Robert Scribbler:
It’s worth re-stating. The Starks were wrong. Winter isn’t coming. Winter, as we know it, is dying. Dying one tenth of a degree of global oceanic and atmospheric warming at a time. Steadily dying with each ton of heat-trapping greenhouse gasses emitted through our vastly irresponsible and terrifyingly massive burning of fossil fuels.
Scribbler warns that “we’ve never, not once, seen this kind of heat set up at the North Pole during January.” Blame this coming event on the media named Winter Storm Jonas. The storm left 19 dead in the United States and now has Britain and Wales in its sight before getting sucked up in a northern low next week.
This is remarkable and should have us biting our nails in terror. This coming Tuesday, remember that temperatures "may push the North Pole up above freezing on a, black as night, January day”:
According to Global Forecast Systems model reanalysis by Earth Nullschool, it appears that a record warm Earth atmosphere and ocean system is again taking aim at the High Arctic. Another synoptic daisy chain of storms funneling warm, south-to-north winds — dredging them up from the tropics, flinging them across thousands of miles of North Atlantic Ocean waters, driving them up over Svalbard and toward the North Pole — is predicted to set up by early morning Monday.
The anchor of these dervishes of Equator-to-Pole heat transfer is the very Winter Storm Jonas that just crippled the Eastern US with record snowfall amounts and storm surges that have beaten some of the highest seas seen during Superstorm Sandy. A second, hurricane force low in the range of 950 mb is predicted to set up between Iceland and Greenland. But the tip of this spear of record atmospheric heat pointed directly at the Arctic is a third, but somewhat milder 990 mb, storm.
And it is this northern low that will draw a leading edge of record warmth into the Arctic. An anomalous, ocean-originating heat front that will spread its pall of air warm enough to melt sea ice during Winter north of Svalbard tomorrow. A swath of near and above-freezing temperatures spreading inexorably Pole-ward. Reinforced by the supporting lows and the synoptic wave of warmth in train, this storm is predicted to drive near or slightly above freezing temperatures into the region of 90 North Latitude by late Tuesday or early Wednesday. An event that would be unprecedented, at least in modern meteorological reckoning. One that may well be unprecedented for the whole of the Holocene.
To put such extraordinary temperatures into context, this predicted record polar warmth is in the range of 55 degrees (F) above normal for January. And for such a typically frigid region, these temperatures are more usual for June, July, or August. Or, to make another comparison, for Gaithersburg, Maryland it would be like seeing readings above 94 degrees (F) for the same Winter day.
The fossil fuel industries need to pay the bills for climate catastrophe. It is only fair and just that they do.
Live Arctic wind patterns can be seen here.
Sunday, Jan 24, 2016 · 6:02:22 PM +00:00 · Pakalolo
From bondibox in the comments: When a similar story broke around new year’s, there was a lot of “debunking” because the Discovery Channel cited 40 degree temps at “The North Pole” when actually they had data for North Pole, Alaska. However, at the same time, the actual north pole experienced temps at 34 degrees. But there’s a problem when debating this — there is a magnetic north pole, a geographic north pole, and an arctic circle of weather stations which are all considered to be “the north pole.” A critic can pick and choose any of these as their data point, so while one of the PAWS stations was recording 34F temperatures, another one was recording -30F temps. So be careful when arguing with wing nuts about this, they will believe what they want to believe (and what Billow [Bill O] tells them to believe)