chubbs

Good news, getting a range of findings on the overturning circulation. Hopefully someone can find some consistency in the various studies.

Yes, the Pacific is probably playing a role. Funny how things have flipped since the hiatus. Then the deck was stacked against warming due to: the Pacific, aerosols from China, the sun, volcanoes and possibly other factors. Now the factors that slowed warming have reversed. Not aware of anyone who anticipated the rate of warming we have seen in the past 10-15 years. Even nflwxman's excellent prognosis was too low. The rest of us weren't even close.

2025 is starting off warm, record warm in recent days. The closest years are 2016 and 2024. Very unusual for a La Nina winter month to be in record territory. Could be a first.

I moved my family away two years ago because, as California’s climate kept growing drier, hotter and more fiery, I feared that our neighborhood would burn. But even I didn’t think fires of this scale and severity would raze it and other large areas of the city this soon. And yet images of Altadena this week show a hellscape, like a landscape out of Octavia Butler’s uncannily prescient climate novel “Parable of the Sower.” One lesson climate change teaches us again and again is that bad things can happen ahead of schedule. Model predictions for climate impacts have tended to be optimistically biased. But now, unfortunately, the heating is accelerating, outpacing scientists’ expectations. We must face the fact that no one is coming to save us, especially in disaster-prone places such as Los Angeles, where the risk of catastrophic wildfire has been clear for years. And so many of us face a real choice — to stay or to leave. I chose to leave. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/10/opinion/la-fires-los-angeles-wildfires.html?unlocked_article_code=1.oU4.uI8e.voMxKYiiN72M&smid=bs-share

David Swain has a number posts which describe the role of climate change in the LA fire. He references a couple of additional papers: 1) Fire growth speed is increasing in the US; and, 2} A new paper on hydroclimate whiplash, either wet-to-dry or dry-to-wet cycling. As expected, hydroclimate whiplash is increasing around the world with climate change. Per graphic below, The LA fires are a good example. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adk5737 https://www.nature.com/articles/s43017-024-00624-z

Site below bundles sea ice information including charts and data. Chart below as an example. https://sites.google.com/view/arctic-sea-ice/home

2024 ended up 0.118C warmer than 2023 and 0.281C warmer than 2016. The gap with 2016 widened during the year.

Yes, and we are warming rapidly. If maintain this warming pace, we will be warmer than any interglacial in a decade or two. Outside of the ice-age climate of the past 3 million years.

Good luck figuring out why people are misinformed. Per this new dataset the board would have been hopping in 1800. https://x.com/ed_hawkins/status/1864815188488126839

Last 12 months GISS temperatures vs 1881-1910. Warming is maximized over Northern Hemisphere land, which is more sensitive to climate change and natural variability. Not surprising that MWP and LIA appear more significant there. Since 1990 more information has been obtained for the rest of the world, reducing the climate importance of both eras. 1.5C warming on a global basis is very significant. Roughly 25% of an ice age swing from complete glaciation to warm interglacial. The earth hasn't been this warm since the last interglacial 120,000 years ago, and we continue to warm rapidly, roughly 20x faster than the last deglaciation. In a decade or two we will have to go back several million years.

Could help explain the reduction in global albedo that is driving the recent surge in global temperatures, from last week's annual AGU meeting: The results indicate that changes in large-scale dynamical processes, primarily midlatitude storm shifts and ITCZ narrowing, produce contraction of the world’s storm-cloud zones and constitute the primary contributor to the recent increase in cloud radiative warming. https://agu.confex.com/agu/agu24/meetingapp.cgi/Paper/1730632 https://www.science.org/content/article/earth-s-clouds-are-shrinking-boosting-global-warming

Off the chart and record-breaking melting on the surface of the Antarctic Ice Sheet. Not a big deal in the short-term as most of the melt is reabsorbed on the ice sheet. Not good in the long-term for critical ice sheet components if surface melt becomes more severe. https://www.climato.uliege.be/cms/c_5652669/fr/climato-antarctica

You have to be careful using raw data from multiple station sites with different baseline temperatures; airport vs downtown for instance. Per NOAA, who corrects for site differences, the past 10 winters in Cook county (2015-2024) were 4.6F warmer than 1895-1930 and the last 5 years (2020-2024) 5.8F warmer. Independently, Madison,Wisconsin Lake freeze data going back to 1852 shows much shorter duration of ice cover now vs the 19'th century and the 1960s and 1970s don't stand out as cold decades. (Mendota and Monona Lakes below.) https://climatology.nelson.wisc.edu/first-order-station-climate-data/madison-climate/lake-ice/history-of-ice-freezing-and-thawing-on-lake-monona/

???? The Chicago airport winter temperature trend is similar to east coast airports (and Detroit). Per the trendline Chicago winters are 5-6F warmer than 60 years ago. Snowfall is more variable locally, but I don't see big differences between Chicago and the east coas teither: 2000+2010s were good, and recent 5-9 years bad. Like many colder east coast cities a snow downtrend hasn't clearly emerged in Chicago despite the warmer winters. That is as expected due to greater snow variability and competing temperature and moisture effects.

Yes weaker is better when the PV is in the arctic, but Hudson's Bay is a different situation. In that case, stronger can help lock in the TNH+ pattern (per Webber) and provide a nearby cold air source. That said, Webber wasn't concerned about it on another forum.

I am also wondering about the impact on the Hudson's Bay vortex itself. An open Hudson's Bay could make it more difficult to maintain a strong vortex near the Bay. Doubt the TNH analogs have an open Hudson's Bay in mid-Dec.

Wondering how the open Hudson Bay impacts our winter weather with a prominent Hudson's Bay vortex expected this winter

While the climate news is not good, the alternatives to fossil fuels look better and better every day. Below is a short blog article on where energy systems have been; and where they are headed, from an alternative energy expert at Eindhoven Univ., Netherlands https://aukehoekstra.substack.com/p/how-our-thinking-about-an-energy

GISS was 1.31 in November. In the past decade the strongest warming has occurred in the northern mid-latitudes where reduction in aerosols has the biggest effect. A larger aerosol effect implies a larger historical warming from ghg to compensate for increased aerosol masking.

Wondering if the break-up of sub-tropical stratocumulus decks with warming as described in the 2019 paper below contributed to the albedo reduction. Note that the 1200ppm CO2 threshold cited by the paper would vary depending on local conditions. Some areas may be close to the threshold today. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-019-0310-1

Zeke Hausfather has a blog on how unusual global tempertatures have been in the current nino. Below is his chart for moderate, strong and super nino covered by the ERA5 reanalysis. This nino was unusually warm at the beginning and recently increasingly so at the end. Only Dec 1958, a 2-year nino, has late warmth similar to this year. Still some hope for further post-nino cooling, based on 1958 and current relatively warm ONI, but we are in the 4'th quarter of this nino cycle. https://www.theclimatebrink.com/p/how-unusual-is-current-post-el-nino

Think we've seen enough to expect the same or bigger warming impact from this nino as 2015/16, i.e., roughly 0.3C warming. The two ninos combined have moved us quite a climate distance from the hiatus period, 2 or 3 decades of warming at 0.2C per decade. Going to take a while to sample enough weather in our new temperature range to see what the implications are.

This abstract for Dec AGU meeting has the best explanation I have seen for the unusual warmth since last summer. Per bar chart on right below about half of this nino's heat (atmosphere, AHC, and 0-100m ocean) came from the 100-300m layer in the ocean and half from the earth's energy imbalance. https://agu.confex.com/agu/agu24/meetingapp.cgi/Paper/1553238 Global and Regional Drivers for Exceptional Climate Extremes in 2023-2024: Beyond the New Normal Plain-language Summary In this study, we examined the 2023-24 global heating event, exploring whether it was exceptional in the context of global warming. We developed the Abnormal record-Breaking test (AB-test) to assess if global surface air and sea surface temperatures, along with atmospheric and upper ocean heat content, were exceptionally high. The results indicated these metrics were at record-breaking levels from June 2023 to June 2024. The significant rise in heat content was attributed to a strong El Niño event and an unprecedented Earth's Energy Imbalance (EEI), which contributed to the extraordinary nature of this heating period. The EEI, in particular, was identified as a key factor making this event special. The study also highlighted regional factors, such as reduced cloud cover and unique atmospheric circulation patterns, that contributed to warming in specific areas like the southeastern tropical Atlantic and the Southern Ocean. These findings emphasize the combined influence of a strong El Niño and an unprecedented EEI, along with regional contributors, in driving the exceptional 2023-24 global heating event.

Consistent with the warm October temps above 80N, sea ice volume growth was slow in October and 2024 fell to 2nd lowest volume as of Oct 31. Only 2020 was lower.

One thing I've noticed recently, the cool SST area south of Iceland and west of Great Britian/Ireland, associated with a potential slowdown in the overturning circulation has warmed; and, a new cool SST area has developed to the SW east of the US. We'll have to see if the change persists long enough to be relevant to the ocean circulation discussion.