Climate Letter #1647

Editing note: Unfortunately, the original images did not save properly. The ones you see below are effectively useless.

This has turned out to be a great day for doing Weather Map studies at both poles, with an emphasis on demonstrating the mighty warming power of water vapor on surface air temperatures. (It will help if you are familiar with the content of the last two letters.) The two polar regions are both in an intermediate stage where they have roughly equal amounts of daylight, plus thin cloud covers that also have almost no role in fixing air temperatures. As for greenhouse gas, all of those that are well-mixed and have long lives of concentration in the atmosphere are within only a few percentage points of what they have ever recorded over recent decades—including both CO2 and methane. Thus none of them could possibly affect air temperature by more than a few tenths of one degree. That leaves us with a single wild card, water vapor, the one greenhouse gas that indeed has a truly short life, such that drastic changes in concentration can be made with almost no notice, and, moreover, all stretched out over a very long scale. The poles happen to be at the end of the scale where changes are the quickest and most dramatic, just the opposite of what goes on around the equator.

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My plan is to show the connection between surface temperatures, their anomalies over a period averaging three decades, and differences in water vapor (which in this case is almost the entire content of Precipitable Water readings) relative to specific locations. I wish I could show you a map detailing the amount of anomaly that every different water vapor reading now has relative to its “normal daily average” for any one spot, but no such thing exists. The best I can do is to tell you what I think those anomalies really are, based on certain inferences and assumptions. This first map simply shows that there is an extreme anomaly of warm air over much of the entire Arctic Ocean right now, with the largest extreme coding to about 16-17C. Note that a tiny patch of the ocean just off the upper edge of the warmest patch, shows up in near-white, making it an exception with almost no anomaly.

The next map shows what the actual temperatures are, as a daily average. Focus on the arrowhead type of image arrangement that starts around the Bering Strait and is aimed at the North Pole. Its temperature starts at around -10C and then drops another 5 degrees or so as it passes the pole. The little patch without much of an anomaly that I mentioned above, here colored in bright magenta, shows up at pretty close to -30C. I think that figure is a fair representation of what this entire ocean area would call normal at this particular time of the year.
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And finally, the water vapor readings, where you can make out the exact outline of that same arrowhead shape by again getting up close to the screen. In this case, to get the readings properly, start with the darkest image, just above the arrowhead, where the temperature is -30, as noted above. That represents one kilogram (or less) of H2O per square meter to the top of the atmosphere. Then you should see separations into lighter shades, one kg each, out to a patch of 5kg near the Bering Strait. That tells us the vapor level has doubled twice within this one fairly small region, with each double being capable of adding 8 and maybe 10 degrees of warmth to surface temperatures, as actually observed in the coding.

Since we do have two poles, and their seasonality is so similar right now, and we are already in the mood, let’s go ahead with a quicker analysis of the other one, starting with observations of a warm anomaly that covers about half of the continent. While not as extreme, the air temperatures do go up by 7 or 8C in places; meanwhile, on the other side of the continent there are a couple of large spots showing declines of 10C or more, but not of much importance for the present discussion.

In this case, as shown below, the warm extremes, which are at high altitudes, appear to have an actual average temperature of around -35 C. Closer to the center of the continent, at roughly similar altitudes, temperatures are now running at about -50, which happens to be within one or two degrees of normal for this altitude and this time of year.

Now I would like to make some valid water vapor readings in order to find connections, except that the information desired is not available, anywhere. Once a reading drops below one kilogram no further distinction is reported, which is too bad because water vapor has been known to drop all the way down to about 15 grams when temperatures are at their record coldest for the continent, or at around -89C. For comparison, the border surrounding the entire area where vapor is less than 1 kg is regularly reported to have a uniform temperature of about -30C. You can see it being so today on the above chart as a ring of bright magenta coloration. The implication is that from -30C all the way down to -90C, a difference of 60 degrees, all of the temperature changes that take place at any time happen in the presence of water vapor variations that stay within a range of 15 and 1000 grams, or less than the under-one kilogram color code. Here is something interesting: Mathematically, if you start from a low of 15 and double the amount of vapor six consecutive times you should come up with an answer just shy of 1000. At 10C per double that kind of run would create a total of 60 degrees of additional temperature warmth. Is that all just a coincidence—or is there a better explanation for what goes on, kind of hidden away, in the Earth’s most extreme location?

Carl

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