Sudden Stratospheric Warming (SSW)

[walterdnes]

Feb 27, 2009 3:16:11 GMT magellan said:

Now note the 600mb level:
tinyurl.com/aas2nj

"what goes up, must come down"

Hmmm, the URLs in my previous post seem to be update Thursday mornings too. I wonder if they have the same schedule as the SST plots at www.osdpd.noaa.gov/PSB/EPS/SST/climo.html i.e. Monday and Thursday mornings a bit after 9:00 AM EST (1400Z). The update is to Julian day-of-year (Feb 25). The noticable changes are...

• the 1mb level is starting to turn back up after overshooting record-low temps
  
• the 2 mb level is flattening out after overshooting record-low temps
  
• the 10 mb level is still falling rapidly towards the record-low line
  
• 30, 50, and 70 mb continue their liesurely descent
  

Hey, the graph at your URL now plots without needing Java (not to be confused with Javascript). Nice, because I don't allow that crud on my home computer.

The ChLT (Lower Troposphere) is the only one still above last year. It hasn't been below the previous year since Dec 10 and 11, when the 2008 temps were 0.004 and 0.002 C below 2007. Before that, we have to go back to November 20th.

Feb 27, 2009 3:16:11 GMT magellan said:

Does anyone care to venture what is happening?

David Archibald's forecast for the May UAH anomaly doesn't look as off-the-wall as it did a few weeks ago. See icecap.us/images/uploads/oftheMay2009UAHMSUGlobalTemperatureResult12thJanuary2009.pdf also available as a blog posting at www.warwickhughes.com/blog/?p=197 Here's the part where he really sticks his neck out...

Note how the SOI prior to end 2006 is mainly mildly negative (El Nino) but is noisy with sudden excursions into positive mode which presage cooling, then from mid 2007 the positive (La Nina) phase dominates causing tropical cooling and leads to the global cool period in early-mid 2008. The combination of the annual pattern of temperature change and the current La Nina enables a short term forecast of the UAH MSU result to be made.

The combination of a 0.3° response to the current La Nina and the usual 0.3° decline from January to May will result in a 0.6° decline to May 2009 to a result of -0.4° (0.4° below the long term average).

David Archibald
12th January, 2009

[jimcripwell]

I have done a little more on SSW. Let me run an idea up the flagpole, and see if anyone salutes it. I am particularly interested in comments from steve, socold and glc. I wrote to Roy Spencer. He told me that he agreed that any effect of SSW on world temperatures would be a one way street; SSW only cools the earth, unlike, for example, el nino/la nina. He said that so far as he was aware, no-one has calculated the radiative forcing of SSW, but that it was undoubtedly small.
Now the IPCC claims that no KNOWN phenomenon can account for the rise in global temperatures at the end of the 20th century, except increased levels of CO2. Let me propose another idea. Suppose that during the Maunder minimum, SSW was far more frequent, and covered a much larger area of the stratosphere; after all, no-one has any idea what causes SSW. SSW could, then, explain why temperatures were so cold during the MM. The rise in temperatures at the end of the 20th century could then be explained by a lack of SSW. Should SSW increase in frequency and extent in the coming years, the radiative forcing could become appreciable, and cause world temperatures to fall.
What, if anything, is wrong with this logic? Sometimes I like to float this sort of idea on Real Climate, and see what reaction I get, but SC24 is a more friendly environment. What say you, steve, socold and glc?

[nautonnier]

As they recently found out that there was a measurable effect from SSW in the muon count in detectors set up to count GCR, and that count has been measured for some time in various places in the globe.

wattsupwiththat.com/2009/01/22/correlation-demonstrated-bewteen-cosmic-rays-and-temperature-of-the-stratosphere/

Maybe it is possible to identify SSWs that occurred in the past from the muon count proxies and correlate them with temperatures.

Just an idea

[savethesharks]

Wow....I did not know there was a dedicated SSW thread on here. I have posted this elsewhere and to no avail....but I see its home is here.

Anyone care to take a stab at this? (And thanks for reading!)

Do you believe there is a link to the most recent epic SSW, and that gamma ray burst or whatever it was, that "shockwaved" across Earth’s magnetosphere on 21 January?

I am sure you all have seen this from the NASA website or Youtube, but I can watch it again and again as it is spectacular!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=anOk8neIFHg

At about the same time of that blast, a Sudden Stratospheric Warming event that had begun a few days earlier over the North Pole…all of the sudden seemed to AMPLIFY…and became one of the greatest events of its kind since records have been kept.

So the second part of the question is this: Could such a large pulse of energy across Space be (at least partially) the cause of such an epic SSW event?

It is really puzzling, too, when you look at the animation from the CPC site showing the temperature changes at the 10mb level, it shows that SSW event has passed and that indeed significant cooling is occurring and has for a long time.

www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/intraseasonal/temp10anim.shtml

But when you look at the vertical cross section of the polar vortex, you get this:

www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/daily_ao_index/hgt.shtml

(Is this thing malfunctioning? And if it is, then why has the CPC continue to let it run for over a month? Maybe they are understaffed?)

This chart when combined with the 10mb video above, do not jive at all.

If one were to believe the second one, the amount of RED since January 21 from about the 200 mb level on up, is rather unsettling.

So to recap...

QUESTION I: Is there any linkage (however small) to the massive magnetar "blast" event of January 21/22...and did that amplify and spike the the SSW event to historic proportions?

QUESTION II: Why is the Cross-section of the Polar Vortex continuing (for a month now) to show extreme deviations above normal from the 200 mb level on up....and if this is a malfunction, then WHY has the CPC allow this to continue to "broadcast" without fixing it?

Thanks.

Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA

[jimcripwell]

savethesharks. I do not have the expertise to respond to your interesting post. I just wonder if you are aware that there is a paper, in press, at Geophysical Research Letters, by Osprey et al entitled "Sudden stratospheric warmings seen in MINOS deep underground muon data". Until I have actually read this paper, I am loath to say anything about it. But, after you post, it makes it all the more important to see it as soon as possible.

[poitsplace]

Mar 1, 2009 0:11:44 GMT savethesharks said:

So to recap...

QUESTION I: Is there any linkage (however small) to the massive magnetar "blast" event of January 21/22...and did that amplify and spike the the SSW event to historic proportions?

Any burst so powerful that it could substantially warm the stratosphere during that short period of time would give off so much energy (in other wavelengths) that it would be visible during the day. ...And the distances involved mean we'll likely never even see the particles emitted during our lifetimes. Short answer, I'd tend to suspect it was a fluke. There are GRBs going off daily, BTW. I'm not saying it's not possible, I'm just saying I don't see how or why it would, given the relatively weak energy levels the earth receives.

QUESTION II: Why is the Cross-section of the Polar Vortex continuing (for a month now) to show extreme deviations above normal from the 200 mb level on up....and if this is a malfunction, then WHY has the CPC allow this to continue to "broadcast" without fixing it?

Well here's the thing...the ocean/wind currents have recently changed to their cooling mode. While we have LOTS of data for the most recent, ending part of the warm phase, we have pretty much no detailed information on the behavior of the atmosphere during the cooling phase.

Since we see the affect of these atmosphere/ocean current fluctuations going back quite a long way and since the patterns did change very recently...I tend to SUSPECT that it's just one of the side affects or just something that happens every so often anyway.

Again, not ruling out the GRB thing, it's just that the things on or near earth affect the weather patterns a lot more than the relatively weak GRB.

[nautonnier]

Just to add another thought.

The SSW occurs in the stratosphere over the winter pole of the planet. By definition this is the pole that is 'pointing' away from the sun and therefore, in some ways, can be thought to have less protection from the solar wind.

I think that there remains much to be discovered that may invalidate many shibboleths of modern science. All that is needed is minds that are open enough to accept these discoveries.

[savethesharks]

Thank you for your replies thoughtful posts.

If that Geopotential Height Anomaly Chart is to be believed....and i can not find anybody at the CPC who can explain it....then it indicates an historic, once-in-a-lifetime stratospheric warming event.

www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/daily_ao_index/hgt.shtml

Obviously all of the posts above show, to the contrary, significant cooling.

So which is right??

It must be malfunctioning....and perhaps that GRB or whatever it was Jan 21 caused the sensors that detect this image....to malfunction.

And if it is malfunctioning....then why does the CPC continue to allow it to broadcast faulty info for over a month now???

Regardless....there is some scientific research out there that attributes larger GRB's to affecting the weather on Earth (for example some correlate the extraordinarily intense GRB in 1998 to the same super El Nino of the same year).

And regardless of that....the current SSW event that ocurred...is NOW showing its effects.

First it made a stunning reversal of the polar vortex...and literally blew it apart for a while.

Then that warming in the stratosphere, like an expanding bubble, squeezed the tropopause down....squeezing colder air to the surface.

Remember the UK snowfalls in the first part of FEB?....and now that pattern has retrograded to the East Coast of the US.

And so...this recent epic and historic SSW may be linked to why our Youtube-roving taxpayer-funded public servant Dr. James Hansen and his international protest against Anthropogenic Global Warming in Washington DC may be met with FRESH SNOWCOVER AND BLUSTERY TEMPERATURE MAXIMA OF 28 DEGREES F. TOPS!

I broke out in PEALS of laughter when I realized that connection....especially in light of the fact that the normal maximum for this time of year is a full 25 degrees warmer. LOL

But I digress....

Somebody have an explanation for this apparently malfunctioning image??

www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/daily_ao_index/hgt.shtml

Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA

[poitsplace]

Mar 1, 2009 5:47:10 GMT savethesharks said:

Thank you for your replies thoughtful posts.

If that Geopotential Height Anomaly Chart is to be believed....and i can not find anybody at the CPC who can explain it....then it indicates an historic, once-in-a-lifetime stratospheric warming event.

Once in a lifetime? Since we don't have detailed atmospheric information for the cooling period from the 1940's to about 2007, we don't really have a good idea about anything that's supposed to happen during this timeframe. Seriously, we have a gaping hole in our knowledge base.

[jimcripwell]

poitsplace writes "Any burst so powerful that it could substantially warm the stratosphere during that short period of time would give off so much energy (in other wavelengths) that it would be visible during the day. ...And the distances involved mean we'll likely never even see the particles emitted during our lifetimes. Short answer, I'd tend to suspect it was a fluke. There are GRBs going off daily, BTW. I'm not saying it's not possible, I'm just saying I don't see how or why it would, given the relatively weak energy levels the earth receives."

I am way outside my expertise here; idle thoughts of an idle fellow. But it seems to me that there are two possibilities. One is, as is suggested here, the cosmic rays cause the SSW directly. The other is that cosmic rays do something that we do not understand, which causes the atmosphere to send heat into the stratosphere. Does this make sense at all?

[nautonnier]

Mar 1, 2009 12:29:18 GMT jimcripwell said:

poitsplace writes "Any burst so powerful that it could substantially warm the stratosphere during that short period of time would give off so much energy (in other wavelengths) that it would be visible during the day. ...And the distances involved mean we'll likely never even see the particles emitted during our lifetimes. Short answer, I'd tend to suspect it was a fluke. There are GRBs going off daily, BTW. I'm not saying it's not possible, I'm just saying I don't see how or why it would, given the relatively weak energy levels the earth receives."

I am way outside my expertise here; idle thoughts of an idle fellow. But it seems to me that there are two possibilities. One is, as is suggested here, the cosmic rays cause the SSW directly. The other is that cosmic rays do something that we do not understand, which causes the atmosphere to send heat into the stratosphere. Does this make sense at all?

Gamma Ray Burst - effects:

Ozone depletion leading to cooling and UV irradiation

www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/429799

Atmospheric temperature increase

This one is of the apocalyptic type - but if you downgrade the GRB that is being described - it would appear to have the affect on the atmosphere and the increase in muon count.

"Within moments of the arrival of the radiation from deep space, the atmospheric temperature will begin rising rapidly, wreaking havoc with global weather systems. "


"Cosmic rays are highly energetic particles travelling through space at almost the speed of light. They will slam into the atmosphere, depositing vast amounts of energy and creating swarms of destructive "daughter" particles.

These particles, called muons, will penetrate hundreds of metres into rocks so that few caves will offer protection"

Note: This is precisely what was measured - an increase in muon count - that matched the appearance of the SSW - so it does look like SSW could be caused by the GRB

news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/1975354.stm

So the heat _could_ come from the GCR impacts - and as it was all in the stratosphere could radiate away very rapidly. However, the kinetic energy that is required to disrupt the polar vortex must also come from these impacts - <idle thought> - some kind of almost explosive expansion with the sudden heating?</idle thought> . The result is to drive polar air in the troposphere a lot further south than normal - in this case it is snowing in South Carolina on March 1st ! It is difficult to say whether this is a net cooling effect - but it could be as the polar air coming south is also very dry allowing more IR to pass out to space as there is so much less water vapor.

[savethesharks]

Interesting posts. Damn interesting stuff.

I still can not get an answer from the CPC as to why this:

www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/daily_ao_index/hgt.shtml

Certainly if this chart were to be believed, then there would be significant cause to correlate the SSW with the GRB or whatever it was 21 Jan.

But this chart runs counter to other readings....so IS IT A MALFUNCTION??

And if it has been malfunctioning (in that case it will have been for over a month now) why has not the CDC pulled the dern thing until they could get it fixed??

[jimcripwell]

Sudden stratospheric warmings seen in MINOS deep underground muon data by Osprey et al, has just been published (7th March 2009). I am trying to get a copy, but it is not really Kosher to download a copy and put it on line But it takes a long time to get it through my library.