This event will be remembered as the BEGINNING of THE END ! This should be big news, but it will be smothered under news of the failed economy,and people will keep asking, "Why is the weather so weird lately". Look at poor Kentucky. First a extremely severe ice storm, then the record breaking high speed straight line winds. What will come their way next? A ten mile wide tornado,that travels all the way through the state?

Hang on, the weather is NEVER going to be the same anymore !

Answer 7

I suspect it is part of the answer. Obviously the La Nina probably had something to do with it as well as the pattern of the PDO. We will see what the long term trends bring. Hopefully, warming.

Answer 8

Oh, yeah, climate theories are great at coming up with explanations for why things happened after the event. They can't predict the future better than a coin toss though.

Answer 9

"Part of the answer lies in the stratosphere, some 20 kilometers (12 miles) above the Earth’s surface.



Starting in January and extending into early February 2009, wind and temperature patterns in the stratosphere changed dramatically. In just a few weeks, temperatures climbed by about 50 degrees Celsius (90 degrees F) on average,”



Here is the temperature data for 21km altitude.

http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/execute.csh?amsutemps+007



I see a drop of about 1 degree F over this time period, not an increase of 90 degrees F.

Answer 10

It doesn't begin to show why the climate of the northern hemisphere have been colder for 3 years in a row. The freezing winters experienced in Asia and as far south as the Philippines. Baguio there has been experiencing it's coldest temperatures in decades.



If valid, your data might explain some recent weather but nothing more. There's something more climatic in nature that's changing temperatures to be cooler or much colder in places. Can we say then that global warming hasn't affected the northern hemisphere yet?

Answer 11

Really? This flies completely in the face of MSU data. For Dana, that means microwave sounding units, it's the satellite temperature data recorded for the troposphere. It indicates that not only is it vastly colder than what you state but that it hasn't even kept up with surface temperatures which of course is opposite of what you would see with greenhouse gas effects. By the way, weather balloons are often used to verify the veracity of this data and to date the correlation is 100%.



Anyone ever been on a really tall mountain? It's always colder there than down at ground level, never warmer. It gets colder as you go up in elevation. 90 degrees at the troposphere? Please, how stupid do you think we are?

Answer 12

Wow...



It's an interesting data point, but it seems more plausible that the changes in winds were the result of temperatures being colder than usual rather than the cause.



The atmosphere likes to mix itself up. It was colder than normal in the northern hemisphere before January. It was colder than normal in the places that 'generate' extreme cold this year.



Edit... wow, you should learn how to read. That's precisely the point I made.