StudentOfClimatology

I've lived here all my life..that's totally normal for this time of year. Your area never got out of the wedge that day anyway..in fact most of the area underperformed on temps. Keep making things up if you feel the need to, though.

I don't believe I linked any "wavy-jet" literature here, and I certainly wouldn't read any study that treats the tropics and high latitudes as separate entities. That flies in the face of every long-range forecasting advancement we've made since the 1990s. A lot of what we're observing, extremes-wise, can be explained by changes to the dominant tropical circulations (Walker/Hadleys), which govern the manner in which the mid latitude wave train interacts with both the polar domains and the tropical domains.

It's a chicken/egg question. It could very well be that the relatively warmer Arctic was a result of the increased meridional mass transport responsible for the mid-latitude extremes. A stable, zonal circulation reduces poleward heat transport and eddy flux, allowing an overall cooling of the Arctic atmosphere, which is in a yearly radiative deficit. Naturally, the two variables are tied together. Given the strong influence tropical forcing has on poleward AAM transport and wave size/spacing, I believe that's where the source of these extremes lies, not the Arctic, which contains only a fraction of the energy in direct exchange. Believing the Arctic is responsible, IMO, is analogous to the tail wagging the dog.

None of that addresses the topic you were referring to.

Not catching this. Thermal wind laws are just one factor of many that govern meridional mass transport potential. Based on?

*bangs head on desk*

I'm talking about you. Some of what you post here is so outlandish it'd make James Hansen laugh. What's the point of this comment?

I'm honestly starting to believe you're some hack from WUWT trying to make climate science look bad. You obviously don't know anything about climate science, geography, or basic thermodynamics. Hence your hilarious attempts to try and sound smart. At least try to make it less obvious.

#iceage2015

Very few proxies are of a sufficient resolution to depict variability like that. Of the few that can, it's not that common to see brief excursions of ~ 0.25C/decade, though they're usually not lasting. Both GISP2 and the SP/EA borehole aggregates reveal this unstable behavior, at a frequency of about 5-10 times per millennium. http://www.gisp2.sr.unh.edu I like this image because it incorporates the recent AGW onto the proxy data, though oxygen based isotope cores are actually more of a hemispheric proxy than a local proxy. There were much larger temperature swings during the early/mid Holocene, as well, with the 8200 kiloyear event standing out as the most extreme excursion in the Holocene, so far, w/a cooling exceeding 2C by most estimates. Obviously the current warming will likely surpass that eventually. If you go further back, into the last stadial, temperature instability was on the order of 5-7X greater than it was during the majority of the Holocene. The Younger Dryas was the big kahuna, with estimated hemispheric warming of up to 7C within a single decade. So, I wouldn't call the current temperature change unprecedented, at least not yet.

Statistically speaking, it's too early to declare the end of the current hiatus. We're still within the standard deviations that have punctuated the 2001-present period.

Thanks for the laughs today. I seriously needed it.

No real wind here w/ snowmageddon..which probably added to the tree damage and power lossage as the snow was clinging to everything. We're also pretty sheltered from winds with any easterly component to them.

You're putting December 2009 over February 2010? 2010 blizzards 1995-96 out of the water here..I'm not sure if that's the case out west, though.

Snowmageddon number one..such an underrated storm. More QPF than 1995-96 and it was followed by another 1-2 feet a few days later. That's a once/twice in a lifetime type occurrence.

1) The deep ocean is heating for that exact reason though, no? Increased vertical mixing. It just slows the SST/upper oceanic response because you're trying to heat more water simultaneously.2) I don't understand your PDO argument. The North Pacific is actually warmer in a -PDO. The PDO phenomenon seems to be forced by changes in atmospheric circulation, which again related to the vertical mixing issue, since wind is what induces vertical motion.

What? Say we magically put a cap on all radiative forcing increase today..the oceans will eventually reach the required equilibrium temperature regardless of the rate at which they do so, which is determined by the depth and strength of the upper mixing layer. The issue is perception...as anthropogenic forcing increases, we expect the oceans to warm in response. With increased vertical mixing, the oceans take longer to respond. At this stage, that would imply that climate sensitivity is higher, because we will have achieved less of the warming necessary to reach equilibrium, given the slower response.

I think you hit the nail on the head. We know the heat capacity of water. If the oceans *seem* to be absorbing more heat, it suggests the upper mixing layer is deeper than we thought, which implies a higher climate sensitivity, as we'd be farther from thermal equilibrium relative to the rate of radiative forcing increase. If the upper mixing layer were shallow, the current slowdown of warming is harder to explain given we'd be closer to equilibrium.