Wild Weather Swings

The above image, adapted from ClimateReanalyzer, shows temperature anomalies of more than 40°F (22.22°C) higher than 1979-2000 forecast for December 25, 2025 (21:00 UTC) over parts of the United States, discussed here on facebook. 

Earlier forecasts warned about even higher anomalies over the Arctic, as illustrated by the image below.

As temperatures rise, extreme weather events are striking with increasingly stronger ferocity, heightened intensity, longer duration, greater frequency and wider 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 that extremely high daily average temperature anomalies hit parts of the Arctic Ocean and Greenland on December 22, 2025, while that same day extremely low daily temperature anomalies hit parts of Canada, Alaska and Siberia. 

The image on the right shows a temperature at the North Pole of -4.3°C or 24.3°F on December 14, 2025 17:00 UTC (also discussed in this post on facebook).

Distortion of the Jet Stream can cause extreme weather events and wild weather swings. The image below shows how the 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 abruptly 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:

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

[ image from earlier post, click on images to enlarge ]

The next El Niño

[ click on images to enlarge ]

The image on the right shows a NOAA update of Niño-3.4 region temperature anomalies and forecasts. NOAA considers La Niña conditions to occur when a one-month negative sea surface temperature anomaly of -0.5° C or less is observed in the Niño-3.4 region of the equatorial Pacific Ocean (5°N-5°S, 120°W-170°W). Also, there must be an expectation that the 3-month Oceanic Niño Index (ONI) threshold will be met, and an atmospheric response typically associated with La Niña is observed over the equatorial Pacific Ocean. These anomalies must also be forecasted to persist for 3 consecutive months.

[ from an earlier post ]

The image on the right, adapted from NOAA, shows ENSO (El Niño-Southern Oscillation) probabilities, with El Niño (red bar) emerging in the course of 2026.

The image below, from an earlier post and adapted from ECMWF, shows the ENSO anomalies and forecasts for developments through November 2026 in Niño3.4 (left panel) and in Niño1+2 (right panel), indicating that the next El Niño will emerge and strengthen in the course of 2026.

Moving from the depth of a La Niña to the peak of a strong El Niño in itself can make a difference in the global temperature of more than 0.5°C, as discussed in an earlier post.

Temperature anomalies in the Niño-3.4 region of the equatorial Pacific Ocean (5°N-5°S, 120°W-170°W) are indicative for ENSO (El Niño/La Niña) conditions. The image below shows anomalies in that region on December 14, 2025, of 0.9° C below 1991-2020, a move deeper into La Niña conditions, which is suppressing temperatures at the moment and that may cause the next El Niño for many to come as a shock. 

Sea ice

As the image below shows, Antarctic sea ice extent was 1.998 million km² on March 1, 2025 and it was 7.995 million km² on December 23, 2025. What Antarctic extent will be on March 1, 2026, is discussed here on facebook.

The image below shows global sea ice concentration and snow cover on December 25, 2025. 

Both sea ice extent and concentration are currently low at both poles, contributing to albedo loss, i.e. less sunlight getting reflected back into space and instead getting absorbed by the surface. 

This leads to an increase in global temperatures, which in turn causes loss of lower clouds, resulting in even more albedo loss. 

This spells bad news for Antarctic sea ice. The Antarctic sea ice is expected to reach its minimum in February 2026. 

The image on the right is adapted from a University of Bremen image and shows the Antarctic sea ice concentration on December 25, 2025. 

The next image on the right is adapted from a NSIDC image and also shows the Antarctic sea ice concentration, on December 24, 2025. Additionally, the image shows the median Antarctic sea ice edge 1981-2010 highlighted in orange.

The danger is that a Double Blue Ocean Event will occur in 2026, i.e. sea ice approaching a low of one million km² both for Antarctic sea ice and Arctic sea ice. 

The image below, adapted from a Uni of Bremen image, shows Antarctic sea ice thickness on December 25, 2025. 

While the Antarctic methane danger has been described before, such as in this April 2013 post, the main focus of the Arctic-news blog has long been on the Arctic, in particular on the East Siberian Arctic Shelf (ESAS). However, recent research highlights the dire situation in Antarctica, justifying an additional wider focus on global developments, as discussed on facebook.

The above image, from Ted Scambos et al. (2017), also features in an earlier post and illustrates the dangerous situation in Antarctica. The danger of progressively stronger intrusions of warm and salty water underneath Antarctic glaciers is also discussed in this recent study. The danger is that this can cause glacier collapse and destabilization of methane hydrates, in turn causing eruption of huge amounts of methane held in and underneath such hydrates, as also discussed here on facebook.

[ click on images to enlarge ]

The danger of an Antarctic Blue Ocean Event occurring in February 2026 is illustrated by the image on the right, which shows Antarctic sea ice extent anomalies through December 12, 2025.

An Antarctic Blue Ocean Event in February 2026 in turn would threaten to trigger an Arctic Blue Ocean Event later in 2026.

Ominously, Arctic sea ice extent was 11.19 million km² on December 22, 2025, a record low for the time of year. What makes this record daily low even more significant is that it was reached without El Niño conditions elevating temperatures. 

The image below, adapted from NSIDC, shows Arctic sea ice extent through December 23, 2025. 

Arctic sea ice volume is also at a record low for the time of year, it has been at a record daily low for well over a year. The image below shows Arctic sea ice volume through December 23, 2025. 

Methane

The methane danger is illustrated by the image below that shows hourly average in situ methane measurements well above 2400 ppb (parts per billion). The image is adapted from an image issued by NOAA December 24, 2025. The image shows methane recorded over the past few years at the Barrow Atmospheric Baseline Observatory (BRW), a NOAA facility located near Utqiaġvik (formerly Barrow), Alaska, at 71.32 degrees North latitude.

The methane danger is discussed in many earlier posts such as this one. Seafloor methane and methane from thawing terrestrial permafrost can add significantly and abruptly to the temperature rise.

The danger of methane hydrates destabilization 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.

Links

• Japanese National Institute of Polar Research
https://ads.nipr.ac.jp/vishop

• Extreme weather
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/extreme-weather.html

• Cold freshwater lid on North Atlantic
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/cold-freshwater-lid-on-north-atlantic.html

• DMI (Danish Meteorological Institute) - Arctic sea ice thickness and volume
https://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icethickness/thk.uk.php

• Kevin Pluck - Sea ice visuals
https://seaice.visuals.earth

• Ocean submesoscales as drivers of submarine melting within Antarctic ice cavities - by Mattia Poinelli et al.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-025-01831-z
Also discussed on Facebook at: 
https://www.facebook.com/groups/arcticnews/posts/10163636947369679

• Climate Reanalyzer
https://climatereanalyzer.org

• University of Bremen

https://seaice.uni-bremen.de/start

• NSIDC - National Snow and Ice Data Center

https://nsidc.org/sea-ice-today

• The threat of seafloor methane eruptions
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2025/11/the-threat-of-seafloor-methane-eruptions.html

• Feedbacks in the Arctic
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/feedbacks.html

• NOAA - Global Monitoring Laboratory - Data Visualisation - flask and station methane measurements
https://gml.noaa.gov/dv/iadv

• Focus on Antarctica
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2025/09/focus-on-antarctica.html

• Transforming Society
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2022/10/transforming-society.html

• Climate Plan
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/climateplan.html

• Climate Emergency Declaration
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/climate-emergency-declaration.html

Betrayal: The threat to life on Earth

by Andrew Glikson

It has been overlooked during Garma festival that, under current policies, global warming would render aboriginal lands in central and northern Australia unliveable and the top-end a nuclear target…

In his classic book The Fate of the Earth speaking for humanity Jonathan Schell describes the horror of a full-scale nuclear holocaust where human beings and animals would die if twenty thousand megatons of bombs, more than a million times the Hiroshima bomb, explode.

The consequences of a global nuclear exchange belong to the unthinkable. Nuclear weapons are the most destructive, inhumane and indiscriminate weapons ever created. Both on the scale of the devastation they cause and uniquely persistent genetically damaging radioactive fallout, they are unlike any other weapons. A single nuclear bomb detonated over a large city could kill millions of people. The use of tens or hundreds of nuclear bombs would disrupt the atmosphere world-wide, causing widespread famine.

[ Figure 1. Extreme geophysical, meteorological, hydrological and climatological events during 1980 -2012 ]

From the 1970s the full implications of climate change were only beginning to be realized, through a growing string of cyclones, fires, droughts and floods increasing in frequency and intensity above the recent historical record (Figure 1). At that time few could forecast the climate trajectory like NASA’s chief climate scientist (Hansen et al., 2012), who stated:

“Burning all the fossil fuels would create a different planet than the one that humanity knows. The paleoclimate record and ongoing climate change make it clear that the climate system would be pushed beyond tipping points, setting in motion irreversible changes, including ice sheet disintegration with a continually adjusting shoreline, extermination of a substantial fraction of species on the planet, and increasingly devastating regional climate extremes” and “warming according to the IPCC Business As Usual’ (BAU) scenario would lead to a disastrous multi-meter sea level rise on the century timescale” and “We’ve reached a point where we have a crisis, an emergency, but people don’t know that” ...

[ Figure 2. credit: NOAA, click on images to enlarge ]

According to Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, Germany’s chief climate scientist “Climate change is now reaching the end-game, where very soon humanity must choose between taking unprecedented action or accepting that it has been left too late and bear the consequences” …

[ Figure 3. The five mass extinctions in the Earth’s history. ]

Within a century or less the Earth’s mean temperature has risen from the mean levels of the Holocene (the last 11,700 years) and the Pleistocene (11,700 years ago to 2.58 million years ago), to levels of the Pliocene (2.58 million years ago to 5.333 million years ago) to the Miocene (5.33 to 23.03 million years ago), 3 - 4°C warmer than the Holocene, at warming rates. This is faster than any identified in the Cenozoic (66 million years until the present) geological record (Glikson, 2022-23). It is difficult to find in the geological record an event increasing the global greenhouse level at a rate as extreme as the current global heating (Figure 4).

[ Figure 4. Past mean temperatures (200 AD to 2000 AD), current warming and future temperature projections (Steffen, 2012) ]

A nuclear war would represent the ultimate outcome of tribalism, nationalism, racism and war, the human propensity for mutual and self-destruction. There was a time when kings and generals would fall on their sword when they were defeated, or when their faith in their gods collapsed. Nowadays oblivious or non-caring world powers continue to proliferate nuclear weapons on hair trigger alert, mine coal and pump oil and gas, starting a greenhouse chain reaction. Leaders, so-called, opportunistically betray the defence of their own people and the future of their children. The voices of anti-nuclear and climate scientists have become subdued, ignored or betrayed. There may not be too many historians to document the 20-21ˢᵗ centuries crimes against humanity and against nature.

An explanation of the collapse of human society, dragging multiple species down with it, arises from Fermi’s Paradox, where the combination of technological achievements and an inherent killer instinct of some leads to collapse.

Andrew Glikson

A/Prof. Andrew Y Glikson
Earth and Paleo-climate scientist

Books:
The Asteroid Impact Connection of Planetary Evolution
https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789400763272
The Archaean: Geological and Geochemical Windows into the Early Earth
https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783319079073
The Plutocene: Blueprints for a Post-Anthropocene Greenhouse Earth
https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783319572369
The Event Horizon: Homo Prometheus and the Climate Catastrophe
https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783030547332
Climate, Fire and Human Evolution: The Deep Time Dimensions of the Anthropocene
https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783319225111
Evolution of the Atmosphere, Fire and the Anthropocene Climate Event Horizon
https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789400773318
From Stars to Brains: Milestones in the Planetary Evolution of Life and Intelligence
https://www.springer.com/us/book/9783030106027
Asteroids Impacts, Crustal Evolution and Related Mineral Systems with Special Reference to Australia
https://www.springer.com/us/book/9783319745442
The Fatal Species: From Warlike Primates to Planetary Mass Extinction
https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783030754679
The Trials of Gaia. Milestones in the evolution of Earth with reference to the Antropocene
https://www.amazon.com.au/Trials-Gaia-Milestones-Evolution-Anthropocene/dp/3031237080

Climate Change Henchmen: Storm, Flood, Heat, Smoke and Fire

As climate change strikes with ever greater ferocity, five henchmen dominate the news: Storm, Flood, Heat, Smoke and Fire.

During the first 6 months of 2021, there have been 8 separate billion-dollar weather and climate disaster events across the United States. The U.S. has sustained 298 weather and climate disasters since 1980 where overall damages/costs reached or exceeded $1 billion (including CPI adjustment to 2020). The total cost of these 298 events exceeds $1.975 trillion. The total cost over the last 5 complete years (2016-2020) exceeds $630.0 billion — averaging more than $125.0 billion/year — both new records.

The image on the right shows very high temperatures over North America end July 2021, with fire radiative power as high as 247.3 MW.

The NASA Worldview satellite image below shows large smoke plumes on July 7, 2021, reaching Hudson Bay. Furthermore, large smoke plumes are also visible over British Columbia.

The NASA Worldview satellite image below shows smoke traveling from the West Coast to the East Coast of the U.S. on July 26, 2021.

The Copernicus image on the right shows Siberian fires spreading aerosols over the Arctic Ocean on August 2, 2021 

The NASA Worldview satellite image underneath on the right shows fires (red dots) in Siberia spreading smoke over the Arctic Ocean on August 2, 2021. 

Mainstream media do cover such disasters, often with sensational footage and while pointing at the extensive damage and loss of life caused by such events. 

However, mainstream media rarely point out that climate change is getting worse and and even more so due to feedbacks that can amplify extreme weather events and can further speed up how climate change unfolds.

One of these feedbacks is albedo loss, i.e. decline of the snow and ice cover resulting in less sunlight getting reflected back into space. Fires also come with soot that can settle on snow and ice, resulting in surface darkening that will speed up melting and albedo loss. 

The rapid thinning of Arctic sea ice was discussed in an earlier post and is again illustrated by the image on the right.

The image shows the sea ice (or rather the lack of it) north of Greenland on August 15, 2021. This is where years ago the thickest sea ice was located.

The melt season will continue for at least another month time, so the situation is very worrying, since the disappearance of the thicker sea ice means that the buffer is gone, i.e. that the latent heat tipping point of Arctic sea ice has been crossed.

Here's a link to compare the sea ice north of Greenland between July 29, 2021, and August 15, 2021.

The NSIDC image on the right shows that the proportion of multiyear ice in the Arctic during the first week of August was at 1.6 million km² (618,000 million miles²).

NSIDC adds: The loss of the multiyear ice since the early 1980s started in earnest after the 2007 record low minimum sea ice cover that summer, and while there have been slight recoveries since then, it has not recovered to values seen in the 1980s, 1990s, or early 2000s. This loss of the oldest and thickest ice in the Arctic Ocean is one of the reasons why the summer sea ice extent has not recovered, even when weather conditions are favorable for ice retention.

The Naval Research Lab animation on the right shows Arctic sea ice thickness (in m) for the 30 days up to August 27, 2021, with eight days of forecasts included. 

As the temperature difference between the North Pole and the Equator narrows, the wind flowing north on the Northern Hemisphere slows down, which changes the Jet Stream, resulting in more extreme weather events, including heatwaves and fires. 

One of the most dangerous feedbacks is that, as temperatures of the water of the Arctic Ocean keeps rising, more heat will reach sediments under the Arctic Ocean where huge amounts of methane are stored, causing destabilization. 

[ from the feedbacks page ]

This destabilization threatens to cause huge quantities of methane to erupt and enter the atmosphere, as has been discussed in many earlier posts such as this one and this one. 

This threat becomes dramatically larger as the latent heat threshold gets crossed and the buffer constituted by Arctic sea ice disappears, so further heat entering the Arctic Ocean from the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean can no longer be consumed in the process of melting the subsurface sea ice. 

Ominously, the MetOp-2 satellite recorded a methane level of 2839 ppb at 469 mb on July 30, 2021 pm, as the image on the right shows.

[ peak methane level of 2839 ppb ]

The image underneath shows large quantities of methane over the East Siberian Arctic Shelf (ESAS) at 469 mb on August 4, 2021 pm. 

On August 4, 2021, there still was some sea ice present in the ESAS. While this remaining sea ice does prevent a lot of sunlight from reaching the water and heating it up, the sea ice also acts as a seal, preventing ocean heat from getting transferred to the atmosphere. The water in the ESAS is very shallow, less than 50 meter in most places, which makes it easier for heat to reach sediments, while it also makes it harder for methane that is rising through the water column to get decomposed by microbes in the water.

[ large quantities of methane over ESAS ]

The image underneath shows that on August 4, 2021 am, at 293 mb, the MetOp-1 satellite recorded a mean global methane level of 1942 ppb. 

At a 1-year Global Warming Potential (GWP) of 200, this translates into 388.2 ppm CO₂e. By comparison, the CO₂ level on August 4, 2021, was 414.89 ppm according to the Keeling Curve measurements at Mauna Loa, Hawaii. A GWP of 200 for methane is appropriate in the light of the danger of a huge burst of methane erupting from the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean, which would, due to the abrupt nature of such an eruption, make its impact felt instantaneously. 

[ mean global methane level of 1941 ppb ]

Methane levels are already very high over the Arctic, so additional methane erupting there will be felt most strongly in the Arctic itself, thus threatening to trigger even further methane releases.

The situation is dire and calls for immediate, comprehensive and effective action as described in the Climate Plan.

Links

• Jet Stream

https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/jet-stream.html

• Feedbacks

https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/feedbacks.html

• NASA Worldview

https://worldview.earthdata.nasa.gov

• NOAA Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters: Time Series

https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/billions/time-series/US

• Copernicus - aerosols

https://atmosphere.copernicus.eu/charts/cams/aerosol-forecasts

• MetOp methane levels

https://www.ospo.noaa.gov/Products/atmosphere/soundings/iasi/

• NSIDC: Arctic Sea Ice News & Analysis - August 18, 2021

https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2021/08/on-the-home-stretch

• Heatwaves and the danger of the Arctic Ocean heating up 
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2021/06/heatwaves-and-the-danger-of-the-arctic-ocean-heating-up.html

• Arctic sea ice disappearing fast

https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2021/07/arctic-sea-ice-disappearing-fast.html

• When will we die?

https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2019/06/when-will-we-die.html

• More Extreme Weather
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2021/02/more-extreme-weather.html

• Most Important Message Ever

https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2019/07/most-important-message-ever.html

• Confirm Methane's Importance
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2021/03/confirm-methanes-importance.html

• Climate Plan
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/climateplan.html

More Extreme Weather

As temperatures rise, the weather is getting more extreme. Around the globe, extreme weather events are striking with ever greater frequency and intensity. 

In 2020, in the U.S. alone, a record number of 22 climate and weather disasters took place that each caused damage of more than 1 billion dollar, while jointly causing the deaths of 262 people. 

Rising temperatures cause stronger storms, droughts, heatwaves and forest fires. Rising temperatures are also behind the cold weather that is currently hitting large parts of North America. Two mechanisms that, by distorting the Jet Stream, are contributing to more extreme weather are described below. 

Distortion of the Jet Streams - two mechanisms

The Jet Streams used to circumnavigate the globe in narrow bands. World climate zones used to be kept well apart by stable Jet Streams. 

On the Northern Hemisphere, the coldest point used to be the North Pole, so wind used to flow from the tropics to the North Pole, while the wind was moved to the side due to Earth's turning. 

Polar Jet Stream and Subtropical Jet Stream - NOAA image

This resulted in two Jet Streams forming, circum-navigating the globe in relatively narrow and straight bands, i.e. the Polar Jet Stream at 60°N and the Subtropical Jet Stream at about 30°N. 

 

Polar Jet Stream (blue) and Subtropical
Jet Stream (red) - NOAA image

First mechanism distorting the Jet Stream

The first mechanism distorting the Jet Stream is that, as the Arctic gets hit much harder by temperature rises, the difference in temperature decreases between the North Pole and the Equator.

This slows down the speed at which wind travels from the Tropics to the North Pole, in turn making the Jet Stream more wavy, just like a slow-moving river over flat land will take a winding route and meander.

For years, Jennifer Francis et al. warned that this will cause more extreme weather in mid latitudes. Arctic-News described Deformation of the Jet Stream as Opening the Doorways to Doom, i.e. one of the feedbacks (#10) of accelerated Arctic warming.

Second mechanism distorting the Jet Stream

Due to the rapid temperature rise of the Arctic Ocean, the North Pole is increasingly not the coldest place on the Northern Hemisphere.

Instead, the air over Greenland, North Canada and Siberia is increasingly more cold than before, and can be much colder than the North Pole, as illustrated by the ClimateReanalyzer image on the right.

This creates temperature and pressure conditions over the East Pacific and over North America that make the Jet Stream branch out.

On the next image on the right, the Jet Stream can be seen running over the West Pacific at speeds as high as 387 km/h or 241 mph (green circle) and moving within a narrow and straight band.

The Jet Stream is then confronted with much different conditions over North America that make the Jet Stream branch out widely (white arrows), with one branch moving north and going circular over the Arctic Ocean, while at the other end a branch can be seen dipping below the Equator.

As a result of these two distortion mechanisms, cold air that used to stay contained over the North Pole, can descend more easily over Siberia and North America, causing more extreme weather, while also taking away opportunities for the sea ice to build up to the strength and depth than it used to have. 

The combination image below shows forecasts for February 6, 2021.

On the above combination image, the left panel shows that, not far apart from each other and at the same time, temperature anomalies over North America are forecast to approach the top end and the bottom end of the scale. The right panel shows that temperatures over North America and Siberia are forecast to be much lower than over the Arctic Ocean.

As the temperature difference between land and ocean gets stronger on the Northern Hemisphere in Winter, the transfer of water vapor and heat to the atmosphere increases (#25 on the feedbacks page, image right). Storms and clouds forming over the North Atlantic trap heat and move much heat toward the North Pole.

 
Formation of clouds can be further facilitated by aerosols (feedback #9). A recent study looks at how melting sea ice can cause more release of iodine into the atmosphere, seeding the growth of new clouds that trap longwave radiation that would otherwise go into space.

The combination image below shows in the left panel how a branch of the Jet Stream is forecast to be moving over the North Pole at speeds as high as 107 km/h or 67 mph on February 16, 2021. Hours later that day, as the globe in the right panel shows, the surface temperature on the North Pole is forecast to be -18°C, i.e. warmer than the white-blue color (about -20°C) that covers most of North America.

As the globe in the left panel of the combination image below shows, temperature anomalies in Texas were approaching the bottom end of the scale on February 15, 2021, i.e. -32°C or -57.6°F (below 1979-2000), while the globe in the right panel shows that on February 16, 2021, temperature anomalies in between Greenland and the North Pole were forecast to approach the top end of the scale, i.e. 32°C or 57.6°F (above 1979-2000). 

Above freezing at North Pole?

As the combination image below shows, the temperature at the North Pole is forecast to be 0°C or 32°F, panel right, on February 22, 2021, 18:00 UTC, while temperature anomalies at the North Pole are forecast to be at the top end of the scale, i.e. 32°C or 57.6°F above 1979-2000. 

The light-blue color over the North Atlantic on the globe on the left is a cold anomaly resulting from cold air moving from North America over the Atlantic Ocean (forecast initiated Feb.15, 2021, 18:00 UTC).

Ominously, sea ice is breaking up north of Greenland. 

And ominously, the N20 satellite recorded methane levels as high as 2835 ppb at 399.1 mb on the afternoon of February 17, 2021.

Conclusion

The situation is dire and calls for immediate, comprehensive and effective action as described in the Climate Plan.


Links

• 2020: Hottest Year On Record
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2021/01/2020-hottest-year-on-record.html

• NOAA - U.S. Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters: Overview
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/billions/overview

• Climate Reanalyzer
https://climatereanalyzer.org

• Nullschool

https://earth.nullschool.net

• Feedbacks in the Arctic

https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/feedbacks.html

• Polar jet stream appears hugely deformed
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2012/12/polar-jet-stream-appears-hugely-deformed.html

• Evidence linking Arctic amplification to extreme weather in mid‐latitudes - by Jennifer Francis et al. 

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2012GL051000

• Opening the Doorways to Doom (feedback #14)

https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2012/08/opening-the-doorways-to-doom.html

• Role of iodine oxoacids in atmospheric aerosol nucleation - by Xu-Cheng He et al. 

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/371/6529/589

• Cloud-Making Aerosol Could Devastate Polar Sea Ice

https://www.quantamagazine.org/cloud-making-aerosol-could-devastate-polar-sea-ice-20210223

• Climate Plan
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/climateplan.html