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APOD: Cold Weather Delayed over North America (2016 Nov 15)
Posted: Tue Nov 15, 2016 5:09 am
by APOD Robot
Cold Weather Delayed over North America
Explanation: Why is it so warm in northern North America? Usually during this time of year -- mid-November --
temperatures average as much as 30 degrees colder.
Europe is not seeing a similar warming.
One factor appears to be an unusually large and stable
high pressure region that has formed over
Canada, keeping
normally colder arctic air away. Although the fundamental cause of any weather pattern is typically complex, speculation holds that this persistent Canadian
anticyclonic region is related to warmer than average sea surface temperatures in the mid-Pacific -- an
El Niño -- operating last winter.
North Americans should enjoy it while it lasts, though. In the next week or two, cooler-than-average temperatures now being recorded in the mid-
Pacific -- a
La Niña -- might well begin to affect North American
wind and temperature patterns.
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Re: APOD: Cold Weather Delayed over North America (2016 Nov 15)
Posted: Tue Nov 15, 2016 5:55 am
by geckzilla
Unsurprisingly, sea ice in the arctic is also having a hard time recovering during this condition.
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
Re: APOD: Cold Weather Delayed over North America (2016 Nov 15)
Posted: Tue Nov 15, 2016 7:56 am
by Ann
Re: APOD: Cold Weather Delayed over North America (2016 Nov 15)
Posted: Tue Nov 15, 2016 5:31 pm
by Jim Armstrong
I am sure someone will quickly set me straight.
The text says: "Why is it so warm in northern North America? Usually during this time of year -- mid-November -- temperatures average as much as 30 degrees colder." C or F surprisingly not specified.
The graphic seems to me to show somewhere around 9F or 5C.
Re: APOD: Cold Weather Delayed over North America (2016 Nov 15)
Posted: Tue Nov 15, 2016 6:09 pm
by rstevenson
I agree, Jim, the wording doesn't seem to describe the graphic. I would have said that it was central North America that was warmer, by 5 to 15° (C), with the arctic being as much as 20° (C) warmer. I'd say central because it's clear there are parts of northern North America that are cooler rather than warmer.
By the way, I don't think °F should be used at all in scientific info or discussions, unless it's parenthesized or unless it's a duplicate scale as in the graphic. It should certainly never be used without saying it's °F, as it appears to be in the description above.
Rob
Re: APOD: Cold Weather Delayed over North America (2016 Nov 15)
Posted: Tue Nov 15, 2016 7:19 pm
by ta152h0
here we are, Nov 15 and it is nice and warm in the Pacific Northwest.Nice anyways.
Re: APOD: Cold Weather Delayed over North America (2016 Nov 15)
Posted: Tue Nov 15, 2016 10:34 pm
by Chris Peterson
ta152h0 wrote:here we are, Nov 15 and it is nice and warm in the Pacific Northwest.Nice anyways.
We hit 64°F here at 10,000 feet in Colorado. Lots of days in summer it's not that warm. Cold should hit us on Thursday- high just above freezing, lows in the low 20s. Maybe some snow. Then it's forecast to go back up again- not as hot as the last few days, but unseasonably warm.
Re: APOD: Cold Weather Delayed over North America (2016 Nov 15)
Posted: Tue Nov 15, 2016 10:50 pm
by heehaw
rstevenson wrote:
By the way, I don't think °F should be used at all in scientific info or discussions, unless ....
Rob
Years ago I phoned my elderly mother in Canada and was surprised when she said "it's so hot here, thirty degrees!" So change is possible! [On the other hand: there are two kinds of nations: those that use celsius, and those that have landed men on the Moon.]
Re: APOD: Cold Weather Delayed over North America (2016 Nov 15)
Posted: Tue Nov 15, 2016 10:54 pm
by MarkBour
Sorry, Ann, we seem to be hoarding all the warm air over on this side.
Seriously, 5 degrees C above normal in the northern arctic? I guess we can't blame facebook's arctic server farm, since it's in Lulea, Sweden.
Re: APOD: Cold Weather Delayed over North America (2016 Nov 15)
Posted: Wed Nov 16, 2016 12:09 am
by rstevenson
heehaw wrote:rstevenson wrote:
By the way, I don't think °F should be used at all in scientific info or discussions, unless ....
Rob
Years ago I phoned my elderly mother in Canada and was surprised when she said "it's so hot here, thirty degrees!" So change is possible! [On the other hand: there are two kinds of nations: those that use celsius, and those that have landed men on the Moon.]
Yeah, we Canajuns like to startle 'Mericans like that. But we're far from perfect about the whole SI meausrement thing. We're adept at using both systems, mostly because we have to be, being smack up against the world's largest F-nation. I think of outdoor temperatures in Celcius with no trouble, but because my thermostat was "Proudly made in the USA", our indoor temps are in °F. Similarly, I drive in kph, but make furniture in feet and inches. Our construction sheet goods are still 4' x 8', but have been made thinner to match SI standard sizes. The stores quote $/lb in the ads to make us think beef is cheap, but when you get to the store, the packages of hamburger are all shown in grams and are heavier than a pound in order to ramp the price up for profitability. Once in a while, just to irritate them, I hand them one of the packages and ask them to take some out until it's 1 pound in weight. They don't, but it's fun watching their faces change colour.
Rob
Re: APOD: Cold Weather Delayed over North America (2016 Nov 15)
Posted: Wed Nov 16, 2016 12:32 am
by jc1742
I'm disappointed that nobody has yet suggested that it's due to all the hot air being generated by the current American election.
Re: APOD: Cold Weather Delayed over North America (2016 Nov 15)
Posted: Wed Nov 16, 2016 12:41 am
by geckzilla
jc1742 wrote:I'm disappointed that nobody has yet suggested that it's due to all the hot air being generated by the current American election.
That would appear to be one of the forcing mechanisms.
Re: APOD: Cold Weather Delayed over North America (2016 Nov 15)
Posted: Wed Nov 16, 2016 12:29 pm
by Guest
Confused with the graphic on the right showing temperature colours. Seems to show Celcius and Farenheight with a common Zero point?
Re: APOD: Cold Weather Delayed over North America (2016 Nov 15)
Posted: Wed Nov 16, 2016 1:34 pm
by Chris Peterson
Guest wrote:Confused with the graphic on the right showing temperature colours. Seems to show Celcius and Farenheight with a common Zero point?
That's correct. The scales are not absolute temperatures, but temperature deviations from a norm. Zero means no deviation, which is always zero regardless of the actual units.
Re: APOD: Cold Weather Delayed over North America (2016 Nov 15)
Posted: Wed Nov 16, 2016 10:31 pm
by neufer
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2112958-80000-reindeer-have-starved-to-death-as-arctic-sea-ice-retreats/ wrote:
80,000 reindeer have starved to death as Arctic sea ice retreats
By Andy Coghlan, New Scientist, 16 November 2016
<<It’s not just polar bears that are suffering as Arctic sea ice retreats. Tens of thousands of reindeer in Arctic Russia starved to death in 2006 and 2013 because of unusual weather linked to global warming. The same conditions in the first half of November led to both famines, which killed 20,000 deer in 2006 and 61,000 in 2013.
Sea ice retreated and unseasonally warm temperatures contributed to heavy rains, which later froze the snow cover for months, cutting off the reindeer’s usual food supply of lichen and other vegetation. “
Reindeer are used to sporadic ice cover, and adult males can normally smash through ice around 2 centimetres thick,” says Bruce Forbes at the University of Lapland in Rovaniemi, Finland, who led the study. “
But in 2006 and 2013, the ice was several tens of centimetres thick.”
This September saw the second-lowest level of sea-ice cover on record in the Arctic, and there is fear of another famine.>>
