There are new developments affecting the seasonal warming trend in the Arctic region that will be reported in today’s letter. The images you see can be compared with those in Monday’s letter, which are easily accessible on this website. The main focus today is not the Arctic region as a whole, which has cooled down some over the two days, but the portion of it that contains the Arctic Ocean. We want to keep an especially close eye on the ocean because of the ongoing trend of reductions in its summer season ice cover. Losses have not yet begun this year, but initial warming trends are here and do not look favorable. Here’s today’s anomaly map:
The most interesting development is that one large warm anomaly is now being formed because of the joining together of substantial PW infusions arriving from two sides of the globe, as we’ll next see. This would not happen without an exceptional breakdown of the regular set of jetstream barriers that normally hold back large-scale infusions. The infusion coming from western Asia via a roundabout route is still there, although slightly weaker. The second one, coming directly off the Pacific, is much more pronounced than before, and more deeply extended, such that the two are now head to head as they create one big anomaly. The only thing preventing a 100% warm anomaly for the ocean area is an infusion coming directly out of the top of Atlantic, which has the potential to be every bit as heavy as any others but is currently blocked off.
Behind the scene, something is going on that is really quite dramatic. We can view it in the form of a major rupturing of the blue zone on the high-altitude air pressure configuration map. Several small bits and pieces of the zone have already broken away. The main rupture now is the one in progress that cuts straight across the middle of the ocean, along a line adjacent to the pole itself. Compare today’s advanced features with those on Monday’s image. What remains of the original blue zone is still effective, but one must expect that its days are numbered, probably following a course of elimination similar to that of a year ago:
Jetstream wind formation is of central importance as a direct consequence of the ongoing air pressure configuration changes. You can have a field day studying these images if you take time to trace out the winds and even the bare isobars that appear as they follow the increasingly complicated borders of the blue and green zones in the above image. Every bit of wind on those pathways, including some too weak for displaying in color, can then be separately viewed within a context of effects they have on the movement of PW concentrations of all shapes and sizes in the preceding image :
The imagery and explanations provided by these letters offer what I believe to be a unique perspective on atmospheric processes that demonstrate an ability to cause considerable amplification of warming in the Arctic.
Carl