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Hot Summer? Blame It On Melting Arctic Ice!

August 20, 2018

By Paul Homewood

 

 

Yet more junk science from the Guardian!

 

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Summer weather patterns are increasingly likely to stall in Europe, North America and parts of Asia, according to a new climate study that explains why Arctic warming is making heatwaves elsewhere more persistent and dangerous.

Rising temperatures in the Arctic have slowed the circulation of the jet stream and other giant planetary winds, says the paper, which means high and low pressure fronts are getting stuck and weather is less able to moderate itself.

The authors of the research, published in Nature Communications on Monday, warn this could lead to “very extreme extremes”, which occur when abnormally high temperatures linger for an unusually prolonged period, turning sunny days into heat waves, tinder-dry conditions into wildfires, and rains into floods.

“This summer was where we saw a very strong intensity of heatwaves. It’ll continue and that’s very worrying, especially in the mid-latitudes: the EU, US, Russia and China,” said one of the coauthors, Dim Coumou from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. “Short-term heatwaves are quite pleasant, but longer term they will have an impact on society. It’ll have an affect on agricultural production. Harvests are already down this year for many products. Heatwaves can also have a devastating impact on human health.”

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/aug/20/summer-weather-is-getting-stuck-due-to-arctic-warming

 

It only takes a few minutes to completely disprove this latest theory.

First, let’s look at summer trends in the UK, courtesy of the Met Office. In particular, average daily maximum temperatures, rainfall and sunshine hours:

 

UK Mean daily maximum temp - Summer

UK Rainfall - Summer

UK Sunshine - Summer

 https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/summaries/actualmonthly

 

Extremes in any of these categories would be a strong sign of weather blocking. Yet, prior to this summer (obviously not shown) there is little evidence of blocking in recent years. You have to go back to the wet summer of 2012 for any sign of this.

In contrast, earlier years are littered with extremes, both wet and dry, hot and cold, and sunny or cloudy. Arguably recent summers have been notable for the lack of extremes.

 

We can do a similar check with the US, and again we find no evidence of extremes increasing.

 

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https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cag/national/time-series

 

The US is a big place, and sometimes the west coast can counteract the east. So let’s also look at the Northeast region:

Again, we find that variability from year to year has actually been decreasing lately.

 

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Weather blocking, of course, is nothing new. But according to HH Lamb, it was actually much worse in the 1960s and 70s. He blamed it on Arctic cooling:

 

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These variations, perhaps more than any underlying trend to a warmer or colder climate, create difficulties for the planning age in which we live. They may be associated with the increased meridionality of the general wind circulation, the greater frequency of blocking, of stationary high and low pressure systems, giving prolonged northerly winds in one longitude and southerly winds in another longitude sector in middle latitudes.

Over both hemispheres there has been more blocking in these years… The most remarkable feature seems to be the an intensification of the cyclonic activity in high latitudes near 70-90N, all around the northern polar region. And this presumably has to do with the almost equally remarkable cooling of the Arctic since the 1950’s, which has meant an increase in the thermal gradient between high and middle latitudes.

Climate, History and the Modern World – pp267-269

 

And it was not only Lamb. CC Wallen,  Head of the Special Environmental Applications Division of the World Meteorological Organization, had this to say about the consequences of the cooling trend since 1940:

The principal weather change likely to accompany the cooling trend is increased variability-alternating extremes of temperature and precipitation in any given area-which would almost certainly lower average crop yields.

During cooler climatic periods the high-altitude winds are broken up into irregular cells by weaker and more plentiful pressure centers, causing formation of a "meridional circulation" pattern. These small, weak cells may stagnate over vast areas for many months, bringing unseasonably cold weather on one side and unseasonably warm weather on the other. Droughts and floods become more frequent and may alternate season to season, as they did last year in India. Thus, while the hemisphere as a whole is cooler, individual areas may alternately break temperature and precipitation records at both extremes.

https://www.sciencenews.org/sites/default/files/8983

And he even gave us these diagrams.

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But as far as the current crop of junk scientists is concerned, it is much easier to pretend one summer makes a trend and blame it on “melting Arctic ice”. After all, it will probably guarantee them another nice chunk of grant money!

16 Comments
  1. August 20, 2018 6:38 pm

    The climate change scam rolls on at taxpayers’ expense. These so-called climate “scientists” have zero integrity.

  2. Coeur de Lion permalink
    August 20, 2018 6:39 pm

    Any sign that the Arctic is warming?

  3. August 20, 2018 6:40 pm

    This theory is based on this summer.
    When we get a different weather pattern next year, there will doubtless be a new theory.

  4. TinyCO2 permalink
    August 20, 2018 6:45 pm

    The impact on our health isn’t played out in the summer death statistics either. See page 2 fig 3. Although the long cold winter was harsh.

    Click to access Weekly_national_influenza_summary_report_week_33_2018.pdf

  5. Michael Ioffe permalink
    August 20, 2018 7:11 pm

    We always have weather and climate change variation for different reasons.
    We can use ONLY PROPERTIES OF WATER to influence the nature in any time,
    It is the cheapest way and will always work, as in global warming, as in global cooling condition.
    WE MUST REEVALUATE DEADLY WRONG SCIENCE OF CLIMATE CHANGE and their scientists articles, which after two fanatic – James Hansen from NASA and influenced by him in 1980 chairman of Senate Committee – Al Gore poison billions of people on the earth by deadly wrong science of fear.

  6. August 20, 2018 7:23 pm

    Reblogged this on WeatherAction News and commented:
    This was discussed at cliscep the other week;

    The science linking man-made warming to our wet summers is explained by Edward Hanna from the University of Sheffield, so we can expect many more wet summers in the future:

    The link, he believes, is that Arctic sea-ice losses and the release of heat over the Arctic Ocean have tended to weaken the jet stream and make it more meandering. This has brought more low pressures over Britain, less stable conditions, more cloud cover and rain-bearing weather systems from the Atlantic.

    This year, the jet stream moved much more than usual, passing south of the UK. It also persisted in this position for an unusually long time. If this pushing of the jet stream southward is indeed linked to less sea ice over the Arctic circle, as Hanna suspects, then the signs are that we will see many more of these wet summers in future.

    The shape of British summers to come?

    I find this a curious theory as even a cursory look at the weather of the past shows several instances of where el jetstream was unusually south or north and where the weather became ‘stuck’ in repeteating patterns.

    1860;

    farming diary maintained in coastal Connaught, NW Ireland, states that the year 1860 was . . . ” the coldest and wettest year on record, a very late harvest – I saw two fields of oats in stook in Co. Meath on the 17th Decr. “: There were two mentions of significant gales during the year, one on the 21st January and the other on 14th September. All three months, January, February and March were noted as being ‘wet, rough and cold’ and coupled with the other remarks, it suggests the jetstream was abnormally strong and displaced in such a position that it propelled frequent Atlantic disturbances across at least Ireland. As noted elsewhere, it was also a wet summer across England.

    And summer 1862

    The summer of 1862 was notably cold using the CET series. All three summer months (June, July & August) had below-average mean temperatures, with anomalies (on the all-series dataset) of -1.6, -1.8 and -1.0C respectively, giving an overall deficit of -1.5C. As of 2013, it ranks within the ‘top-15’ of coldest summers using that long series. Specifically in NW Ireland (from a farming diary in Connaught), there are frequent notes of ‘wet days’ and ‘alarming cold’, coupled to occasional days of high winds/damage: specific occasions of ‘gales’ are thought worthy of record on the 4th & 7th June and the 19th July; it was noted that the harvest was ‘terrible’. It looks as if our old friend the polar jet was displaced southward again and no doubt stronger than the long-term average.

    Then we have summer 1868

    Persistently warm weather by CET series over period May to July. The summer of 1868 was very hot & dry, with some of the highest temperatures ever recorded for the second half of July occurring in this year. There was a remarkable spell of hot days, with temperatures over 30degC in England. For the south-east of England specifically, a maximum temperature above 32degC was recorded in each of the months from May to September, and in July specifically, the temperature exceeded 32degC on 9 days; the soil was very dry (lack of precipitation), which would of course mean that solar energy was most effective. [ Note that consistency of instrumentation / housing was not as high as it is today.]
    > It was regarded for many years, until 1976 at least, as the longest (due lack of rainfall) & hottest in the instrumental record for England.
    2. Although not accepted (because of problems of comparison between Glaisher and Stevenson screens), the maximum temperature recorded on the 22nd July, 1868 at Tonbridge, Kent is still remarkable: 100.6 degF/(converted=38.1degC) [ It is now thought that this value, when compared with the ‘standard’ Stevenson screen, is about 1.5C or 2C too high.]
    3. Notable drought May to July over England & Wales in particular: somewhere around 40% of long term average. Using the EWP series (Hadley), both June & July were in the ‘top-10’ of dry such-named months (4th driest as at 2007), with 17 mm (~25% average) & 20 mm (~33% average) respectively. Not quite so dry in Scotland (just under 70%).

    Or 1872-79

    These eight years began with the wettest calendar year in the EWP series (see above), and culminated in the second wettest summer in that set; the ‘growing-to-harvest’ periods (May – September) of 1872, 1875, 1877, 1878 & 1879 all experienced well-above average rainfall – that of 1879 being some 160% above the ‘all-series’ mean. Summer-time temperatures were also either ‘average’ or depressed, and again, in 1879 the CET value of 13.7degC was some 1.5degC below the all-series average, a considerable amount. It is no surprise then to find that British agriculture entered a period of depression (some have called it a ‘crisis’), beginning in 1875 and not recovering until 1884; the downturn was aggravated by foreign wars and imbalance in trade (depressed home prices), coupled to unsustainable land rents.

    https://booty.org.uk/booty.weather/climate/1850_1899.htm

    Was that the Arctic ice as well? The theory that explains everything explains nothing.

  7. August 20, 2018 9:30 pm

    Climate extremism is the new normal, in the Guardian at least.

  8. tom0mason permalink
    August 21, 2018 1:57 am

    The Guardian — news for the village idiot.

    • August 21, 2018 6:28 am

      Hence it’s the BBC’s main source of information.

      • Gerry, England permalink
        August 21, 2018 1:38 pm

        Funny how during Cheriegate and the conman buying flats for her saga, the last two outlets to cover it were the Guardian and BBC.

  9. August 21, 2018 1:40 pm

    If this pushing of the jet stream southward is indeed linked to less sea ice over the Arctic circle

    How much difference in Arctic sea ice is there this year compared to other recent years? None worth mentioning.
    http://polarportal.dk/en/sea-ice-and-icebergs/sea-ice-thickness-and-volume/

  10. August 21, 2018 1:56 pm

    As with most things, “follow the money.” Whether it is academia or media which are becoming integrated in an unfortunate way, follow the money. Neither group has been raised with a sense of “right and wrong.” Thus, lying is just a means to the desired end.

    We have more than a generation with no personal desire nor public constraint to be truthful. Add to that the “publish or perish” constraints within academia and it is a recipe for creative lying.

    For several decades here, institutions such as the National Science Foundation, have been purposefully politicized. In order to receive the grants necessary to maintain your academic status or even employment, you must sing from their page. The recent outrage from the granting community over the finding in OH that fracking did not affect the water supply is an example. That finding from the study was basically suppressed for almost 2 years.

    Universities are judging the usefulness of faculty by the research they do, not their classroom abilities, because the research brings in the lovely money which funds the vast overburden of useless administration. Curricula which are not heavily money generating are demoted in favor of those which do. Those which pass the test are ones requiring a lot of expensive equipment. Grants now have up to 30% or more built in for the institution’s “handling” of the grant. So the fatter the grant, the more the administration has for it’s own bloated self.

    The result is those who are hired are ones who will bring in a lot of grant money. Often these are not those with either teaching personalities, abilities nor interests. Students are viewed as nuisances unless they are graduate students working on “your” grant. I have seen this attitude at 2 universities.

    The predictable results are greater numbers of so-called faculty and so-called researchers and so-called scientists who have been trained for have one view and make certain that all research, finding and opinions fit that view. Follow the money. Get robots who cannot have an original nor deviant thought.

  11. Broadlands permalink
    August 21, 2018 2:00 pm

    “The US is a big place, and sometimes the west coast can counteract the east. So let’s also look at the Northeast region…”

    In 1934 the ten warmest states were contiguous and in the West and Northwest. In 1998 the ten warmest states were contiguous and in the East and Northeast. In 1921 they were in the middle and the South. No state overlap anywhere for those three record years.

    However, NOAA/NCDC has since revised these maps eliminating the contiguous part. That’s why they were rather than are…

  12. August 24, 2018 7:09 pm

    Reblogged this on Climate Collections.

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