As you know, the jet stream has taken a much more southerly track across North America in recent weeks and this has allowed the cold from the Arctic to move down over Canada and the US.
The same disruption that’s bringing snow and ice to the US right now is also responsible for the warmer conditions in the Arctic. Much of the cold has exited the Arctic allowing warmer air to move in and replace it.
Researchers told Climate Central that the weather pattern driving the extreme cold into the U.S. — with a weaker polar vortex moving around the Arctic like a slowing spinning top, eventually falling over and blowing open the door to the Arctic freezer — fits with other recently observed instances of unusual fall and wintertime jet stream configurations.
Such weather patterns, which can feature relatively mild conditions in the Arctic at the same time dangerously cold conditions exist in vast parts of the lower 48, may be tied to the rapid warming and loss of sea ice in the Arctic due, in part, to manmade climate change.
Arctic warming is altering the heat balance between the North Pole and the equator, which is what drives the strong current of upper level winds in the northern hemisphere commonly known as the jet stream. Some studies show that if that balance is altered then some types of extreme weather events become more likely to occur.
During the past week, while much of North America has seen frigid temperatures, weather maps show a strip of orange and red hues, indicating above-average temperatures, across parts of the Arctic, Scandinavia, Europe and Asia.
You have your answer. Basically, it is weather.
>>last summer the Arctic was colder than average<<
So what? Averages are center-points of multiple values both greater than and less than the average.
>>it is so much warmer not like the years before<<
Actually, it is not so different (so far) from years before. Winter temperatures in 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, and 2012 (and to a slightly less degree 2013) were all riding above the mean.
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.p...
That is the reason why looking at narrow windows of data is largely both irrelevant and deceptive. You need to look at the data at a scale that is comparable to and consistent with the signal you are looking for. As you reduce the size of the window you are looking at, you increase the noise and lessen the signal that you see – until you eventually reach a point where noise is the only thing you are looking at.
Look at it this way. Say you want to determine the average height of some group of people. Which do you think will give you a better answer – measuring just one person or measuring 100 people?
Although you may get lucky if you only measure one person’s height – if that person’s height actually happens to be the average – even if you are right, you cannot know that you are right. The more people you measure, the more confident you become that you have a good answer. And even if some freak is 10-feet tall; if the average is 6-feet and you measure enough people it will not matter how much taller he is than everyone else.
And it becomes even more important when you start trying to compare 2 or more different groups of people.
You are fretting over one person – and it is a waste of time because if that is all you look at, it is all that you can ever know.
Actually, it's similar to a few other years recently:
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/plots/meanTar...
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/plots/meanTar...
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/plots/meanTar...
In my humble and relatively uneducated opinion, it looks like Arctic temperature is much more variable year to year during winter months than the summer months. It would be interesting to know why this is.
Edit: Here is an interesting graphic. Give it time to run, it's an animated gif: http://climatesanity.files.wordpress.com...
Well AGW and for a number of years the Arctic has been warming at a faster rate than the rest of the planet
Currently the sea ice extent in the Arctic is @ 2 million squaw meters less than the 1981-2010 average
...
There is only so much coldness in the system so if the Americans are getting colder it must be getting warmer where it is coming from. I bet it is roasting now at the north pole.
Though the Arctic is warming faster than the rest of the planet, it being so warm this winter, and subsequent winters, is due to energy redistribution, changes in ocean currents, and so on.
http://www.climatedialogue.org/melting-o... (note: this is a debate amongst active working scientists)
Note that the contribution to sea ice decline in this region is estimated by both sides of the debate to be due to 'global warming' by between 30% and 95%. The rest can be attributed to natural cycles such as the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, which switched to positive in the mid 1990s.
https://climatedataguide.ucar.edu/climat...
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/data/correl...
As well, short term changes in wind and jet stream characteristics have an effect.
Solar Max, the Sun has been very active for the last few months. And Arctic air temperatures correlate well with solar activity, even though the mechanism is not fully understood.
http://spot.colorado.edu/~koppg/TSI/TSI_...
Perhaps it's all the hot air generated by the denialists. Or a change in the direction of the jet stream.
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/plots/meanTarchive/meanT_2014.png any ideas?
