The Weather Is Getting Weirder And More Extreme

good old fasioned winter here in the nor'east. just like i remember as a child of the late fifties/early sixties. snowshoeing, cross country skiing, ice fishing, snowmen, igloos, it doesn't get any better than this. except the carribean maybe.

 

thanks for the link. i have no explanation for the data you have other than i pretty clearly remember it being pretty main stream news around here when we broke the 100º mark. we hit 101, 103 and finally 104.5 and all were touted as all time records.

 

A minor thread ressurection, because two new back-to-back articles in Geophysical Research Letters suggest that the 2010 Russian heat wave was not caused by climate change. Rather, a persistent blocking high. Summaries here:

AGU journal highlights -- April 13, 2011

I do like to take note when such studies are published. Not everyone shares my confidence in the impartiality of the scientific endeavor, and examples might help dispel misconceptions.

 

so are persistent blocking highs something that might be more common in a warming world or no? I know sweet fanny adams about atmospheric dynamics so if anyone could shed a wee bit of light on the subject, I'd be mildly interested.

 

Sorry that info will have to come from somebody further up the food chain than I. Right offhand I'd suppose that the current batch of models lack the resolution (especially temporal) for reliable predictions.

Models always getting better resolution though. So just keep sending the moelers money

I realize my 'point of view' cannot be adduced from that statement. Not important here.

 

I've been working in the field of meteorology since the mid-1980s. Haven't noticed any differences with respect to the frequency of blocking patterns over those years, although admittedly, it's not a very long time on the climate scale. Also have mainly concentrated on North America (synoptic scale) so can't really speak to other areas of the globe, although blocks usually affect an entire hemisphere.

The amplitude of blocking ridges (and troughs) is also a factor for temperature extremes.

 

One more point I meant to make...the pattern in the Northern Hemisphere was blocked for much of the early portion of this past winter season, with a high-amplitude ridge persisting over the North Atlantic/Greenland for several weeks. This resulted in persistent colder-than-normal temps over much of the eastern CONUS, and persistent much warmer-than-normal temps over Greenland. However, the pattern has become much more progressive since resulting in relatively rapid movement of mid-latitude cyclones over North America (mainly the USA).

By the way, the atmospheric blocks are mostly controlled by upper air features - upper air ridges and troughs. The configuration of the "jet stream" is controlled by these upper air features.

 

fascinating. Thanks for that, mate.