The image below, a forecast for October 8, 2017, run on October 7, shows Hurricane Nate near New Orleans, with winds as fast as 83 mph or 134 km/h (at 850 mb) and up to 5.33 in or 135.4 mm (3-hour precipitation accumulation) of rain (at the green circle).
Early forecast also showed as much as 6.1 in or 154.9 mm of rain (3-hour precipitation accumulation) hitting the Mississippi coast.
The NOAA image below also shows the track over North America as forecast over the next few days.
Nate, the fourth major storm to strike the United States in less than two months, killed at least 30 people in Central America before entering the warm waters of the Gulf and bearing down on the U.S. South (Reuters report).
One of the biggest dangers is storm surge flooding, as illustrated by above image and the tweet below.
7-11 ft storm surge on the MS Gulf Coast and open water coast in SE LA from #Nate. I’m 6ft 6 in. This pole is 11 ft. Some perspective. pic.twitter.com/kisGyATz13
It's raining over the Arctic Ocean and the rain is devastating the sea ice. What are the conditions that led to this?
As has been known for a long time, energy is added to Earth due to emissions by people and this translates into a warmer troposphere with more water vapor, warmer oceans and stronger winds.
Warming is hitting the Arctic particularly hard, due to numerous feedbacks, as illustrated by the sea surface temperature anomalies image on the right.
On July 6, 2017, cyclonic winds lined up to create a 'perfect storm'. As a result, an Atmospheric River of moisture was driven through Bering Strait into the Arctic Ocean, as shown on the images below.
On July 6, 2017, 1500 UTC, winds in Bering Strait were as high as 58 km/h (36 mph) at surface level (green circle on above image left), and as high as 82 km/h (51 mph) at 850 mb (green circle on above image right).
On July 6, 2017, surface temperatures of the air in Bering Strait were as high as 8.1°C (46.5°F) (green circle on image right).
Another indication of the strength of the wind driven through Bering Strait is wave height. On July 6, 2017, waves were as high as 3.35 m or 11 ft in the Bering Strait, at the location marked by the green circle on the image on the right.
The relatively warm and moist air driven through Bering Strait by strong winds is causing rain to fall over the sea ice of the Arctic Ocean, as shown on the video and images further below.
On July 7, 2017, high air temperatures were recorded over land and over the water.
The image below shows temperatures recorded at two locations over the Mackenzie River, one of 32.6°C or 90.8°F at the mouth of the Mackenzie River and another one of 34.7°C or 94.5°F further inland. Warm water from rivers can substantially warm up the sea surface and thus melt the sea ice.
Temperature of the surface of the water was 10°C or 50.1°F where the water was pushed into the Bering Strait, while temperatures as high as 46.9°C or 116.3°F were recorded over California.
The combined impact of high temperatures, strong winds, high waves and warm river water, rain water and melt water looks set to further devastate what sea ice is left in the Arctic Ocean.
Rain can be particularly devastating. The very force at which rain strikes can fracture the sea ice where it's weak, while pools of rainwater and meltwater will form at places where the sea ice is stronger. Where fractures appear in the sea ice, warm water can reach further parts of the ice and widen the cracks.
The video below shows rain over the Arctic Ocean. The video was created with cci-reorganizer.org forecasts from July 3, 2017, 18:00 UTC to July 17, 2017, 00:00 UTC.
Arctic sea ice is in a terrible shape. Sea ice volume is at a record low, as indicated by the Wipneus image below showing volume anomalies from 2002.
The image below, by Torstein Viddal, shows how low the 2017 year-to-date average sea ice volume is.
An additional danger is wildfires. Due to high temperatures, wildfires have broken out near the Mackenzie River, as illustrated by the satellite image below.
Wildfires come with a lot of emissions, including soot that darkens the surface when settling down, thus further speeding up warming.
The situation is dire and calls for comprehensive and effective action as described at the Climate Plan.
Surface temperature anomalies of 20 degrees Celsius are not uncommon in the Arctic these days. The image below shows surface temperature anomalies on November 9 and 10, 2012.
Paul Beckwith, regular contributor to this blog, comments as follows on the conditions in the Arctic:
“The Arctic meteorology is unprecedented at the moment. Huge ridges of high pressure are crossing the Arctic ocean cutting off the Siberian cold region from the North American region. Very little cold air is present in the entire system, and it is exhibiting very bizzare fragmentation. Nothing like a “normal” polar vortex is apparent.
The ridge could just be due to this greatly reduced volume of cold air, but I suspect there is much more to the situation then that. It seems that there must be some source of heat to create this ridge. Could be warm air rising up from open water regions in the Arctic, however most of the warm water is now isolated from the atmosphere by the sea ice.
It seems more likely to me that the high levels of methane with GWP > 150 or higher are causing higher long-wave absorption and heating in these regions, but I have not seen methane concentration distributions over the Arctic from AIRS satellites lately.”
So, let's have a look at the methane levels for those days. The image below shows the methane levels for the above two days.
Paul continues:
“This is what abrupt climate change looks like. In the paleorecords global average temperatures increased over 6 degrees C within a decade or two, I suppose we will know more precise numbers in a few short years.”
Paul Beckwith, B.Eng, M.Sc. (Physics),
Ph. D. student (Climatology) and
Part-time Professor, University of Ottawa
My projections for our planet conditions when the sea-ice has all vanished year round (PIOMAS graph projects about 2024 for this; I forecast 2020 for this) are:
Average global temperature: 22°C (+/- 1°C)
(rise of 6-8°C above present day value of about 15°C)
Average equatorial temperature: 32°C
(rise of 2 °C above present day value of 30°C)
Average Arctic pole temperature: 10°C
(rise of 30°C above present day value of -20°C)
Average Antarctica pole temperature: -46°C
(rise of 4°C above present day value of -50°C)
Water vapor in atmosphere: higher by 50%
(rise of 4% over last 30 years, i.e. about 1.33% rise per decade)
Average temperature gradient from equator to North pole: 22°C
(decrease of 28°C versus present day value of 50°C)
Very weak jet streams (driven by N-S humidity gradient and weak temperature gradient as opposed to existing large temperature gradient)
- Result: very fragmented, disjointed weather systems
- Basic weather: tropical rainforest like in some regions; arid deserts in others with few regions in between.
Note: This scenario would require significant emissions of methane from the Arctic. Without this methane, the scenario would still occur but would take longer. Disclaimer: Best guess and subject to rolling revisions!
Meanwhile, extreme weather continues to strike areas outside the Arctic. In the U.K, airports were closed due to snow, following a period of heavy rainfall in November.
In Russia, extreme weather caused a huge traffic jam; see the BBC reports here and here, prompting Veli Albert Kallio, also one of this blog's contributors, to make the following comments:
Veli Albert Kallio in front of Peter Wadhams and John Nissen at APPCCG event, March 13, 2012, House of Commons, London
“The Ewing-Dunn Precipitation (the lake-effect snow) from warmed-up Arctic Ocean has taken the Russian Government's winter preparations by suprise of its severity, with the Russian Government minister banging his fist as standing queues of vehicles reoccurs and is now 190 kilometres (120 miles) long between the capital Moscow and St. Petersburg.
I have been warning from the leaked files since July at this and other groups that December 2012 was going to be like this. We need to tell the Russian Interior Minister who bangs his fist on TV that he should not blame his road officials, but the global warming and loss of sea ice from the Barents and Kara Seas and generally warmed up North Atlantic - Arctic Ocean regions.”
