The temperature anomaly map for the entire globe is full of interesting features and information today. The most troublesome is the upward bump in the numerical average for the entire Northern Hemisphere, +1.1C compared with an average day only three decades ago. Meanwhile the SH has been drifting in the opposite direction, sinking down a bit more today at minus 0.3. The current spread between these two is highly unusual. Part of the blame for the coolness in the south can be attributed to the way Pacific Ocean waters are upwelling in response to a pattern of La Nina trade wind strengthening from east to west.
Antarctica’s anomalies are very cold again on balance, just as they have been on most days for quite some time. This is of no concern in a region where temperatures are bouncing around between 40 and 70 below over a broad area that has little daylight. The Arctic, on the other hand, has had some kind of a heatwave going on with minimal interruption for much of the year, doing tremendous environmental damage. I have long thought that regular intrusions of abnormal amounts of water vapor at high altitudes overhead are mainly responsible, and have provided much documentary evidence of the effects in past letters. You can see the relationship at work again today, not just in the Arctic:
The Arctic does in fact have internal differences that are vapor-related. Notice the sharp contrast between vapor readings in northern Asia land areas and those in the West at the same latitude, and then compare their corresponding anomalies. Elsewhere, the entire continent of Asia, plus all of Europe, North Africa and Arabia exhibit relatively uncomfortable warm anomalies of +5 or more, offset by only a handful of minor cold anomalies. Such a quantitative imbalance is traditionally far from normal, all because of an imbalance in the amount of vapor movement. Only a few spots currently display PWat readings below 10kg, and they are all connected with the coolest anomaly readings. Notice too how Europe is covered by a shapely “umbrella” of super-high PWat readings up to 30kg that seem to be trapped in place for some reason (explained below) and is paying a high price in temperatures.
The general connection between warm anomalies and high PWat readings is evident in many other places. I see it in Alaska, in the Baffin Bay area, in central South America, in Australia, and also in effects on air temperatures from certain ocean surfaces. Keep in mind the fact that ocean waters normally do not hold the heat created by radiation energy inputs at their surface level the same way land does, and thus generally have weaker anomalies to show. There is one strange feature on these maps that leaves me baffled, and that is the warm anomaly appearing in the western half of the US in spite of quite low PWat indications. Compare this region to Mongolia, at about the same latitude and also largely elevated, where relationships having a similar PWat base look quite normal.
I can’t resist showing one more image, that of jetstream winds, just because of the perfect association between an umbrella-shaped leg of jet wind above Europe and the unusually high PWat readings on the other map, previously discussed, that fit so nicely under the umbrella. What better evidence could one hope to find showing the nature of what to expect when one of these totally disparate and unrelated high-altitude streams comes into direct physical contact with the other?
Carl