After the coldest Arctic summer on record, mid-October Arctic temperatures are the coldest they have been for 13 years.
COI | Centre for Ocean and Ice | Danmarks Meteorologiske Institut
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My interpretation of the graph is that the above normal spikes last winter show a lot of heat escaping due to a meridianal pattern and arctic storms churning the Arctic Sea. This cooled the water, which explains the cooler summer, however until the water cools to a degree where the warm-AMO-induced open water north and northeast of Scandinavia is ice-covered, the sea continues to loose heat, which explains the initial reluctance of temperatures to fall as summer ends. Once the water cools past a certain point ice forms, and temperatures can crash below normal.
The interesting thing is that this process is also seen in the DMI map from the year 1976, which was the lead-up to the hard winter of 1976-77. (That got people talking about “The oncoming ice age.”)
While no two winters are the same, I’m keeping an eye on the arctic to see if the below normal cold persists. In 1976 it did, and then arctic outbreaks began pouring steadily down through Canada to the eastern USA, and we froze our socks off from November through late February. Sea ice became a problem in Baltimore Harbor. (California was warm and dry that winter.)
http://sunriseswansong.wordpress.com/2013/10/16/arctic-sea-ice-recovery-halloween-hushing-and-howling/
There is no ‘normal’ in climate, only averages over observed periods.
I agree that the concept of “normal” is highly subjective. Also weather is usually “above” or “below” average, and hardly ever “average,” which makes “average” downright unlikely!
However there are certain patterns you learn to recognize. This is not to say the result will always be the same. Weather is full of surprises, and weathermen will forever be made to look like fools. However the good ones do spot patterns they have seen before, and the pattern now is something like 1976.
Winters 1977-1979 were all brutal, historic winters. The 3 coldest consecutive winters on record in the eastern half of the US.
Weird. Didn’t seem that cold in Phoenix.
Your memory is spot on, Steve. There was a ridge in the west in 1976-77, and as I recall California was suffering from heat and drought. The ridge extended right up to southwest Alaska, which was milder than usual. However the wind over the top of that ridge dug into Eastern Siberia, and brought a cross-polar-flow right down to the east coast, including to our Nation’s capital (which deserves to be frozen.)
I wouldn’t be surprised if it didn’t happen to the same degree, this year. Mother Nature loves to make mere mortals look like asses, when they think they can out-guess her, and it wouldn’t be the first time I wound up looking like an ass. However I got some good exercise today stacking firewood, because I am not going to be caught off guard, with such a pattern possible.
If the pattern does develop, I hope you feel wicked guilty as you bask in balmy sunshine, and I freeze my ——- and ——- off.