I noticed this ABC story – looked like the usual puff – you know “proving GW” – we have all read dozens of the genre. Then Dr Kerry Rodgers emailed out of the blue to say he had a letter in the Timaru Herald – and it sounded like the same source quoting Australian oceanographer Dr Amelie Meyer. I thought wow a fast moving story “Timaru!!”.
I found T data for Cape Morris Jesup and downloaded data for winter to get a bit of perspective on the chart of 24Feb18 featured by the ABC. Note 1Dec2017 is on the right in my chart.
The ABC cherry picking of the 24th was impeccable. It would have been so easy for the ABC to give their readers a more balanced chart and story.
Google shows plenty of versions of the story incl this one from Perth.
‘Really extreme’ global weather event leaves scientists aghast 26Feb18
www.watoday.com.au/environment/climate-change/really-extreme-global-weather-event-leaves-scientists-aghast-20180225-p4z1q4.html
Aghast!! I get an impression the story was generated to combat the “Beast from the East” snow stories from Europe & UK.
When similar events occurred in the 1970s they were attributed by many in the scientific community as being the portents of a coming ice age.
youtu.be/L_861us8D9M
We also were “aghast” in the Timaru Herald.
1. Dr Meyer specifically referred to the “North Pole”.
Query I: is there a thermometer recording at the Pole?
2. If she was referring to the temperatures at Cape Morris Jesup, it lies some400+ mile south of the North Pole.
3. Cape Morris Jesup does not have a long historical weather record.
4. The Cape Morris Jesup weather station lay directly in the path of the narrow tongue of mild Atlantic air that flowed from the north Atlantic into the Arctic Circle in late February.
5. The narrow tongue affected only some of the Arctic and that briefly.
6. Canada’s northernmost weather station, Alert, lies 500+ miles from the pole and like Cape Morris Jessup is north of 80oN. It was little-affected by the short-lived tongue of warm air.
In February Alert recorded a highest maximum temperature of -4.7C and a lowest maximum -29.6C. Its highest minimum temperature was -18.9C and lowest minimum temperature -36.8C.
7. The Alert figures are consistent with the mean daily temperatures for the Arctic reported by the Danish Meteorological Institute.
Query II: Does anyone know how many stations the Danish “mean” is based on?
PS: Rodgers has a “d”
I presume we can rely on the ABC to correct the misleading information in this article?……
Plenty of other interesting things around the same time. The Greenland surface mass balance went off the daily charts with a massive spike from more than 12 Giga Tonnes of snow in that one same day ( Feb 24 ). try to get you head around that amount of snow. Move the date slider here. polarportal.dk/en/greenland/surface-conditions/
You may also notice the hot site is not on that map. Paul Homewood explains how the massive snow fall may have contributed to the high reading via the “Fohn” or “Fohnen wind” here. Lance Pidgeon notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2018/03/01/cape-morris-jesup/
At the other end of the planet the below average temperatures and sudden early rise return of sea ice extent to within the +/- 2 standard deviations line is not being blamed for hot weather anyplace.
The NSIDC sea ice extent map showing “sudden early rise return of sea ice extent to within the +/- 2 standard deviations”. nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/S_stddev_timeseries.png
Looks like the rest of the world spells it Foehn wind. Here is a video from New Zealand that explains how it causes above average temperatures at the opposite end of the planet to Greenland.
youtu.be/-Zshykr5NFQ
Here is another video with a clearer pictures and an audio explanation.
youtu.be/cGLNMmkUfh4
Here is a written explanation from the Hong Kong observatory.
www.hko.gov.hk/education/edu01met/wxphe/ele_foehn_e.htm
For years I used to check polar seaice extent charts at “The Cryosphere Today” – a useful collection.
arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/
then in 2016 I noted their data glitch –
Antarctic sea ice area graphic faulty for months
www.warwickhughes.com/blog/?p=4890
and I see their main page still carries this message – [Special Sensor Microwave Imager and Sounder (SSMIS) on the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) F-17 satellite that provides passive microwave brightness temperatures (and derived Arctic and Antarctic sea ice products) has been providing spurious data since beginning of April. Working on resolving problem or replacing this data source.]
Assume that was April 2016.
Does anybody know why TCT can not update? Yet other sites apparently can?
More alarmist propaganda spruiking rapid Arctic warming (26 February, 2018) which turns out to be attributable to weather involving Foehn winds.
wattsupwiththat.com/2018/03/05/trying-to-get-on-the-top-of-the-warming-heap-the-chinese-pull-a-fast-one-in-the-arctic-i-catch-them/
Here is the latest DMI plot of Arctic temperature (see link below).
“Daily mean temperatures for the Arctic area north of the 80th northern parallel, plotted with daily climate values calculated from the period 1958-2002.”
Some heatwave (a day or two), it dropped 10 degrees Celsius from about -10 degrees to -20 degrees Celsius.
ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
I notice 1976 (just toggle 1976 among the year list on the left to see that plot) was very similar to 2018 for the start of the year.