Stratosphere Temperature Watch 2013/2014

[DELETED]

That was tongue in cheek, Ben, as it is far too early to even speculate! It was just that the ensemble warming towards the end of the month would fit in nicely with pre-winter thoughts.

fair enough. Just hope the runs dont change!!. looks great though thanks!

[feb1991blizzard]

That was tongue in cheek, Ben, as it is far too early to even speculate! It was just that the ensemble warming towards the end of the month would fit in nicely with pre-winter thoughts.

 

Where would you say we are in terms of your winter forecast, in terms of timing? bang on? and seeing the start of that warming at 10mb on the GFS, what type of warming would you say that has the hallmarks of and if offered now would you take a displacement SSW and just hope to roll a 6 in terms of what effect it has on the troposphere?

[Recretos]

Uhm... Funny enough, if I keep the same legend scales as on the previous graphics, the bias-corrected version of GEFS looks even better, with a weaker vortex and a bit stronger wave, as one would expect, and the warming only a degree weaker.  We might actually be onto something here, since the GFS and GEFS seem to actually agree this time.

 

 

 

 

 

And for those of you that like dealing with anomalies (personally I don't like dealing with anomalies at all, when it comes to the stratosphere):

 

 

Regards.

Edited January 10, 2014 by Recretos

[DELETED]

Uhm... Funny enough, if I keep the same legend scales as on the previous graphics, the bias-corrected version of GEFS looks even better, with a weaker vortex and a bit stronger wave, as one would expect, and the warming only a degree weaker.  We might actually be onto something here, since the GFS and GEFS seem to actually agree this time.

 

 

 

 

 

And for those of you that like dealing with anomalies (personally I don't like dealing with anomalies at all, when it comes to the stratosphere):

 

 

Regards.

This is amazing!. I dont want to jinx it! just hope these runs carry on!

[cooling climate]

Great posts again Recretos.

Having a look back through the ESRL strat mean composites and had a look at December

1981 as this upcoming warming has the GPH  profile of a Canadian warming.

Just saying.

[Cloud 10]

Nice representation of the current split in the vortex at 70hpa.

 

earth wind map 70hpa

 

Oh, what could have been!

[feb1991blizzard]

18z GFS tones down the warming at 10mb, lets hope the 18z ensemble mean posted kindly by recretos continues the trend from the 12z.

[karyo]

18z GFS tones down the warming at 10mb, lets hope the 18z ensemble mean posted kindly by recretos continues the trend from the 12z.

It looks fine to me at 30hpa with a nice displacement of the vortex 

 

Karyo

[feb1991blizzard]

It looks fine to me at 30hpa with a nice displacement of the vortex 

 

Karyo

 

The warming at 10mb still a bit better on the 12z and the vortex at 30mb more elongated too, not a massive difference admittedly.

Edited January 10, 2014 by feb1991blizzard

[feb1991blizzard]

18z 10mb temp.

 

 

12z 10mb temp.

 

 

 

12z 30mb height and temperature.

 

 

18z 30mb height and temp.

Edited January 10, 2014 by feb1991blizzard

[bluearmy]

The last forecast warming which didn't verify in the way it was modelled post T300 was notable for its lack of consistency, day to day and across runs. yes, the vortex proved too strong but had the model consistently showed the same warming having the same affect on the location and shape of the middle/upper vortex then I suspect we would have seen a better verification. The new warmings are just now showing up and it's good to see ens support. Lets hope for consistency on the damage they may do to the upper vortex in location and shape. That will give us confidence.

[Recretos]

18z GFS tones down the warming at 10mb, lets hope the 18z ensemble mean posted kindly by recretos continues the trend from the 12z.

 

Sorry I was at work (the night shift) so I couldn't post the 18z mean. But now I just got home, and I simply have to look at all the latest runs before I take a shower and eat my breakfast (or make that dinner ).

 

So. The 18z GEFS was basically the same as 12z. And 00z is pretty much similar. i wont include the bias-corrected version this time, because they are practically without a difference in the 00z run.

 

 

 

 

 

Regards.

 

Edit: I also made an animation of 10mb temperature from GEFS. 

Edited January 11, 2014 by Recretos

[AWD]

Looking like the vortex will soon be leaving the states and heading towards our part of the hemisphere;

Asian warming and an increase in wave 1 activity looks enough to re-jig the vortex more towards our side of the pole.

European heights look like steadily lowering too.

Wave 1 activity rising all the time;

Hints of a possible wave 2 hit in the long run maybe;

All in all it's looking like a game of wait and see where the vortex rests for now.

Those looking for Greenland height rises are going to need to be rather patient I feel. The shorter term prognostics look like deepening the vortex intensity there.

Edited January 11, 2014 by AWD

[bluearmy]

zonal winds taking a real battering in the middle and upper strat through the next 10 days. I wonder if our inability to build a decent scandi block is perhaps twofold. One could be the locale of the upper vortex in the vicinity, but perhaps the more relevant is the flushing down of the zonal winds into the lower strat and trop. I mentioned this some time ago but the models still wanted to amplify significantly. Berlin charts show how the negative flow above 60/70N which has been evident and large for a while now (neg -AO?) is unable to sustain as the blues are replaced by red hues. in the big picture of the last third of winter, it maybe a case of losing this battle and winning the war. Once these stronger winds have flushed through into the trop, there will be very little pressure from above. In my eyes, once we are past the 20/25th jan, I can see no reason for trop blocking patterns to be restricted by the strat. infact they could be influenced depending on what happens to the strat vortex re firther wave breaking.

[feb1991blizzard]

Sorry I was at work (the night shift) so I couldn't post the 18z mean. But now I just got home, and I simply have to look at all the latest runs before I take a shower and eat my breakfast (or make that dinner ).

 

So. The 18z GEFS was basically the same as 12z. And 00z is pretty much similar. i wont include the bias-corrected version this time, because they are practically without a difference in the 00z run.

 

 

 

 

 

Regards.

 

Edit: I also made an animation of 10mb temperature from GEFS. 

 

Sorry, I meant 12z in my earlier post but thanks very much for the 0z.

[karyo]

zonal winds taking a real battering in the middle and upper strat through the next 10 days. I wonder if our inability to build a decent scandi block is perhaps twofold. One could be the locale of the upper vortex in the vicinity, but perhaps the more relevant is the flushing down of the zonal winds into the lower strat and trop. I mentioned this some time ago but the models still wanted to amplify significantly. Berlin charts show how the negative flow above 60/70N which has been evident and large for a while now (neg -AO?) is unable to sustain as the blues are replaced by red hues. in the big picture of the last third of winter, it maybe a case of losing this battle and winning the war. Once these stronger winds have flushed through into the trop, there will be very little pressure from above. In my eyes, once we are past the 20/25th jan, I can see no reason for trop blocking patterns to be restricted by the strat. infact they could be influenced depending on what happens to the strat vortex re firther wave breaking.

For me winning the war means having a colder than average winter. As we are half way through and we have to wait possibly till February for our first cold spell, then I think the war is well and truly lost! Winning a February battle is all we can hope for now.

 

Karyo

[DELETED]

For me winning the war means having a colder than average winter. As we are half way through and we have to wait possibly till February for our first cold spell, then I think the war is well and truly lost! Winning a February battle is all we can hope for now.

 

Karyo

I agree but then again some of our best snowfalls have come in February. Just doesn't feel to clever this winter boo hoo 

[feb1991blizzard]

For me winning the war means having a colder than average winter. As we are half way through and we have to wait possibly till February for our first cold spell, then I think the war is well and truly lost! Winning a February battle is all we can hope for now.

 

Karyo

 

I disagree. winning the war is getting a massive convective easterly followed by frontal incursion from the east delivering for most of UK, 1 week of cracking snowfall and bitter cold will do for me, you could easily have a couple of MLH spells that orientate favourably (for cold but not snow) and have a significantly below average winter in terms of surface temps but also significantly below average for snow.

Edited January 11, 2014 by feb1991blizzard

[cooling climate]

Strongest warming yet now being forecasted at the 1mb level on the 06z run.

This does look to be showing up quite consistently now.

[DELETED]

Strongest warming yet now being forecasted at the 1mb level on the 06z run.

This does look to be showing up quite consistently now.

1mb temp 11.01,14.gif

Fingers and toes crossed!!! but its looking strong

[damianslaw]

Looking like the vortex will soon be leaving the states and heading towards our part of the hemisphere;

image.jpgimage.jpg

Asian warming and an increase in wave 1 activity looks enough to re-jig the vortex more towards our side of the pole.

European heights look like steadily lowering too.

Wave 1 activity rising all the time;

image.jpg

Hints of a possible wave 2 hit in the long run maybe;

image.jpg

All in all it's looking like a game of wait and see where the vortex rests for now.

Those looking for Greenland height rises are going to need to be rather patient I feel. The shorter term prognostics look like deepening the vortex intensity there.

 

 

This would tie in with the suggestion of heights to the NE receding away eastwards in response probably to a reenergised polar vortex moving towards Greenland. For medium term prospects i.e. as we move through the second half of January this isn't a good situation for UK snow and cold prospects, however, I'm encouraged by the prospects of wave breaking and strat warming perhaps helping to develop stronger heights to the west of the Greenland and in the vicinity of Canada and I highly doubt the polar vortex can develop the strength it has in recent weeks - February thus could see a scandi trough scenario and a negative west based NAO pattern with a much weaker diffuse Jetstream.

 

Can anyone shed light on why the polar vortex has been so cold and strong so far this winter... a number of people were calling for a very dry December, how wrong? Can't help but think the aluetian heights during November helped to lock and intensify the PV in situ over Canada - and this was all in response to the PDO and ENSO state. Anyone help with an explanation?

[Interitus]

 

re: Interitus post above thanks for the paper, I would like to think the UKMO do have something a little more advanced, apologies for the Glosea G4 abbreviation this morning meant G5, the joys of  half awake pre-coffee posts. From the discussion, it would appear the Glosea skill level ramps severely when strat leads the output and the evolving predictive ability whether AI, or intuitive programming, allows this model to see pre-cursor waves. Again speculative, never seen the thing just relaying my thoughts on what I have read. 24th you say...

 

 

Without seeing the details it's hard to comment, however as you know there is lots of research actively looking for SSW and precursor conditions and I've not seen any which says definitively 'yes, we can forecast them precisely at x-days beyond NWP forecasts'. It doesn't sound much different to the claims for the CFS and is most likely trends and probabilities.

 

Speaking of which the 25th was the earliest date from the 4th that could be achieved from that particular temperature profile before SSW in the satellite record. It is just a simple comparison with the temperature plume charts prior to SSW, for example here is the 30mb 90° temperature. Looking at the lower right corner, temperatures lower than the lowest rising trend of 28 SSW may be considered not impossible but probably unlikely.

 

 

Bearing in mind some of the forecast charts from the turn of the year showing a full on SSW by the 16th or 17th, the 50mb 80° temperature from the 1st suggested that a reversed 10mb zonal wind was unlikely before 23rd.

 

Temperatures have shown a slight increase since then, whether actual or partly through orientation with respect to the latitudes used, which makes this less applicable at the moment.

So for a bit of fun, here are some simple analogues based upon the geometrically closest data in the 30 days up to 08/01/14. This graph shows the 10mb zonal wind speed predicted by the closest 55-75° temperature at each of the levels 150mb, 100mb, 70mb, 50mb, 30mb and 10mb. Day 31 is 08/01 and the dark blue line is this year

 

 

Here is the 'ensemble' mean

 

 

Still looks like early February maybe.

[Catacol]

How do you know? Show some prove.

 

Not a very impressive response. Any proof would lie in the charts - to match your cast off response : here's another. Go look at them.

 

Chio is right I think that a warming at 1hPa is very hard to nail down in terms of trop response. But the further down you go, the closer the match seems to become. The similarity between charts at 100hPa and trop charts is quite marked most of the time: the idea that 30hPa is a good starting point for detecting a relationship between a mid strat warming and trop modelling would seem to be a call.

 

To be honest - if you think there is no direct relationship between the two then why are you bothering to post on a thread that is dedicated to this area of investigation?

Edited January 11, 2014 by Catacol_Highlander

[sebastiaan1973]

But you don't know for sure and I wonder why you think the way you do, just because I'm curious.

 

I haven't read any article which states clearly the relation between place of warming, e.g. 10hPa and the excact location of the high and low pressure in the troposphere. In my opinion the MJO is important in that way too. The similarity between charts at 100hPa and trop charts are caused by the tropsheric output of a particular run. So discussion where high pressure in the tropshere will come is highly speculative and has not a sound basis.

Edited January 11, 2014 by sebastiaan1973

[Ruben Amsterdam]

Because we had a discussion last week on the relation between Sun Spot number/solar activity and the occurence of SSWs in the QBO west phase, I've been playing around with the data presented at the FU Berlin site. I am not a meteorologist or anything comparable (I'm an ecologist) and the analysis below is extremely simplified.

 

I filtered for years with a WQBO phase and plotted mean February 30hpa temperatures against January average sun spot number. General linear model revealed a significant correlation (p=0.0029 and R2= 0.29) between Jan. sun spot numbers and 30hpa temperatures in February. The correlation coefficient is not particularly strong, but overall the result was significant.  

 

In the graph attached below, years with a Major Mid-Winter Warming in December are shown as circles, warmings in January are shown as squares and warmings in Febraury are shown in triangles.  Years with no major warmings are shown in plus signs. I think the recent peak in solar activity and sun spot number (currently at 138 and flux at 175) is a good thing.

 

Because I am not aware of the causal mechanism behind the relation I found by playing around in R (don't you just love that? ), these results should ofc. be taken wit a grain of salt. 

 

 

 

Cheers,

 

Ruben

Edited January 11, 2014 by Ruben Amsterdam