I’ll warn you now this is a crazy post 😜. For some reason I got to wondering how much of an affect the friction from a stormy sea with large winds a big swell and large waves can have on wind speeds measured by an anemometer out in the open ocean? The reason I ask is because in the recent named storm ‘Ashley’ on the 20th of October 2024, the winds from the Weather Buoy known as K4, seemed to be rather on the low side. My memory is probably playing tricks here, but I remember when plotting any of the Ocean Weather Ships on a chart in stormy weather as an assistant, it wasn’t unusual for me to plot mean speeds of 50 knots or more. That’s when I got to wondering about surface friction and the height of the anemometer, and what effect friction would have on wind speeds? The height of the anemometer may have been 60 feet or more above the ocean surface on a weathership, but on a weather buoy, that might be no more than 20 feet. It may be fairly academic now because the days of weather ships have long since passed, but there are still hundreds of ship and probably thousands of weather buoys observations made each hour across the world, so I wonder if any adjustment at all is made to those from buoys? I did warn you that this post was crazy.😉
PS If you want to find out more about Ocean Weather Ships maintained by the Met OfficeUKMOThe Meteorological Office is the United Kingdom's national weather service. It is an executive agency and trading fund of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Ican recommend this great site WeatherShips.com
Iceland has been rather cold for much of this year. The reason I’ve put it down to was persistent NW’ly winds flowing down from off Greenland ice cap. This month however, a tongue of colder water SSTSSTSea Surface Temperatures has extended E’NENENorth East from the coast of SE Greenland and wrapped itself around Iceland’s north and east coast. You can see the effects of this if you look at temperature anomalies so far this October for Iceland. The cold month we’ve seen across much of the UKUKThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland., and which the media love to describe as ‘rather chilly’, may also be a symptom of the colder air across Iceland and those same NW’ly winds.
How long these low SST will continue around Iceland is anyone’s guess, and what if any effect this will have on the coming winter. One thing I have noticed for some time in the long-range 16 to 30 day text forecast from the UKMOUKMOThe Meteorological Office is the United Kingdom's national weather service. It is an executive agency and trading fund of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, is the mention of higher pressure to the northwest of the UK which might be in somehow linked.
Towards mid-November, high pressure may become more focussed towards the northwest of the UK, allowing a gradual trend towards colder and perhaps more unsettled conditions, especially in more southern and eastern areas.
A cold pool has developed in the last six weeks off the coast off the coast of northwest Ireland and western Scotland. It’s incongruous, because at the moment the SSTSSTSea Surface Temperatures of the North Atlantic are at the second highest level since 1981, and possibly many hundreds of years before this. It’s expanded & consolidated a little more during the last week, but what’s behind it? Answers on a postcard to the usual address.😉
The central Pacific continues to cool, if rather hesitatingly over the last month. Here’s the latest ENSOENSOEl Niño–Southern Oscillation is an irregular periodic variation in winds and sea surface temperatures over the tropical eastern Pacific Ocean, affecting the climate of much of the tropics and subtropics. The warming phase of the sea temperature is known as El Niño and the cooling phase as La Niña. forecast from the IRI.
ENSO Forecast
July-2024-quick-look
Published: July 19, 2024
A monthly summary of the status of El NiñoEl NiñoEl Niño 'The Boy' is the warm phase of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation and is associated with a band of warm ocean water that develops in the central and east-central equatorial Pacific, La NiñaLa NiñaLa Niña is an oceanic and atmospheric phenomenon that is the colder counterpart of El Niño, as part of the broader El Niño–Southern Oscillation climate pattern. The name La Niña originates from Spanish for "the girl", by analogy to El Niño, meaning "the boy". In the past, it was also called an anti-El Niño[1] and El Viejo, meaning "the old man.", and the Southern Oscillation, or ENSO, based on the NINO3.4 index (120-170W, 5S-5N)
As of mid-July 2024, ENSO-neutral conditions persist in the western equatorial Pacific, and oceanic and atmospheric indicators also align with ENSO-neutral state. The IRI ENSO prediction plume forecast ENSO-neutral for Jul-Sep, and Aug-Oct, 2024. La Niña becomes the most probable category in Sep-Nov, 2024 through Dec-Feb, 2025, while for Jan-Mar, 2025 ENSO-neutral conditions become dominant (50% chance), and remain so during Feb-Apr, and Mar-May, 2025. Similar to the most recent official CPCCPCThe Climate Prediction Center is a United States federal agency that is one of the National Centers for Environmental Prediction, which are a part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Weather Service. The CPC is where meteorologists and oceanographers review climate and weather observations and data along with model results; assess their meaning, significance, and current status; and likely future climate impacts. ENSO Outlook (issued on July 11, 2024), the objective IRI model-based ENSO outlook forecasts indicate ENSO-neutral conditions for Jul-Sep 2024. However, there is a notable difference between the probability numbers in the early-month CPC and mid-month IRI ENSO forecasts. The CPC ENSO forecasts predict a 70% chance of La Niña onset in Aug-Oct 2024, which then persists with increasing probabilities reaching into the range from 66% to 81% during the boreal fall and winter seasons. In contrast, the objective IRI ENSO forecasts show a late onset of La Niña conditions in the equatorial Pacific (49% chance in Sep-Nov 2024), with persistence into the fall and early winter, though with very low probabilities ranging from 52% to 48%. The forecasts then show a return to ENSO-neutral conditions in Jan-Mar 2025, and remain dominant for the rest of the forecasts period. The low probability numbers reflect a high level of uncertainty in the forecasts, due to the relatively low skill of seasonal forecast models at this time of year. Therefore, these ENSO forecasts should be interpreted with caution.
Arctic sea ice extent was the third lowest for this date at 77.8% of the LTALTALong Term Average. This is usually defined as a 30 year period by the WMO., behind 2020 & 2019, and down 5.6% on the same date last year.
Antarctic sea ice extent was the second lowest since 1978 for this date at 89.2% of the LTA, just behind & tracking 2023, with ~8 weeks to go before maximum which was early last year.
Flannan Isles Lighthouse is a lighthouse near the highest point on Eilean Mòr, one of the Flannan Isles in the Outer Hebrides off the west coast of Scotland. It is best known for the mysterious disappearance of its keepers in December 1900. From what I read in the Wikipedia article the disappearance of the three lighthouse keepers occurred on the 15th of December or shortly thereafter.
The weather from the 15th to the 17th from what I can see in the reanalysis charts was quite rough to the west of the Hebrides, with a westerly gale on the 15th,that backed southwesterly by the 16th. The switch to a tropical maritime air mass would explain the poor weather conditions reported by the steamer “Achtor” later on the 15th. As for the men being swept off the island by a freak wave who knows, the gradients are tight so there must have been gale force winds at that time, but possibly not storm force.
The curious thing in March was that although Atlantic SSTSSTSea Surface Temperatures were at record high levels, the air above it (in the central Atlantic at least) was 2 degrees colder than average.
I couldn’t quite believe the new research by Alexandra Jahn, of the University of Colorado that claims that the Arctic could be free of sea ice by the end of this decade 😮. In her research for free of ice read 386,000 square miles, or a million square kilometres, which isn’t exactly what I would describe as “free of sea ice”. I make the date to true zero to be the 7th of June 2071 by extrapolating a simple linear trend for the last 30 years of minima. Even then the Arctic would never be truly free of sea ice I suspect. The date to the one million square kilometres mentioned in the report at the same rate would be around the summer of 2058, which looks far more realistic than the end of this decade. 😉
Climate Pulse is a new interactive website that’s just been released by the ECMWF. It’s a wonderful way to visualise global air and sea temperature data in graphs and in a 3D Globe. I may be wrong but the graphs look like they use the plugin from Highcharts, the globe has limited functionality compared to the graphs but is still pretty good. Web applications as good as this are gradually putting me out of a job, and although they do allow you to download the daily data as a CSVCSVA data file using Comma Separated Variable format. file, I can only match the visualisation you get in a Windows application on a PC which is already out there on the web and available to all, and that can only be a good thing.
I wonder if the current high SSTSSTSea Surface Temperatures off the west coast of Africa will spark off more Cape Verde tropical cyclones than occurred last year? For the record 2023, was a little above average using the accumulated ACEACEAccumulated cyclone energy (ACE) is a metric used by various agencies to express the energy released by a tropical cyclone during its lifetime. It is calculated by summing the square of a tropical cyclone's maximum sustained winds, measured every six hours. The resulting total can be divided by 10,000 to make it more manageable, or added to other totals in order to work out a total for a particular group of storms. index for the year in the North Atlantic. There were a handful of storms that originated from the around the Cape Verde Islands although I am unaware of any correlation between the number of cyclones and SST. As you can see that at the moment the SST is around +3°C and two degree warmer that at the same time last year. SST are fickle, and can change quite quickly, especially close to the coast, so these higher than average SST may well not persist into June.
Atlantic sea surface temperatures [SSTSSTSea Surface Temperatures] have been increasing exceptionally quickly over the last 12 months. Even allowing for the fact that the increases coincide with an El NinoEl NiñoEl Niño 'The Boy' is the warm phase of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation and is associated with a band of warm ocean water that develops in the central and east-central equatorial Pacific event, what lies behind them in both the North Atlantic and globally remains a mystery. As you can see from the first chart, a 365 day moving average, the linear trend since 1981 has been at the astonishing rate of +0.249°C per decade. To investigate the rise in SST I’ve developed a program to download and visualise the daily SST data from the Climate Reanalyzer site and to plot these three charts that I’ve included. I am thankful to Professor Eliot Jacobson (@eliotjacobson) for the link to the data, and the inspiration for the first two of these three charts. ToDo: It might be very useful if I were to overlay the ENSOENSOEl Niño–Southern Oscillation is an irregular periodic variation in winds and sea surface temperatures over the tropical eastern Pacific Ocean, affecting the climate of much of the tropics and subtropics. The warming phase of the sea temperature is known as El Niño and the cooling phase as La Niña. events on the first of these two graphs.
As you can see 2024 has picked up where 2023 left off and is considerably higher than 2023 was at this date.
The waters around IONAIONAIslands Of North Atlantic.
Yes I know there's an island called Iona, but this is so I don't have to use the term 'British Isles' when referring to the whole of Ireland and the UK. are all still well above average for early January. In fact the southern North Sea is +1.7°C above the LTALTALong Term Average. This is usually defined as a 30 year period by the WMO., and has been for some considerable time. It’s no wonder when we do get a cold Arctic northerly or a continental easterly, why temperatures are even more attenuated by the SSTSSTSea Surface Temperatures than they usually are.
The latest SSTSSTSea Surface Temperatures were a bit of a surprise. I realise that globally SST are currently at record levels, so I was surprised to see how much blue there was on the chart. Obviously the belt of high anomalies in the central Pacific, Atlantic and Indian ocean must be at very high levels indeed. The northern Baltic has managed to ice up this year, but SST in the Black Sea and Mediterranean are still well above average.
It looks like this January (2024) could turn into a very anticyclonic month from this weekend, so I thought I would take a look back in the objective LWTLWTLamb Weather Types are often used in UK-based analyses, with individual weather patterns based on the eight primary cardinal directions (N, NE, E, SE, S, SW, W, NW) plus cyclonic (C), anticyclonic (A) and unclassified (U) types. records, which started in 1871, and found that January 1992 was the most anticyclonic on record., although despite it being so anticyclonic, it never really managed to generate more than a few easterly days at the start of the third week.
MSLPMSLPMean sea level pressure is the pressure at sea level, or, when measured at a given elevation on land, the station pressure reduced to sea level assuming an isothermal layer at the station temperature. that month across the UKUKThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. got close to 1050 hPahPaA Hectopascal is the SI unit of pressure and identical to the Millibar on the 26th as you can see from the chart for 12 UTCUTCCoordinated Universal Time or UTC is the primary time standard by which the world regulates clocks and time. It is within about 1 second of mean solar time (such as UT1) at 0° longitude (at the IERS Reference Meridian as the currently used prime meridian) and is not adjusted for daylight saving time. It is effectively a successor to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT)., the highest on that chart was 1049.0 hPa at Cynwyd in Denbighshire. I only have main synoptic hour data so it may have broken through 1050 hPa. Notice that they’re also plotted SYNOPSYNOPSYNOP (surface synoptic observations) is a numerical code (called FM-12 by WMO) used for reporting weather observations made by manned and automated weather stations. SYNOP reports are typically mad hourly and consist of groups of numbers (and slashes where data is not available) describing general weather information, such as the temperature, barometric pressure and visibility at a weather station. reports from Cape Wrath, Butt of Lewis and Binbrook on that chart, those were the days 😉
One other point about January 1992 is that it was also a El NinoEl NiñoEl Niño 'The Boy' is the warm phase of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation and is associated with a band of warm ocean water that develops in the central and east-central equatorial Pacific month.
The latest El NinoEl NiñoEl Niño 'The Boy' is the warm phase of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation and is associated with a band of warm ocean water that develops in the central and east-central equatorial Pacific is going great guns in the central pacific, no doubt helped along by a surge in SSTSSTSea Surface Temperatures in the Pacific as well as in all the other oceans of the world. Because of the complicated rules, this is the first time I’ve seen El Nino conditions confirmed, and which started with the three month mean of SST from May, June and July of 2023.
For the fourth month in a row global temperatures have set another new monthly record for warmth. September is perhaps the most remarkable of the four in my DIYDIYDo It Yourself global temperatures series, exceeding the previous highest in 2016 by a massive, in global temperature terms that is, of 0.24°C. The question that immediately springs to mind is when will this run of new extremes come to an end? Maybe when it comes full cycle in June of 2024, or who knows if the El NinoEl NiñoEl Niño 'The Boy' is the warm phase of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation and is associated with a band of warm ocean water that develops in the central and east-central equatorial Pacific is still running it will just continue.
Currently, on the 30th of September, the daily mean global temperature is in open water on the graph above way higher than in any of the previous daily temperatures since 1948. What’s driving the sharp rise in global temperatures are the higher than average SSTSSTSea Surface Temperatures in the central Pacific Ocean. The La NinaLa NiñaLa Niña is an oceanic and atmospheric phenomenon that is the colder counterpart of El Niño, as part of the broader El Niño–Southern Oscillation climate pattern. The name La Niña originates from Spanish for "the girl", by analogy to El Niño, meaning "the boy". In the past, it was also called an anti-El Niño[1] and El Viejo, meaning "the old man." event which had been keeping a check on global temperatures until earlier this year has gone, replaced by a strengthening El Nino.
The southeast of the North Sea and Baltic remain remarkably warm still with anomalies widely of +3°C above the LTALTALong Term Average. This is usually defined as a 30 year period by the WMO.. Is the warm summer of 2023 across Europe a product of these high SSTSSTSea Surface Temperatures, or as seems likely, these high SST are just a by product of the very warm summer? The central north Atlantic, although still much warmer than average, is much cooler generally that at the same point last year, how this bodes for the weather in this autumn and coming winter is anyone’s guess, but mine would be for a very mild, wet autumn and winter, but don’t quote me on that because I’m no expert😉
El NiñoEl NiñoEl Niño 'The Boy' is the warm phase of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation and is associated with a band of warm ocean water that develops in the central and east-central equatorial Pacific is anticipated to continue through the Northern Hemisphere winter (with greater than 95% chance through December 2023 -February 2024).
In July, El Niño continued as indicated by above-average SSTSSTSea Surface Temperatures across the equatorial Pacific Ocean. Nearly all of the weekly Niño indices in the central and eastern Pacific were in excess of +1.0°C: Niño-3.4 was +1.1°C, Niño-3 was +1.8°C, and Niño1+2 was +3.4°C. Area-averaged subsurface temperatures anomalies decreased compared to June, but remained positive, in association with anomalous warmth across the equatorial Pacific Ocean. Tropical atmospheric anomalies were also consistent with El Niño. Starting in mid-July, low-level winds were anomalously westerly over the western equatorial Pacific, while anomalous easterlies prevailed over the eastern Pacific. Upper-level wind anomalies were westerly over the eastern Pacific. Convection continued to be enhanced around the International Date Line and was weakly suppressed in the vicinity of Indonesia. The equatorial SOISOIThe Southern Oscillation is the atmospheric component of El Niño. This component is an oscillation in surface air pressure between the tropical eastern and the western Pacific Ocean waters. The strength of the Southern Oscillation is measured by the Southern Oscillation Index. The SOI is computed from fluctuations in the surface air pressure difference between Tahiti (in the Pacific) and Darwin, Australia (on the Indian Ocean). and the traditional SOI were both negative. Collectively, the coupled ocean-atmosphere system reflected El Niño.
I have smartened up my ENSOENSOEl Niño–Southern Oscillation is an irregular periodic variation in winds and sea surface temperatures over the tropical eastern Pacific Ocean, affecting the climate of much of the tropics and subtropics. The warming phase of the sea temperature is known as El Niño and the cooling phase as La Niña. application a little and downloaded the latest data. The monthly anomaly for August when published (the average of the three months July through to September) will confirm the current El Niño event started in June, but the rules used by NOAANOAANOAA is an agency in the Department of Commerce that maps the oceans and conserves their living resources; predicts changes to the earth's environment; provides weather reports and forecasts floods and hurricanes and other natural disasters related to weather., if I remember them correctly, are that you need three of those three month averages above +0.5°C before this happens. The ENSO rules and stats are always a bit murky. Here is another view of the weekly data that my ENSO application also displays.
00 UTCUTCCoordinated Universal Time or UTC is the primary time standard by which the world regulates clocks and time. It is within about 1 second of mean solar time (such as UT1) at 0° longitude (at the IERS Reference Meridian as the currently used prime meridian) and is not adjusted for daylight saving time. It is effectively a successor to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). – 24 Dec 2016
On 20 UTC on the 23 December 2016, instrumental wave heights reported by the automatic weather buoy [MAWS] K5 out in the North Atlantic at 59.1° north and 11.7° west were as high as 15.4 metres or just over 50 feet. Wave heights have since dropped to around 30 feet, before increasing again tomorrow as storm Conor passed close by to the north. Looking at the midnight chart I should imagine waves may have been considerably higher than this a little further north judging by the strength of the gradient. Sadly, since I wrote the original article the UKMOUKMOThe Meteorological Office is the United Kingdom's national weather service. It is an executive agency and trading fund of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy now suppress wave height data in their hourly weather buoy observations, so much for progress.
Hourly wave heights from K5Plotted observations from K5
Courtesy Copernicus- the picture that caused all the fuss
Just a quick look back at the heatwave of July 2023 across the Mediterranean. There was a great deal of interest in this taken by the media in the UKUKThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland., particularly the BBCBBCThe British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is the national broadcaster of the United Kingdom, based at Broadcasting House in London. It is the world's oldest national broadcaster, and the largest broadcaster in the world by number of employees, employing over 22,000 staff in total, of whom approximately 19,000 are in public-sector broadcasting.. As far as I can see it was in my opinion, and that’s what this blog is all about, was sparked off initially by some overzealous reporting by the new (to me) Rome correspondent who was interviewing a selection of British tourists in the centre of Rome in the middle of a hot sunny day. I think this was in reaction to a warning from METEOAMMeteoAMThe Italian Meteorological Service is an organizational unit of the Italian Air Force (Servizio Meteorologico dell'Aeronautica Militare) and the national meteorological service in Italy. The weather forecasts and other services serve both the armed forces and the general public. of a severe heatwave dubbed Cerberus on the 13th. If you’ve ever been to Italy or abroad you’ll realise it’s usually a good idea to hide from the sun at this time of the day😉 As far as I can ascertain from observational data there was a short 3 day heatwave (see thermograph below) at Rome’s airport. The trouble with observational data from Italy, as is the case in the UK, you can only access a subset of it, and unfortunately Rome has only one SYNOPSYNOPSYNOP (surface synoptic observations) is a numerical code (called FM-12 by WMO) used for reporting weather observations made by manned and automated weather stations. SYNOP reports are typically mad hourly and consist of groups of numbers (and slashes where data is not available) describing general weather information, such as the temperature, barometric pressure and visibility at a weather station. station situated at the airport on the coast. Because of the HIEUHIUrban Heat Island (UHI) is an urban area that is significantly warmer than its surrounding rural areas due to human activities. The temperature difference is usually larger at night than during the day, and is most apparent when winds are weak. UHI is most noticeable during the summer and winter. The main cause of the UHI effect is from the modification of land surfaces I’m sure it was much warmer in the centre of Rome. Not only is there a shortage of observational data for many countries, I challenge you to find any up to date LTALTALong Term Average. This is usually defined as a 30 year period by the WMO. climate data for any of them either. What I mean here by up to date is the LTA for 1991-2020 and not that for 1971-2000 that I have for many stations. You would have thought in these days of “global boiling” the latest climate station for all member countries would be available on the WMOWMOThe World Meteorological Organisation is a specialized agency of the United Nations responsible for promoting international cooperation on atmospheric science, climatology, hydrology and geophysics. website – no it isn’t – and if it wasn’t for Wikipedia, and some nifty parsing, I wouldn’t have collected over 800 LTA records across the world as I have. I’ve been watching and examining heatwaves closely across the UK and Europe since I retired from the Met OfficeUKMOThe Meteorological Office is the United Kingdom's national weather service. It is an executive agency and trading fund of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy in 2011. There are no rules as to what constitutes a heatwave, and therein lies the problem. The UK have one set of rules and every other country has another, and that’s why I argued, mainly to myself because few people read what my views are or give a damn about them either, that instead of a rigid threshold for summer months of X°C for a region, as the UKMOUKMOThe Meteorological Office is the United Kingdom's national weather service. It is an executive agency and trading fund of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy do, a “heatwave day” should be defined on the anomaly of the maximum temperature for each individual station. Over the years I’ve developed software and I usually default to an anomaly of 6°C above the LTA. Personally I think this is much too low for a severe heatwave, and probably should be ~+10°C. The thermograph for Seville shows the extent of the heatwave there using this 6°C rule. Three distinct heatwave days up to the 28th. These anomalies are calculated using the 1981-2010 LTA and not the much colder LTA of 1971-2000.
Seville 1981-2010 LTA
These thermographs for Rome, Decimomannu and Palermo use the 1971-2000 LTA. and because they anomalies calculated using this slightly colder LTA, the anomalies are much warmer than if I had the ones for 1991-2020. I’ve emailed METEOAM to see if I can obtain them, but am not hopeful I will be able to source the latest climate data. I shouldn’t need to do this, or rely on Wikipedia to supply them, this basic climatological data should be available from the WMO. That aside the three thermographs do highlight a series of heatwave days, with many as 15 at Decimomannu in Sardinia with an extreme maximum of 46.8°C.
I hope I’ve explained the importance of using the latest LTA for all stations to get an unbiased picture of July’s heatwave. The map below of total heatwave days shows the number of days with a maximum temperature anomaly of 6°C or higher. There’s no doubt that it was hot across a large of southeastern Europe using the +6°C threshold, particularly across parts of northern Algeria and Tunisia. There are what looks like spuriously high anomalies scattered around these are probably caused by out-of-date LTA.
Number of days with a maximum temperature [06-18] >=+6°C
If you look at the next chart this shows the total number of days with anomalies of +10°C or more, and what I maintain are severe heatwave days. Heatwaves in the UK must last at least three consecutive days or more before they can be officially labelled a heatwave, many of the sites in the chart below away from North Africa have one or two, and even if they have more they may not be consecutive.
Number of days with a maximum temperature [06-18] >=+10°C
Looking at reanalysis gridded temperatures and anomalies up to the 26th reveal what I think was really going on. The core of the heat was across the north of Algeria and Tunisia, occasionally some of that very hot air escaped transferring northwards from Africa to affect parts of Sardinia, Sicily, southern Italy, western Greece and the Balkans, and because SSTSSTSea Surface Temperatures temperatures in the Mediterranean were at record levels during July, the sea didn’t cool the air at the surface as much as it could. The other thing is the media got a hold of this story and ran with it, this was easy to do, because they already had stories about heatwaves in the southern states of America and China, and as the month went on wildfires broke out, and it was also announced that July was very likely to be the record hottest month – a perfect combination for catastrophising the whole thing🥵. For the record heatwaves don’t cause wildfires people do.
The surge in SSTSSTSea Surface Temperatures that began in June has gradually been subsiding since the start of July, and now we’re starting to see some blue negative anomalies appear around the British Isles at last. What triggered this surge in SST’s is anyone’s guess. Perhaps a giant hydrothermal vent briefly opened on the mid-Atlantic ridge in the North Atlantic and spewed out an enormous amount of super-critically heated water for a couple of days? It may sound totally wacky, which it probably is, but there have been a number of hotspots that suddenly appear and disappear just as quickly in the last 10 years that I’ve been watching SST across the globe.
SST anomalies may have been falling across the Atlantic but they are still at record high level in the Mediterranean sea, particularly at the western end along the coast of north Africa.
There’s been a massive fall of in Antarctic sea ice this season. I decided to emulate a graph I saw on Twitter that overlays a daily line series for each year since 1978 and then highlight specific series, red for 2023, blue for 2022, and green for 2016, the year of the previously lowest daily anomaly from the 1981-2010 LTALTALong Term Average. This is usually defined as a 30 year period by the WMO.. The total for the 5th of July is just 12.332 million square kilometres, that’s just 81.6% of the LTA for that date, and around 1.8 million square kilometres lower than last year the previous lowest.
Below is another graph you don’t often see and that’s total global sea ice extent from both the Arctic and Antarctic combined. There’s a very noticeable year-on-year decline in Arctic sea ice extent in the world.
For the first time in three years, three monthly average SSTSSTSea Surface Temperatures in the ENSOENSOEl Niño–Southern Oscillation is an irregular periodic variation in winds and sea surface temperatures over the tropical eastern Pacific Ocean, affecting the climate of much of the tropics and subtropics. The warming phase of the sea temperature is known as El Niño and the cooling phase as La Niña. 3.4 region are above average. Depending on whose rules you follow this may be the precursor to an El NiñoEl NiñoEl Niño 'The Boy' is the warm phase of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation and is associated with a band of warm ocean water that develops in the central and east-central equatorial Pacific later this year when SST get 0.5°C above the LTALTALong Term Average. This is usually defined as a 30 year period by the WMO.. It’s all rather complicated when they begin and end, the Americans have one method, so too do the BOMBOMThe Bureau of Meteorology (BOM or BoM) is an executive agency of the Australian Government responsible for providing weather services to Australia and surrounding areas. in Australia and the JMAJMAThe Japan Meteorological Agency (気象庁, Kishō-chō), abbreviated JMA, is an agency of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism. in Japan. Isn’t sorting problems concerning climate and weather like this what the WMOWMOThe World Meteorological Organisation is a specialized agency of the United Nations responsible for promoting international cooperation on atmospheric science, climatology, hydrology and geophysics. exist for?
Five out of the seven Met Services around the world have finally published their estimated global temperature anomalies for February 2023. I swear they get slower at updating their estimates each year. The Europeans are always first off the mark to report these days, but the slowest by far are the UKMOUKMOThe Meteorological Office is the United Kingdom's national weather service. It is an executive agency and trading fund of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, who have only just published their estimate for January. The comparison graph (above) shows that the weak third dip in anomalies that started in 2016 has now all but fizzled out. Now that the double dip La NinaLa NiñaLa Niña is an oceanic and atmospheric phenomenon that is the colder counterpart of El Niño, as part of the broader El Niño–Southern Oscillation climate pattern. The name La Niña originates from Spanish for "the girl", by analogy to El Niño, meaning "the boy". In the past, it was also called an anti-El Niño[1] and El Viejo, meaning "the old man." event has come to an abrupt end, and world ocean SSTSSTSea Surface Temperatures at record highs, you can only expect global anomalies start to rocket through the rest of 2023.
