The massive warm anomaly in western Russia (and beyond) that I wrote about on May 7 is still there, and still has a really hot spot toward the north that has a reading about 20C above normal. I picked up the current view at this site: https://climatereanalyzer.org/wx/DailySummary/#t2anom. The view will probably be in places where it looks much the same for a few more days, so toggling back and forth to see how things that are related appear on other maps should effectively show similar sequences for awhile. Here is how the anomaly looks today (the part over the Arctic Ocean actually has a separate and unrelated source coming from the other hemisphere):
There are five other maps worth toggling to in order to get the full story about this anomaly. Today I think I will go all out and show you all but one of them, with commentary on how the pieces are related as the story unfolds. Start with the one most basic, which of course must be Precipitable Water because of its capacity for supplying large amounts of greenhouse energy on short notice. There is actually a double source of such supply today, adding enough water to create a total of 20kg near the top of the anomaly, to an area which otherwise might be carrying a normal supply of no more than 5kg from local sources. That amounts to two doubles, and having two doubles of H2O material overhead is typically worth 20C for additional warming of surface air if there are no offsetting factors to bring such a result down.
So where did all that water come from, since evaporation off the ground in that part of the world could not possibly be adequate? I would look for a conveniently located body of warm, tropical seawater with a clear sky above, permitting newborn vapors to rise well up into the atmosphere. The Arabian Sea is a good choice for one of the two main sources of supply that are observed, and sure enough it has both of the required qualities. I will just show the map with a clear sky, which could change at any time. The sea’s extra-warm surface water, viewable on its own separate map, is not going to be any cooler for many months so you can always check it out later.
So how was that newly-produced vapor transported, for the most part, from the Arabian Sea all the way to and past the Arctic Circle? You can easily track the main pathway from various effects seen on all three of the above images, but then you may still want to see if there are reasons for why this particular pathway was chosen, and why the primary stream has such a coherent shape once it has gotten past a mountainous region where signals are typically blurred. What we can find on the Jetstream map is clearly of help in that regard. The water stream, after emerging from the Arabian Sea and rising high aloft, has encountered a rather modest section of jetstream wind, viewed here mainly as two aligned chunks, that just happens to be going that way and is willing to accommodate hitchhikers. The observed overlap on the two maps could not be more perfect, providing high-quality evidence that streams of these two types, air and water, of totally different origin, are both to be found cruising on courses that exist in the same high level of the atmosphere. In this case two of the streams have accidentally combined in a way that provides for the swift and unimpeded conductance of a powerful amount of greenhouse energy to a remote place, resulting in the anomalous warming.
Was there any particular reason for why a singular section of jetstream wind happens to be right there, or why various other jet-like bursts, some greater and some not, are scattered about? (Before we search for an answer, do take note of the smallish jet in the form of a doughnut at the top of the above picture. It is totally unrelated to this story, but it has a counterpart that shows up in the next image, and is so unusual that it must have an interesting story of its own.) Anyway, to see how today’s more ordinary jet winds are laid out we’ll go to the 500hPa map of the region, where every piece of jetstream must have linkage to one of the color-coded edge lines, as explained in previous letters. In this situation the overall pressure pattern has formed a large bulge that allows plenty of room for high-flying water streams to roam about with nothing powerful to get in the way. I think the light green “finger” pointing toward the Caspian Sea is appropriately positioned to serve as a parent of the modest jet under review and seen as carrier of the water stream.
Carl