UW atmospheric scientists says "very, very unusual" arid heat wave in Pacific Northwest is not due to global warming and will not end soon

[Emily]

Thursday, July 2, 2015

Why is the Northwest so warm?

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Although the warmth is most excessive during the last few weeks, we have been in this torrid state for a long time...and last summer was very warm as well.
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What is actually going is an amplification of the upper level wave pattern. Now, drop that at a cocktail party and folks will be impressed. The upper level flow, where the jet stream is located, can undulate like a snake, with areas where it slithers northward (a ridge) and others where it projects southward (a trough). During the past year, we have been stuck in a startling persistent pattern with a ridge over the west and a trough over the east.

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And something is amplifying the warmth even more....the Pacific Ocean.

The ridging over the eastern Pacific and West Coast has resulted in warmer than normal waters, something demonstrated in a recent paper by Nick Bond (WA State Climatologist) and others. It seems like high pressure reduces winds and lessens the mixing of cooler water from below the surface. Thus, the eastern Pacific has been 3-6F warmer than normal, which warms the air reaching our region. To demonstrate this, here are the sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies (difference from normal) for the past month...you see the reds and orange colors off our coast? The is warm water. Nick Bond termed a colorful name for it: the BLOB.

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The bottom line is that there is no reason to expect that global warming would amplify the upper level wave pattern like this. In fact, the latest research, including some done by one of my graduate students, Matt Brewer, strongly suggests the opposite. Furthermore, a paper by Professor Dennis Hartmann of my department suggests the West Coast ridging can be traced to some warm water in the subtropics, associated with a mode of natural variability over the Pacific.

What we are going through IS very, very unusual. But just because is unusual does not mean humans are behind it.

Will we cool down soon? Probably not...

http://cliffmass.blogspot.com/

FYI - Mass DOES believe that global warming does exist and that anthropogenic sources are a factor.

http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle...thwart-cliff-massrsquo-climate-change-debate/

 

[Emily]

[h=1]El Nino plus 'the blob' may help Western drought[/h] Jeff DeLong, Reno Gazette-Journal 9:39 a.m. PDT August 11, 2015 There's El Nino, and then there's "the blob."
Both are phenomena associated with warm water in the Pacific that can separately impact weather. Now, the two combined are building hopes for a wet winter that could help pull the West out of protracted drought.
"This is a little bit of an unprecedented situation," said Kelly Redmond, deputy director of the Western Regional Climate Center in Reno. "It's like two sets of dice that influence the atmosphere. But do these sets of dice have a string connecting them?
... Back to the blob, which emerged off the coast of the Pacific Northwest late in 2013, according to Washington State climatologist Nick Bond.
"We started to notice a big, almost circular mass of water that just didn't cool off as much as it usually did, (and) by spring of 2014 it was warmer than we had ever seen it for that time of year," Bond said.
The mass of water was 1,000 miles long, 1,000 miles wide and 300 feet deep, with temperatures 2 to 7 degrees above normal. Bond dubbed it "the blob."
In 2014, more blobs emerged. There are now three of the things ? the original one off the Pacific Northwest, another off the coast of Southern California and Baja California, and a third in the Bering Sea.
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Blobs of warm ocean water have occurred in the Pacific before but these ones are unusual, he said.
"These blobs are some of the biggest ones we've seen in the last 50 years. They are really outstanding," Redmond said...

http://www.king5.com/story/weather/2015/08/11/el-nino-plus-blob-may-help-western-drought/31453603/

The article says there is no way to predict what will happen next.

 

[Emily]

http://www.ktoo.org/2016/03/06/warm-...bitat-changes/

Warm water Blob is prime suspect in marine mortality, habitat changes

By Matt Miller March 6, 2016
Scientists are increasingly alarmed about the potential for more species die-offs and other adverse effects on marine mammals and seabirds if the suspected cause, a huge anomaly of warm water in the northeast Pacific Ocean, persists into summer. The warm seawater may be a catalyst for a variety of ongoing ecological incidents along the West Coast, including a breakdown in the marine food web.
Biologists and ecologists reported on a distressing list of affected marine species at a recent two-day workshop at the University of Washington. The conference was a follow-up to a similar gathering held last May in La Jolla, California, that primarily featured climatologists. oceanographers and marine researchers...

 

[Emily]

http://www.king5.com/weather/revisi...ss-influence-on-washingtons-weather/292331900

[h=1]'Blob' bigger than ever, bringing cooler NW weather[/h] Glenn Farley, KING 11:57 AM. PDT August 10, 2016 SEATTLE ? It's been called "the blob," a huge pool of warmer than normal water in the North Pacific Ocean.
It was first recognized in late 2013 by Washington State Climatologist Nick Bond, who is an authority on the interaction between ocean temperatures and the atmosphere.
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Today, the blob covers a region, most of the North Pacific. Sea surface temperature maps from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration now show warm water all the way to Asia with large hot spots off Alaska, Russia, and near the Korean Peninsula. But the eastern north pacific is cooling off, with coastal waters off Washington, Oregon and much of California about a half degree Celsius cooler than normal.
"The original blob was more localized, but since then it's evolved," said Bond. "And it certainly isn't in the form that it was in a few years ago." ...

The land temperatures will be record-breaking HOT this weekend.