Arctic News: Wild Weather Swings

Tuesday, December 16, 2025

Wild Weather Swings

As temperatures rise, extreme weather events are striking with greater force and intensity and are occurring with longer duration and with increased frequency and ubiquity.

The above image shows temperature anomalies of more than 28°C above 1979-2000 forecast over the Arctic Ocean for December 24, 2025 06z.

The image on the right shows a temperature forecast at the North Pole of -4.4°C or 24°F on December 14, 2025 20:00 UTC.

The image below shows how a distorted Jet Stream is forecast to form an 'Omega' pattern at 250 hPa over Greenland on December 21, 2025 18:00 UTC, with temperatures on the east coast of Greenland forecast to be as high as 7.1°C or 44.7°F.

Strong wind can push huge amounts of ocean heat from the Atlantic Ocean into the Arctic Ocean.

An influx of warm, salty water into the Arctic Ocean can penetrate sediments at the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean that contain vast amounts of methane in the form of methane hydrates and free gas underneath such hydrates. Greater salinity and higher temperatures can cause such hydrates to destabilize, resulting in eruptions of huge amounts of methane and in rapid global warming.

Such a rapid warming scenario could unfold if triggered by a stronger-than-expected El Niño event, as follows:

a stronger-than-expected El Niño would contribute to
early demise of the Arctic sea ice, i.e. latent heat tipping point +
associated loss of sea ice albedo,
destabilization of seafloor methane hydrates, causing eruption of vast amounts of methane that further speed up Arctic warming and cause
terrestrial permafrost to melt as well, resulting in even more emissions,
while the Jet Stream gets even more deformed, resulting in more extreme weather events
causing forest fires, at first in Siberia and Canada and
eventually also in the peat fields and tropical rain forests of the Amazon, in Africa and South-east Asia, resulting in
rapid melting on the Himalayas, temporarily causing huge flooding,
followed by drought, famine, heat waves and mass starvation, and
collapse of the Greenland Ice Sheet.

[ image from earlier post ]

The next El Niño

[ screenshot from earlier post ]

Destabilization of methane hydrates is further illustrated by the screenshot below.

[ screenshot from earlier post ]

Climate Emergency Declaration

UN secretary-general António Guterres recently spoke about the need for “a credible global response plan to get us on track” regarding the international goal of limiting the global temperature rise. “The science demands action, the law commands it,” Guterres said, in reference to a recent international court of justice ruling. “The economics compel it and people are calling for it.”

What could be added is that the situation is dire and unacceptably dangerous, and the precautionary principle necessitates rapid, comprehensive and effective action to reduce the damage and to improve the outlook, where needed in combination with a Climate Emergency Declaration, as described in posts such as this 2022 post and this one and as discussed in the Climate Plan group.