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The radar returns on that convective complex are starting to wane. It's possible this lays out a boundary that backs the surface winds and enhances the critical angle on the hodographs. It's more of a low probability and speculative scenario, but the 14Z HRRR does kind of hint at that. Instability would still have to materialize of course. If it happens just right the MO/IA/IL border area might still be a prime spot.

It may not be as focused or as certain as it appeared last night, but odds still favor a significant outbreak including tornadoes. The SPC is still pushing EF2+ tornadoes today afterall.

3Z SREF suggests only modest tornado potential in western/northern IL. Verbatim the higher tornado probabilities are in AR/MO/TN/KY/IL border area. If I were to go off only the latest HRRR and SREF runs I think I'd be considering a downgrade right now. But...it's a big low with an impressive kinematic environment so maybe they'll decide to keep the 15% sig-tor area on the 13Z update and wait and see what the morning convection does before making big adjustments. I will say that the 10Z HRRR still has a pretty good parameter space in IL just on a more localized scale now.

I don't know about the high risk. HRRR looks potent now, but what will things look like tomorrow? We've seen this type of over-reaction by CAMs only to curtail their outputs a few runs later or the day-of ends up being a bust. Nah...I see < 50% of a high risk tomorrow. I'll accept a good ribbing if I'm wrong though. We'll see.

^^^ 3km CAPE of 237, LCL of 372, and 1km SRH of 274. Yikes.

Those UH tracks on the 0Z HRRR are gnarly. They're also expanding at a rate of 65 mph.

Man...I'm getting up to 70 mph right movers on some of these soundings.

15Z RAP is primed with a convective melee of activity in the warm sector there in IL.

Another day and another sharp decline. The NSIDC did call the top as March 5th.

March 5 with a 5d average of 15.047 on NSIDC might be the max. I'd give greater than 50% odds at this point. We'll see.

RSS was up in February, but not as much. ERA was only up by 0.02C. I keep wondering if UAH is contaminated by what happens in the stratosphere more so than RSS. If so that would partly explain UAH's 0.13C/decade trend which is far lower than what any other dataset shows.

Maybe. I was watching aerosol optical depths closely after that eruption and while there was a lot tephra lofted into the troposphere it didn't appear as if much sulphate aerosols made it into the stratosphere. I think the Australia wildfire smoke is a better hypothesis at this point. In regards to the troposphere...volcanoes typically cool this layer. I don't know of a case where warming resulted from an eruption. And I'm not understanding the link with smoke either. I thought smoke was more effective at blocking incoming shortwave radiation than it was at trapping outgoing longwave radiation.

Hmm...Dr. Spencer is suggesting the smoke warmed both the troposphere and stratosphere. Typically aerosols cool the troposhere and warm the stratosphere. This is an unusual event in that the spike up is observed in both layers. I'm a bit skeptical of his smoke causing radiation induced warming (aka greenhouse effect) claim, but I'm open to hearing what evidence he presents. The thing is that the February troposphere anomaly is primarily the result of warming in the NH. My first thought is that the record +AO may be partly to blame with the spike.

I was not expecting that. The average ONI over the last 3 and 6 months is only 0.5 and 0.3 respectively. Somewhat interesting...the UAH stratosphere temperature spiked up this month. This is only the 3rd time a spike has occurred. The other two were from El Chichon and Pinatubo.

Definitely some export going on there. We are now at that time of year when the max could occur at anytime.

The Arctic Oscillation is once again predicted to top 6 by the Euro.

Good question. This can be found in IPCC AR5 WGI figure 12.28. For the summer minimum not much is expected to change through 2030. In fact, we might even expect a slight increase possibly lasting until mid century until a regime of more consistent declines begin down there. And the detailed breakdown for Arctic summer minimum is in IPCC AR5 WGI TS figure 17. The only scenario that gets to near 100% melt out before 2100 is RCP8.5. But even then a very small patch of ice is predicted to cling the northern tip of Greenland. And, of course, winter ice will likely persistent for a very long time...well past 2100.

I don't equate an ice-free summer regarding Arctic sea ice extents to anything even remotely close to a doomsday scenario though. FWIW the "official" IPCC prediction can be seen in figure TS.17 of the AR5 WGI report. The best guess is about 2045 for RCP8.5, 2065 for RCP6.0, 2080 for RCP4.5, and never for RCP2.6.

Gotcha. Outlier predictions like those from Wedhams are overwhelmingly rejected by mainstream science. The consensus timeline for the first ice free summer in the Arctic region is about 2040-2060 with moderate to high emissions scenarios. Note that "ice-free" means < 1e6 km^2. The disappearance of sea ice altogether would likely take hundreds of years even under an unmitigated emissions scenario. Regarding daily and annual sea ice extents...it's "supposed" to ebb and flow like this. Its best to stick to reputable sources for climate predictions or predictions of any kind in any discipline of science really.

Who is saying that daily or annual sea ice extent would only monotonically decrease?

Sea ice in the SH is doing relatively well too.

Here's a pretty good (and lengthy) article talking about Arctic sea ice and the odds of seeing an ice-free summer. https://interactive.carbonbrief.org/when-will-the-arctic-see-its-first-ice-free-summer/ Bottom line...around 2050 is the 50/50 point especially if carbon emissions take a more middle-of-the-road trajectory being neither abated aggressively or allowed to grow unmitigated...basecially RCP 4.5.

It's interesting what is happening in the SH as well. According to the IPCC the expectation was for mostly flat trends and possibly even an increase through the 2020's. So to see the SH decline and even drop to record lows tells us that at least some sea ice predictions have underestimated the decline down there too. It seems as though there is a long history of sea ice predictions being too conservative; sometimes shockingly so. For example, back in 2001 and inferring from a graphic in AR3 the IPCC predicted that NH sea ice extent wouldn't drop below an annual mean of 10.5e6 until about 2040. It first happened in 2007 and then 6 times after that including the last 4 years in a row. So by taking a more conservative stance and hinting that the declines may moderate in the 2020's I'm doing so fully aware that I could end up getting burned. But I also understand that trendline reversion is a powerful concept and I'm also trying to stay pragmatic and not come across as overly alarmist either.

So if I remember correctly some of the recent computer modeling studies showed that the 2020's might be characterized as period of stalling out on the declines before picking back up again in the 2030's. What do you guys think? Are we going to see the same dramatic declines or will there be a hiatus? I think I'm more in favor of a moderation in the decline rates. But, it's not lost on me that those who have made similar conservative predictions in the past have gotten burned. So I'm prepared to be wrong.

According to NSIDC... For 2019 the NH (Arctic) ended with an annual mean of 10.186e6 km^2 of extent. This is the 2nd lowest after 2016 which ended with 10.163e6. For 2019 the SH (Antarctic) ended with an annual mean of 10.826e6 km^2 of extent. This is the 2nd lowest after 2017 which ended with 10.749e6.