![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
New Weather
Dec. 11th, 2009 05:52 pmWell Def Jeff over at Weather Underground has a detailed post on a new weather pattern that's been identified over the Arctic:
This is fascinating - we knew there would be these large-scale changes, but not really what they'd be until they happened. The heat transport possibly explains the excess melting that has occurred in recent years: it wasn't in the current crop of ice prediction models, so they've been conservative.
The Arctic is switching from swirling jetstreams around the pole to winds from the South slurping warm air, so "fascinating" should be accompanied with a generous side of "oh crap".
The old atmospheric patterns that controlled Arctic weather--the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) and Arctic Oscillation (AO), which featured air flow that tended to circle the pole, now alternate with the new Arctic Dipole pattern. The Arctic Dipole pattern features anomalous high pressure on the North American side of the Arctic, and low pressure on the Eurasian side. This results in winds blowing more from south to north, increasing transport of heat into the central Arctic Ocean.
This is fascinating - we knew there would be these large-scale changes, but not really what they'd be until they happened. The heat transport possibly explains the excess melting that has occurred in recent years: it wasn't in the current crop of ice prediction models, so they've been conservative.
The Arctic is switching from swirling jetstreams around the pole to winds from the South slurping warm air, so "fascinating" should be accompanied with a generous side of "oh crap".
