I'm reblogging two posts from Robertscribbler about the weird weather that's been going on.
First, a new item about how the mangled Jet Stream has permitted so much warm air into the Arctic, it's forcing its way into NW Siberia and causing an Arctic Vortex invasion into East Asia, even Southeast Asia.
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| NW Siberian Warm Snap and East Asian Cold Snap Source: Earth Nullschool via Robertscribbler. |
Arctic Heatwave Drives Deadly Asian Cold Snap
by Robertscribbler, 26 January 2016 Link
In the Arctic today, there’s a warm wind howling over Siberia. It’s a wind blowing from the northwest. A wind originating from the Arctic Ocean. Siberia is warming up today because warm air blew in from the direction of the North Pole. This should strike everyone as ridiculously, insanely odd.
In Okinawa it snowed for the first time since 1977 this weekend. In Taiwan, a cold snap turned deadly killing 85 as tens of thousands more huddled in homes that lacked any form of central heating. In South Korea, 500 flights were grounded due to unseasonable weather. In Hong Kong, the temperature was 3 C — the same temperature as a region near the southwestern coast of Svalbard east of Greenland and above the Arctic Circle.
What the hell is going on? In short, a global warming driven heat-up of the Arctic has punched a hole in the Jet Stream and driven chill, Arctic air all the way into portions of Southeast Asia that seldom ever see temperatures go below 60 degrees Fahrenheit (16 Celsius).
http://robertscribbler.com/2016/01/26/arctic-heatwave-drives-deadly-asian-cold-snap/
Nested in the comments thread there is a video "What's Going on with El Nino?" posted by commenter dtlange:
Which leads into the second post by Robertscribbler, concerning El Nino and why the massive storms that accompanied previoous El Ninos haven't shown up in California so far this year.
Polar Amplification vs a Godzilla El Nino — Is the Pacific Storm Track Being Shoved North by Arctic Warming?
by Robertscribbler, 26 January 2016 Link
It’s an El Nino year. One of the top three strongest El Ninos on record. The strongest by some NOAA measures. And we are certainly feeling its effects all over the world. From severe droughts in Southeast Asia, Africa, and South America, to Flooding in the Central and Eastern US, Southern Brazil, and India, these impacts, this year and last, have been extreme and wide-ranging. During recent days, Peru and Chile saw enormous ocean waves and high tides swamping coastlines. Record flooding and wave height events for some regions. All impacts related to both this powerful El Nino and the overall influence of human-forced warming by more than 1 C above 1880s temperatures on the whole of the hydrological cycle.
Amped up by a global warming related 7 percent increase in atmospheric water vapor (and a related increase in evaporation and precipitation over the Earth’s surface), many of these El Nino related impacts have followed a roughly expected pattern (you can learn more about typical El Nino patterns and links to climate change related forcings in this excellent video by Dr Kevin Trenberth here). However, so far, some of the predicted kinds of events you’d typically see during a strong El Nino have not yet emerged. A circumstance that may also be related to the ongoing human-forced warming of the globe.
Storm Track Not Making it Far Enough South
NE Pacific Storm, 26 January 2016.
Source: Earth Nullschool vis Robertscribbler.
Particularly, there has been an absence of powerful storms running in over Southern California then surging on into Arizona, New Mexico and West Texas. During strong El Nino events, heat and moisture bleeding off the super-warmed Equator have typically fed powerful storms racing across the Pacific. These storms have tended to engulf the entire US Pacific Coast from San Diego through to Seattle. However, much of the storm energy is often directed further south toward Central and Southern California.
Crossposted with 2016 is strange!
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