These are heady days for climate watchers. The NH is supposed to be past the peak of summer heating for the year, usually in mid-July, but that is not stopping some dramatic new developments from happening. I have lots of images to show, partly with an intent of having them in hand for making comparisons with the same set later this month. I’ll start off with a special close-up from the Aegean Sea area, recorded by satellite on August 2. The scale at the bottom indicates widespread incidents of high temperatures running as high as 50C (122F), and these were probably not always their maximums for the day. This is not Death Valley, it’s just a piece of Europe:
Now we’ll switch to a global map of current maximums, which has all of the usual suspects (from recent letters) plus one feature I wasn’t expecting. It’s an area to the east of the Caspian Sea, about the same in size as the US Midwestern states, and at the same latitude, where highs for today are revealed in the low 40s and up to 45C (113F):
On the anomaly map those figures convert to a full 10C (18F) in some spots on the north end. What is even more special on this map is the even larger area of greater anomalies in northern Russia, which run as high as 15-16C in places. While not so terribly hot, that kind of anomaly can do a great deal of damage, as wildfires for example, if it continues for long, which we will want to watch for in the weeks ahead:
Be sure to look at the numbers immediately above these words. They have been extraordinarily consistent at similarly low levels for quite some time. Bear in mind that the NH as a whole is being cooled over large areas by major assemblies of rain clouds, for which the presence of heavy doses of precipitable water (PW) is a necessity in supplying of materials. We can see rain clouds all over this map, but not in those places in the NH where we find the big warm temperature anomalies:
The PW map always needs to be studied for guidance. When concentrations are well above normal we may get rain clouds—or we may not. I wish I knew the reason. It makes a huge difference for surface temperatures, owing to the strength of albedo and certain other effects, especially during the warmest months. Also, on this image you may be able to pick out the movement of PW concentrations that are apparently originating from sources that inhabit central Europe and eastern Asia. These concentrations seem to be fortifying other movements of PW that originate from more distant and regular sources we know of, located in waters along the borders of the tropical belt:
I find these new and unexpected sources fascinating because they must be coming from inland seas or landlocked gulf waters where evaporation rates turn on and off on a seasonal basis. Right now they are decidedly “on” because surface water temperatures at or above 25C are warm enough to deliver concentrated vapor streams high into the upper atmosphere. We can see on this map how such temperatures are now in place, and could possibly still be trending higher, The Mediterranean Sea is a real giant, and the one we most want to be watching:
Carl