Exceptional Arctic Warmth

[blizzard1024]

Looking at DMI, and the NCEP reanalysis 80-90 N, this fall has been off the charts warm. 

How accurate is this? We know sea ice is down but I have read that reanalysis data from ERA and NCEP can be off for high latitudes especially with infilling of data. I think this 

subject deserves its own thread since it has been crazy warm up there. Is it El Nino related which would fade soon...or AMO related or CO2 related. 

 

 

[Mallow]

I don't believe it's ENSO-related, since El Niño is not known to be associated with widespread warmth in the Arctic. Possibly it's associated with a combination of factors (many of which are likely related to one another), including but not limited to the AGW trend, Eurasian snow cover/growth in autumn, constructive interference with the climatological stationary wave, enhanced warm pool convection, and/or decadal-multidecadal oscillations such as the AMO. But I don't think anyone has a clear understanding of what makes this fall so unusual yet.

I'd add that it's also incredible that this is occurring at the same time as the low Antarctic sea ice anomalies, so it's possible any full explanation of the Arctic may also be at least partly relevant for the Antarctic.

[bluewave]

Great write-up on the extreme Arctic warmth.

https://wwa.climatecentral.org/analyses/north-pole-nov-dec-2016/

Discussion and conclusions

We have investigated the rarity of the November-December 2016 average temperature around the North Pole and assessed how much November-December average temperatures have changed over the past century using observations over a wider region. We also attempted to quantify how much high Arctic temperatures have changed due to anthropogenic emissions (greenhouse gases and aerosols) in two climate model ensembles.

The observations and the bias-corrected CMIP5 ensemble point to a return period of about 50 to 200 years in the present climate, i.e., the probability of such an extreme is about 0.5 percent to two percent every year, with a large uncertainty. This is rare, but it should be kept in mind that we are focusing on this particular November–December period precisely because an unusual event has occurred. For a random two-month period it would be between six and 12 times more likely. The prescribed SST design of the HadAM3P simulations precludes estimating an absolute return period.

The observations show that November–December temperatures have risen on the North Pole, modulated by decadal North Atlantic variability. For all phases of this variability a warm event like the one of this year would have been extremely unlikely in the climate of a century ago. The probability was so small it is hard to estimate, but less than 0.1 percent per year. The model analyses show that the event would also have been extremely unlikely in a world without anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases and aerosols, attributing the cause of the change to human influences. This also holds for the warm extremes caused by the type of circulation of November 2016. If nothing is done to slow climate change, by the time global warming reaches 2 ºC (3.6 ºF) events like this winter would become common at the North Pole, happening every few years.

 

 

 

 

[donsutherland1]

2 hours ago, bluewave said:

Great write-up on the extreme Arctic warmth.

https://wwa.climatecentral.org/analyses/north-pole-nov-dec-2016/

Discussion and conclusions

We have investigated the rarity of the November-December 2016 average temperature around the North Pole and assessed how much November-December average temperatures have changed over the past century using observations over a wider region. We also attempted to quantify how much high Arctic temperatures have changed due to anthropogenic emissions (greenhouse gases and aerosols) in two climate model ensembles.

The observations and the bias-corrected CMIP5 ensemble point to a return period of about 50 to 200 years in the present climate, i.e., the probability of such an extreme is about 0.5 percent to two percent every year, with a large uncertainty. This is rare, but it should be kept in mind that we are focusing on this particular November–December period precisely because an unusual event has occurred. For a random two-month period it would be between six and 12 times more likely. The prescribed SST design of the HadAM3P simulations precludes estimating an absolute return period.

The observations show that November–December temperatures have risen on the North Pole, modulated by decadal North Atlantic variability. For all phases of this variability a warm event like the one of this year would have been extremely unlikely in the climate of a century ago. The probability was so small it is hard to estimate, but less than 0.1 percent per year. The model analyses show that the event would also have been extremely unlikely in a world without anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases and aerosols, attributing the cause of the change to human influences. This also holds for the warm extremes caused by the type of circulation of November 2016. If nothing is done to slow climate change, by the time global warming reaches 2 ºC (3.6 ºF) events like this winter would become common at the North Pole, happening every few years.

 

 

 

 

Fantastic find. Thanks for sharing this.

[donsutherland1]

Another paper from a few years ago that still has relevance: http://tos.org/oceanography/assets/docs/26-4_cohen.pdf

[blizzard1024]

HADCRUT4 shows that it was warmer in the 1930s than today in the Arctic. 

 

Look at that +7C departure sometime around 1937! This was also a time when places in upstate NY like Syracuse had 3 Januarys out of 10 with > +10F departures!!  I still think that today's climate is not much different that the 1930s and 40s.... 

 

 

[blizzard1024]

9 hours ago, donsutherland1 said:

Another paper from a few years ago that still has relevance: http://tos.org/oceanography/assets/docs/26-4_cohen.pdf

This could explain why it was so cold in Asia in October/November??? 

[donsutherland1]

1 hour ago, blizzard1024 said:

This could explain why it was so cold in Asia in October/November??? 

It's probably too soon to be confident whether the paper's scenario will increase the likelihood of the kind of synoptic pattern responsible for that cold.

[cbmclean]

17 hours ago, bluewave said:

Great write-up on the extreme Arctic warmth.

https://wwa.climatecentral.org/analyses/north-pole-nov-dec-2016/

Discussion and conclusions

We have investigated the rarity of the November-December 2016 average temperature around the North Pole and assessed how much November-December average temperatures have changed over the past century using observations over a wider region. We also attempted to quantify how much high Arctic temperatures have changed due to anthropogenic emissions (greenhouse gases and aerosols) in two climate model ensembles.

The observations and the bias-corrected CMIP5 ensemble point to a return period of about 50 to 200 years in the present climate, i.e., the probability of such an extreme is about 0.5 percent to two percent every year, with a large uncertainty. This is rare, but it should be kept in mind that we are focusing on this particular November–December period precisely because an unusual event has occurred. For a random two-month period it would be between six and 12 times more likely. The prescribed SST design of the HadAM3P simulations precludes estimating an absolute return period.

The observations show that November–December temperatures have risen on the North Pole, modulated by decadal North Atlantic variability. For all phases of this variability a warm event like the one of this year would have been extremely unlikely in the climate of a century ago. The probability was so small it is hard to estimate, but less than 0.1 percent per year. The model analyses show that the event would also have been extremely unlikely in a world without anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases and aerosols, attributing the cause of the change to human influences. This also holds for the warm extremes caused by the type of circulation of November 2016. If nothing is done to slow climate change, by the time global warming reaches 2 ºC (3.6 ºF) events like this winter would become common at the North Pole, happening every few years.

 

 

 

 

One thing that strikes me is that according to this analysis, even with a much warmer arctic due to AGW, this was a very unlikely event.  So either we got very "unlucky" or the AGW models used may not be sufficiently pessimistic.

[cbmclean]

2 hours ago, blizzard1024 said:

HADCRUT4 shows that it was warmer in the 1930s than today in the Arctic. 

 

Look at that +7C departure sometime around 1937! This was also a time when places in upstate NY like Syracuse had 3 Januarys out of 10 with > +10F departures!!  I still think that today's climate is not much different that the 1930s and 40s.... 

 

 

An interesting graph.  I am assuming that the dark line is the running 37 month average (why in the world would they choose 37 months?).  Some observations

1. I am curious as to the source of HADCRUT4 data for this region from say, the 1930's.  This was long before the Cold war drove the great powers to dot the arctic with outposts and there were certainly no satellites, so where does the data come from?

2. The running average for the recent warm period seems to be beginning to exceed the late 30's early 40s but not to a degree that would necessarily cause alarm in the abscence of other data.

3. Even in the midst of that previous warm epoch, there were numerous cold anomalies which are not being replicated in the recent warm period.

4. Speaking of "anomalies" what is the 0 C baseline used by this graph?

5. According to this dataset, arctic temps seem to have actually become less variable, which does not correspond with one of the conclusions of the article.

[blizzard1024]

3 hours ago, cbmclean said:

An interesting graph.  I am assuming that the dark line is the running 37 month average (why in the world would they choose 37 months?).  Some observations

1. I am curious as to the source of HADCRUT4 data for this region from say, the 1930's.  This was long before the Cold war drove the great powers to dot the arctic with outposts and there were certainly no satellites, so where does the data come from?

2. The running average for the recent warm period seems to be beginning to exceed the late 30's early 40s but not to a degree that would necessarily cause alarm in the abscence of other data.

3. Even in the midst of that previous warm epoch, there were numerous cold anomalies which are not being replicated in the recent warm period.

4. Speaking of "anomalies" what is the 0 C baseline used by this graph?

5. According to this dataset, arctic temps seem to have actually become less variable, which does not correspond with one of the conclusions of the article.

I think the dataset was much more sparse in the 1930s and 40s and I agree could be too sparse. But look at the 1990s and 2000s...anomalies in the Arctic were as high as recent months. This is the Hadley centre's dataset averaged from 70-90N latitude. I have read that the ERA and NCEPs reanalysis are not good for Arctic temperatures because of data infilling problems. So this is the only graph I could find of the Arctic temps. Based on this the recent months are not that impressive from 70 N to 90N....  

[cbmclean]

40 minutes ago, blizzard1024 said:

I think the dataset was much more sparse in the 1930s and 40s and I agree could be too sparse. But look at the 1990s and 2000s...anomalies in the Arctic were as high as recent months. This is the Hadley centre's dataset averaged from 70-90N latitude. I have read that the ERA and NCEPs reanalysis are not good for Arctic temperatures because of data infilling problems. So this is the only graph I could find of the Arctic temps. Based on this the recent months are not that impressive from 70 N to 90N....  

i wish I had the time and expertise to look into this more.  I have heard claims that the 30s and 40s were warm in the arctic but I assumed that the current warmth blew it away.

[donsutherland1]

4 hours ago, cbmclean said:

i wish I had the time and expertise to look into this more.  I have heard claims that the 30s and 40s were warm in the arctic but I assumed that the current warmth blew it away.

The current warmth does, at least on GISS.

[cbmclean]

13 minutes ago, donsutherland1 said:

The current warmth does, at least on GISS.

So HadCRUT and GISS disagree?  I wish I could look into the data.

[bluewave]

The temperatures in all the datasets including HadCRUT4 surpassed 1940's levels during the 2005-2013 period shown below. These only go to 2013

so the record temperatures last few years above those levels don't show up yet. While the various datasets have different ways of calculating

the Arctic temperatures and coverage gaps, they all agree that this warmth is greater than the 40's.

https://tamino.wordpress.com/2014/01/28/judith-curry-responds-sort-of/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[chubbs]

1 hour ago, bluewave said:

The temperatures in all the datasets including HadCRUT4 surpassed 1940's levels during the 2005-2013 period shown below. These only go to 2013

so the record temperatures last few years above those levels don't show up yet. While the various datasets have different ways of calculating

the Arctic temperatures and coverage gaps, they all agree that this warmth is greater than the 40's.

 

 

Yes we have risen well past the 30s/40s. Here are the arctic land temperatures through 2016 from the recently released arctic scorecard. The land temperature data is more complete but may miss some of the warming from retreating sea ice.

http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/Report-Card/Report-Card-2016

 

[BillT]

nothing recent has blown away the records from the 1930's........and some posters here already admit to "assumed"
 well you assumed wrongly........the raw data from back then has been adjusted DOWN = NOT science on any level......

[Sundog]

4 hours ago, BillT said:

nothing recent has blown away the records from the 1930's........and some posters here already admit to "assumed"
 well you assumed wrongly........the raw data from back then has been adjusted DOWN = NOT science on any level......

 

Was it adjusted down? And what was the reason if it was?

[BillT]

YES the raw data from the 30's has been altered and the reason is obvious to fit the LIES of the grant seekers........to control the climate one must FIRST control the weather, do humans control the weather?   if not then we certainly are NOT the cause of the naturally  ever changing climate.

https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2014/06/23/noaanasa-dramatically-altered-us-temperatures-after-the-year-2000/

[winterymix]

4 hours ago, BillT said:

nothing recent has blown away the records from the 1930's........and some posters here already admit to "assumed"
 well you assumed wrongly........the raw data from back then has been adjusted DOWN = NOT science on any level......

This is a science forum, where is the proof?

[BillT]

22 minutes ago, winterymix said:

This is a science forum, where is the proof?

https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2014/06/23/noaanasa-dramatically-altered-us-temperatures-after-the-year-2000/

science indeed.....please deal with the science FACT that the climate is just a set of STATISTICS, it is not some force or power to controls our weather, the OPPOSITE is true the weather 100% dictates what the climate stats will show.

[FloridaJohn]

4 hours ago, BillT said:

https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2014/06/23/noaanasa-dramatically-altered-us-temperatures-after-the-year-2000/

science indeed.....please deal with the science FACT that the climate is just a set of STATISTICS, it is not some force or power to controls our weather, the OPPOSITE is true the weather 100% dictates what the climate stats will show.

Your conclusion is erroneous. Weather is highly chaotic and, in a statistical sense, is noise. Climate is the underlying trend. If you can control the underlying trend, the weather will follow. CO2 is the lever that controls that trend. But the weather is highly chaotic, so it will still fluctuate greatly. However, once he noise is removed, you can see the trend, and that trend is upward. If you have evidence of otherwise, please link to climate research that shows this link does not exist. Please keep in mind that "Steve Goddard" (not his real name) is neither a statistician nor a climate scientist. 

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Goddard

[BillT]

1 hour ago, FloridaJohn said:

Your conclusion is erroneous. Weather is highly chaotic and, in a statistical sense, is noise. Climate is the underlying trend. If you can control the underlying trend, the weather will follow. CO2 is the lever that controls that trend. But the weather is highly chaotic, so it will still fluctuate greatly. However, once he noise is removed, you can see the trend, and that trend is upward. If you have evidence of otherwise, please link to climate research that shows this link does not exist. Please keep in mind that "Steve Goddard" (not his real name) is neither a statistician nor a climate scientist. 

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Goddard

what was just said for lay people to understand, the results of the at bats in baseball are just "noise" you use our "scientific" voodoo to IGNORE the actual stats and arrive at a "trend" and that "trend" controls the batters future results.........what POWER does the "climate" exert please and be precise.......i note the attack on my link because you dont like the source and that you didnt address the FACT the raw data was ALTERED, or as you prefer the "noise"(FACTUAL DATA) was removed and our desired "trend" was found.

[FloridaJohn]

5 minutes ago, BillT said:

what was just said for lay people to understand, the results of the at bats in baseball are just "noise" you use our "scientific" voodoo to IGNORE the actual stats and arrive at a "trend" and that "trend" controls the batters future results.........what POWER does the "climate" exert please and be precise.......i note the attack on my link because you dont like the source and that you didnt address the FACT the raw data was ALTERED, or as you prefer the "noise"(FACTUAL DATA) was removed and our desired "trend" was found.

Please describe in detail how the data was altered and why that is a problem.

[BillT]

1 minute ago, FloridaJohn said:

Please describe in detail how the data was altered and why that is a problem.

the link you dismissed has all of that......the governments own graphs are used to show the lowering of the heat in the 30/40s and the rising of the data from recent years......and i note you refuse to address points made.........raw data is NOT "noise" PERIOD.

[FloridaJohn]

18 minutes ago, BillT said:

what was just said for lay people to understand, the results of the at bats in baseball are just "noise" you use our "scientific" voodoo to IGNORE the actual stats and arrive at a "trend" and that "trend" controls the batters future results.........what POWER does the "climate" exert please and be precise.......i note the attack on my link because you dont like the source and that you didnt address the FACT the raw data was ALTERED, or as you prefer the "noise"(FACTUAL DATA) was removed and our desired "trend" was found.

Since you brought up baseball, there is a great analogy that compares to climate change. The statistics concerning the number of home runs had a major increase in the mid 1990s, and then around 2003 the number started to decline again. The reason for this statistical change was the use of steroids and other Performance Enhancing Drugs (PED) that artificially increased the number of home runs per season. When MLB got serious about stopping the use of these PEDs, it stopped the high number of home runs. So, contrary to your assertion, the results of the bats were influenced by an underlying trend. 

This is analogous to the increasing climate trend, where CO2 is like the steroids, artificially increasing the temperature over time. 

Details in the baseball statistics can be found her, among other places. http://qz.com/452490/chart-home-runs-in-major-league-baseball-keep-falling-since-the-crackdown-on-steroids/

[FloridaJohn]

15 minutes ago, BillT said:

the link you dismissed has all of that......the governments own graphs are used to show the lowering of the heat in the 30/40s and the rising of the data from recent years......and i note you refuse to address points made.........raw data is NOT "noise" PERIOD.

That link is full of unsupported assertions and misleading data. The wiki link I posted has a quick summary of the problems with it, but if you want a more thorough takedown, pleas read this link. 

http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2014/jun/25/steve-doocy/foxs-doocy-nasa-fudged-data-make-case-global-warmi/

Here's a more detailed analysis if you are really interested in finding out the reason why "Steve Goddard" is wrong. 

http://rankexploits.com/musings/2014/how-not-to-calculate-temperature/

[BillT]

3 minutes ago, FloridaJohn said:

That link is full of unsupported assertions and misleading data. The wiki link I posted has a quick summary of the problems with it, but if you want a more thorough takedown, pleas read this link. 

http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2014/jun/25/steve-doocy/foxs-doocy-nasa-fudged-data-make-case-global-warmi/

Here's a more detailed analysis if you are really interested in finding out the reason why "Steve Goddard" is wrong. 

http://rankexploits.com/musings/2014/how-not-to-calculate-temperature/

i will withdraw at this time nothing to be gained.....and the personal attack on Goddard is enough for this to end from my end.....BYE.

[FloridaJohn]

9 minutes ago, BillT said:

i will withdraw at this time nothing to be gained.....and the personal attack on Goddard is enough for this to end from my end.....BYE.

I figured. No response when presented with detailed scientific data. None of my links was a personal attack on "Steve Goddard," he is using misleading data which seems to fool people who can't be bothered to do any research, even when it is handed to them. Thanks for stopping by, though. It shows that these old denier arguments are still fooling people.

[chubbs]

Here is a Dec 5 interview with Jennifer Francis on this year's warmth. Her theory is unproven, still the transport of warm air to the arctic has been persistent this year through nino, nina, AO+, AO- etc.

http://e360.yale.edu/feature/unusually_warm_arctic_climate_turmoil_jennifer_francis/3060/