StudentOfClimatology

You would of had to of been here to understand the situation. The day before we were locked in with a heavy marine airmass, highs in the lower 40's. Some places in SE VA were 2-3 degrees away from their daily record high.

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.

Your two most recent papers on the wavy jet split up into Arctic and Tropical origins. So perhaps it's better to take

a more holistic approach. But it's human nature to use your own area of expertise to try and explain an individual

phenomena.

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.

How about the theory that the extremes have been increasing recently like we saw from the 1910's into the 1930's due to warmer Arctic temperatures relative to the rest of the Northern Hemisphere? You can also see the extremes decreasing as the Arctic cooled again after the 1930's into the 1970's. I guess you could say correlation doesn't equal causation, but I would like to see a study that focuses on the last 100 years or so rather the last 30 to get some clarity on this issue.

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.

I honestly don't think it has anything to do with sea ice cover. It's more or less arctic warming in general and that is variable on a year to year basis via the latitudinal Delta T.

Not catching this.

Thermal wind laws are just one factor of many that govern meridional mass transport potential.

This is too massive to be a coincidence or to occur by random chance. The temps are also in lockstep two-years in a row, 2014 Jan-Mar was a more extreme version of 2013 Jan-Mar.

Based on?

Also, how the heck do you go from warmest Jan-Mar to coldest Jan-Mar on record within 3 years (New York)? That is seriously messed up, yet our historical record is so small. I'd wager this temperature oscillation has not occured for 500-1000 years or more.

*bangs head on desk*

Talking about yourself again?

I'm talking about you. Some of what you post here is so outlandish it'd make James Hansen laugh.

CM is more mid-atlantic'ish than Union NJ.

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.

Geo-engineering has begun..

#iceage2015

That would be due to internal natural variability. It's very unusual for the global temperature to increase 0.2c/decade, even in paleorecords. Thus we are still in uncharted waters if you include the hiatus.

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.

The chance of another hiatus decade occuring this century is about 10%. Based on latest research.

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.

Whatevz bro, you have no idea what is transpiring here and the deepness of the ignorance that persists in society. At least an effort was made.

I don't think the most severe hyperbole is enough to describe our situation.

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.

Nothing will ever compare to the depth, duration, and temps afterward of Jan. '96. But #3 on my list is certainly Feb '83. Temp was in the low teens during the entirety of the storm and the rates of that storm will probably never be seen again. We got 32" in Warren County, just outside Front Royal, in around 15 hours. It was only the second time in my life (to that point) that I'd experienced thunder snow. Remember being outside playing and the snow pouring from the sky and then, BOOM. I swear, you could see the snow piling up. I remember Bob Ryan talking about snow rates of 4 -5 inches per hour, and I believe it. The intensity of that storm is unmatched. Had it been a slower mover; it would surely have been the storm of the ages. Unfortunately, there was little cold air behind the storm... and it was mid-Feb at that point, so the sun quickly did its damage too. Another reason why Jan '96 and Dec '09 are #1 and #2 on my list.

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.

Not if the deeps ocean heat faster than the surface during -PDO intervals like we are in now.

Abraham_2013.png

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.

Not necessarily. Other studies show sensitivity possibly being lower with greater ocean heat uptake. But it will take a long time

to know which set of studies are correct.

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00382-013-1770-4

Observational estimate of climate sensitivity from changes in the rate of ocean heat uptake and comparison to CMIP5 models

Abstract

Climate sensitivity is estimated based on 0–2,000 m ocean heat content and surface temperature observations from the second half of the 20th century and first decade of the 21st century, using a simple energy balance model and the change in the rate of ocean heat uptake to determine the radiative restoration strength over this time period. The relationship between this 30–50 year radiative restoration strength and longer term effective sensitivity is investigated using an ensemble of 32 model configurations from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 5 (CMIP5), suggesting a strong correlation between the two. The mean radiative restoration strength over this period for the CMIP5 members examined is 1.16 Wm⁻²K⁻¹, compared to 2.05 Wm⁻²K⁻¹from the observations. This suggests that temperature in these CMIP5 models may be too sensitive to perturbations in radiative forcing, although this depends on the actual magnitude of the anthropogenic aerosol forcing in the modern period. The potential change in the radiative restoration strength over longer timescales is also considered, resulting in a likely (67 %) range of 1.5–2.9 K for equilibrium climate sensitivity, and a 90 % confidence interval of 1.2–5.1 K.

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.

If the oceans are 'taking the heat more' it just means it will take longer to reach equilibrium. In fact, it means that we are farther from equilibrium than we thought and climate sensitivity is larger than we thought.

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.