The ongoing stratospheric warming

check out the 10-hpa zonal temp in the 90N-65N. click on 10mb.and low and behold a new record.it's goin off the graph.they may increase it ha ha now thats impressive.

negative 10-hpa zonal winds imminent folks.that means now a major warming.they should hold for a while bofore goin back positive to give fairly different surface conditions ie cold.ya see the beauty bout this is even tho this happens every year,its the fact that it rarely happens in jan and we,ve broken records that gives us great chance of mad cold weather.surface conditions do be naturally too warm when it has peaked mid feb and march previous years.we,re still in winter this time and thats what makes it oh the more beautiful.here's still hoping all goes well cause we're not by any means there yet.

great blog here that explains alot bout strat warming and whats happening now and how the warming makes us cold. www.keeneweather.blogspot.com/

morning all.im goin to post the strat temp charts here now.starting at the middle of the strat and working down .you'll see all temps in real time every day as the warming moves down right through to the bottom of the strat.notice how she cools again as the warming sinks.eh naturally i hear you say ha. so here goes ,

Good chart to highlight the warming moving down through the strat.could be a very long time before we see anything as severe as this strat warming.very glad to have learned so much from this.

STRATALERT TOKYO
STRATALERT TOKYO 28 JAN2009 0130 UTC30-HPA ANALYSIS 1200UTC 26 JAN1. COLD MINUS 75 45N 96W, COLD MINUS 81 53N 65E, WARM MINUS 24 75N 57W, WARM MINUS 34 53N 120E, LOW 224 63N 83E, LOW 229 60N 85W, HIGH 411 63N 172W. HIGH 400 51N 24W.2. CONDITIONS AT 30-HPA HEIGHT FIELD, THE POLAR VOLTEXES REMAINS TO BE SPLIT AND ARE LOCATED OVER WESTERN SIBERIA AND HUDSON BAY. COLD AIRS LIE OVER CENTRAL ASIA AND CENTRAL CANADA. WARM AIRS LIE OVER GREENLAND AND TO THE EAST OF LAKE BAIKAL. REGARDING ZONAL MEAN FIELD, EASTERLY WIND IS OBSERVED ABOVE 70-HPA OVER THE POLAR REGION. TEMPERATURE INCREASES POLEWARD FROM 60N ABOVE 100-HPA.3. STRATALERT EXISTS. MAJOR WARMING HAS CONTINUED AT 30-HPA. TEMPERATURE OVER THE POLAR REGION HAS INCREASED WITH MAXIMUM 53 DEGREES FROM 19 TO 26 JAN.REMARK: THE HEIGHT DATA SHOULD BE READ IN DECAMETERS ADDING 20 KILOMETERS.=AS YOU CAN SEE ALL STILL GOING GREAT:D

take note folks of second chart in grid especially cause the longer those winds remain below the zero line,the longer the easterly lasts.as you can see it projected to remain for a while.:D

BETTER UNDERSTANDING OF THE NAO THAT IS JUST ONE OF THE TELECONNECTIONS INVOLVED WITH HELPING STRAT WARMING MAKE US COLDER.
[FONT=verdana,arial]One of the most prominent teleconnection patterns in all seasons is the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) (Barnston and Livezey 1987). The NOA combines parts of the East-Atlantic and West Atlantic patterns originally identified by Wallace and Gutzler (1981) for the winter season. The NAO consists of a north-south dipole of anomalies, with one center located over Greenland and the other center of opposite sign spanning the central latitudes of the North Atlantic between 35°N and 40°N. The positive phase of the NAO reflects below-normal heights and pressure across the high latitudes of the North Atlantic and above-normal heights and pressure over the central North Atlantic, the eastern United States and western Europe. The negative phase reflects an opposite pattern of height and pressure anomalies over these regions. Both phases of the NAO are associated with basin-wide changes in the intensity and location of the North Atlantic jet stream and storm track, and in large-scale modulations of the normal patterns of zonal and meridional heat and moisture transport (Hurrell 1995), which in turn results in changes in temperature and precipitation patterns often extending from eastern North America to western and central Europe (Walker and Bliss 1932, van Loon and Rogers 1978, Rogers and van Loon 1979). [/FONT]
[FONT=verdana,arial]Strong positive phases of the NAO tend to be associated with above-averagel temperatures in the eastern United States and across northern Europe and below-average temperatures in Greenland and oftentimes across southern Europe and the Middle East. They are also associated with above-average precipitation over northern Europe and Scandinavia in winter, and below-average precipitation over southern and central Europe. Opposite patterns of temperature and precipitation anomalies are typically observed during strong negative phases of the NAO. During particularly prolonged periods dominated by one particular phase of the NAO, anomalous height and temperature patterns are also often seen extending well into central Russia and north-central Siberia. [/FONT]
[FONT=verdana,arial]The NAO exhibits considerable interseasonal and interannual variability, and prolonged periods (several months) of both positive and negative phases of the pattern are common. The wintertime NAO also exhibits significant multi-decadal variability (Hurrell 1995, Chelliah and Bell 2005). For example, the negative phase of the NAO dominated the circulation from the mid-1950's through the 1978/79 winter. During this approximately 24-year interval, there were four prominent periods of at least three years each in which the negative phase was dominant and the positive phase was notably absent. In fact, during the entire period the positive phase was observed in the seasonal mean only three times, and it never appeared in two consecutive years. [/FONT]
[FONT=verdana,arial]An abrupt transition to recurring positive phases of the NAO then occurred during the 1979/80 winter, with the atmosphere remaining locked into this mode through the 1994/95 winter season. During this 15-year interval, a substantial negative phase of the pattern appeared only twice, in the winters of 1984/85 and 1985/ 86. However, November 1995 - February 1996 (NDJF 95/96) was characterized by a return to the strong negative phase of the NAO. Halpert and Bell (1997; their section 3.3) recently documented the conditions accompanying this transition to the negative phase of the NAO.[/FONT]

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[FONT=verdana,arial,serif]HOME > Climate & Weather Linkage > Teleconnections > North Atlantic Oscillation > GFS Outlooks[/FONT] [FONT=verdana,arial,serif]The daily NAO indices are shown for the previous 120 days, and the GFS forecasts of the daily NAO index at selected lead times are appended onto the time series. The indices are standardized by standard deviation of the observed monthly NAO index from 1950-2000 interpolated to the day in question. A 3-day running mean is applied to the forecast time series.[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana,arial,serif][/FONT]
[FONT=verdana,arial,serif]The values at the upper left and right corner of each figure indicate the mean value of the NAO index and the correlation coefficients between the observation and the forecasts, respectively.[/FONT]

• [FONT=verdana,arial,serif]Time series of the difference between 15-day running mean values of the observation and the outlooks.[/FONT]

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INDICATION OF THE STRAT WARMING COMING INTO PLAY HERE WITH THIS FORECAST BLOCKING.HOPE IT PANS OUT.

[FONT=verdana,arial,serif]The series of maps below show the 500 hPa height field along with the corresponding anomalies (colored) from the 22 year climatology (1979-2000) for the current 00Z GFS forecast verifying at the indicated time. At the top of each panel the blocking index strength is shown in units of (m/deg lat).[/FONT]

forkassed wrote: »

Got this link from NW..animation making the graphs above a bit easier to vusualize whats happening.

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

excellent stuff.love where ya can see the ao begin in asia.mark my words this will be big.just need all factors to play ball with us and i feel they are cause our cold spell keeps gettin extended:D

I'VE TAKEN THIS FROM A POST ON NW BECAUSE IT BRILLIANTLY PUTS INTO WORDS WHAT HAS HAPPENED AND WHAT IS ABOUT TO:D

Look at the stratospher/troposphere/model sequence/surface response so far this winter-

Average conditions prevailed in the stratosphere to start the winter, and we witnessed an Asian mountain torque event that precipitated a couple of negative zonal anomalies to propogate to the troposphere. This lead to the blocked and cold period we witnessed through xmas, New Year and nearly the first third of January.

Now, at the same time as we were enjoying the first cold spell, we saw a distinct cooling in the stratosphere and it was no coincidence that towards the middle of January we saw the increase in westerly zonal winds, associated with that cooling, and this manifested itself in the return of the northern jet and a zonal pattern as we know for most of the rest of the month.

Now, while the zonal period was in full swing, we have witnessed another mountain event, a much larger one than the previous one. This is one of the main factors behind triggering the unprecedented MMW that has produced a reverse (easterly) switch in zonal winds in the stratopshere and these have been monitored (as per stratosphere thread) in terms of their propagation process towards the troposphere (and hence towards the time when the models start to pick up on the downwelling of the negative zonal winds in response to this) We must remember that this is a much larger scale feature than pre xmas, and we are talking about a reverse switch of polar westerly winds (which drives the low pressure and polar vortex) to a sustained easterly switch that rips up the polar vortex and kills off the energy of the zonal winds.

So this brings us up to the present day and the final burst of westerly zone winds which are the precursor 'switch' prior to the polar easterlies. The model disagreement, as GP suggests, is down to how they handle this pulse of energy before it dissipates. As he suggests, ECM is more superior in modelling the upper atmosphere and it has called each successive pattern correctly all this winter. Before the GFS. That includes the switch back to zonality earlier in January. On that occassion, GFS was hanging on to the blocking longer than ECM, although it is acknowledged that ECM was a day or two progressive with the return of the atlantic.

Similarly, I would suggest the same is true here and at worst the ECM is trying to bring in the high latitude blocking in rsponse to the MMW a day or two too soon - and merely briefly postphoning the ineveitable.

Sorry about the long post but I think this hopefully will demonstrate how the stratosphere is a very dominant driver in our winter patterns - especially from january onwards when the state of the stratosphere, cold or warm, in turns impacts on the strength of the polar westerlies, which in turn impacts as one of the main determinators on jet strength and the ability of blocking to hold. There are others, like the GlobalWind Oscillation which measures low pressure strength etc, but as even Met Office spokesmen have suggested, this event has already made its impact in terms of the pre emptive effect on the atmosphere. They have also suggested thats effects will be felt for some weeks to come. So it is fact not theory.

The publicity that this event has taken attention, shows that it is not only winter cold forum members who eshew the virtues of a warm stratosphere

redsunset wrote: »

great blog here that explains alot bout strat warming and whats happening now and how the warming makes us cold. www.keeneweather.blogspot.com/

THIS SITE I POSTED EARLIER NO LONGER EXPLAINS HOW THE STRAT WARMING FORMS ORIGINALLY BUT HAS BEEN UPDATED ON TO SHOW TEMP AND WINDS CHARTS SHOWING THEM SLOWING SINKING INTO TROPOSPHERE LAYER(THE PART WE LIVE IN).I SEE ITS SHOWING A TEMPORARILY BURST OF WESTERLY WIND AT THE MO.