Extreme weather in the arctic: a warm spring

[CaptainPanic]

Strong high pressure areas are forming over regions in the Arctic which disturbs the normal temperature distribution on the Northern hemisphere, or at least the northern regions. Western Europe experiences a very cold spring (it's still freezing in the Netherlands, we had an all-time record low for March just a week ago), but in certain regions in the Arctic, these same strong weather systems blow hot air and increase temperatures to well above the normal.

 

Links I found on the topic suggest that this is not your every-day weather event. This link predicts that Arctic melting might be quite severe this summer. But the patterns are also similar to the ones that caused droughts in the western USA last 2 years.

 

I'm just posting this because I thought that it is an interesting read. The weather is often reported as a local phenomenon, so it is interesting to see it on a much larger scale.

 

Note to my fellow mods: I deliberately did not place this in "Climate science", because we are discussing the weather, not climate. The two are related, but not the same. I am not interested in another thread where believers and skeptics are fighting a bitter Yes/No fight.

Note to everybody, let's discuss the weather here, and leave climate change out of it, even though this may or may not be caused by it.

[Mike Smith Cosmos]

Strong high pressure areas are forming over regions in the Arctic which disturbs the normal temperature distribution on the Northern hemisphere, or at least the northern regions. Western Europe experiences a very cold spring (it's still freezing in the Netherlands, we had an all-time record low for March just a week ago), but in certain regions in the Arctic, these same strong weather systems blow hot air and increase temperatures to well above the normal.

 

Links I found on the topic suggest that this is not your every-day weather event. This link predicts that Arctic melting might be quite severe this summer. But the patterns are also similar to the ones that caused droughts in the western USA last 2 years.

 

I'm just posting this because I thought that it is an interesting read. The weather is often reported as a local phenomenon, so it is interesting to see it on a much larger scale.

 

Note to my fellow mods: I deliberately did not place this in "Climate science", because we are discussing the weather, not climate. The two are related, but not the same. I am not interested in another thread where believers and skeptics are fighting a bitter Yes/No fight.

Note to everybody, let's discuss the weather here, and leave climate change out of it, even though this may or may not be caused by it.

 

Yes, Well we are suffering over here in England with the same bout of cold that you are. I am sitting here with double pairs of socks on and a thick wool jumper and I am still frozen. Mike

[overtone]

In the Great Plains of NA, the pressing of the cold air south has hit the wet air coming from the Gulf and Pacific and brought March precipitation as snow - even dry, fluffy winter snow - rather than the sleet and rain and half frozen slush of a "normal" year.

 

Quite a lot of snow, in my area - the plow pile along the street is 5-7 feet tall. My driveway is a ravine of sorts.

 

As the ground is still frozen (deeper than usual because of a lack of insulating snow over the winter), and now insulated from the sun to delay thawing, this probably will not replenish local soil moisture or local aquifers much - it will instead sublimate and blow far eastward, or melt and run off south and north.

 

So we are looking at the early stages of serious drought across the world's primary agricultural zone, for the third or fourth consecutive year in many places. Drought is cumulative in its effects. Much that can handle a dry year or two is changed or killed by three or four such years, and the resulting bare landscape breaks the feedback water cycle that provided rain downwind - drought spreads itself.

[Klaynos]

It is very dfficult to predict weather patterns very far in advace even with very expensive computers... things that superficially look the same can and often do result in very different weather systems...

[Ophiolite]

we are discussing the weather, not climate. The two are related, but not the same

Very true. The UK has an excellent climate. It is the weather that is dreadful.

[John Cuthber]

I'm wondering if all the snow will melt before British Summer Time arrives.

[Mike Smith Cosmos]

I walked past a garden this morning in south Devon. The owner was tending his border, looking for shoots. We passed the time of day discussing a late spring. " eye lad twill be t' longest day in couple of months! What yer tink ow that ! ".

Edited March 29, 2013 by Mike Smith Cosmos

[Klaynos]

Interesting given we're only a couple of weeks after the equinox and there is a well known lag between the longest day and the warmest.

 

Also I've never talked to anyone in south Devon who sounded like that!