Chris's Corner - Ground Hog's Day Storm 2.0 - Winter Reboot?

Both. Wind block from the north and longwave radiation working it's magic.

Amazing outside.....except it sounds like it's raining.

First two is my yard, the other one is the southern exposure

I keep track of this pretty closely. I know Friv does as well. This is almost certainly noise. The planetary energy imbalance has now increased to +0.87 W/m2 with the ocean buffering most of the excess heat. In fact, the ocean took another 14 zetajoules of excess energy in 2021. The ocean can only buffer so much before the atmosphere and cryosphere are forced to equilibriate with it though.  

12z GEFS dosent look shabby

I didn't respond because I would never be able to say it nearly as eloquent as you.  It's definitely noise.  


2012 had a high extent max compared to years around it and as we all know the summer ice pack in 2012 almost no completely collapsed. 

Even Glenn on the 530 report said during the 6-10
Day outlook that there is a storm out there Wed/Thu next week that could be comparable to last weeks storm. With the caveat of “way out there” of course.

Jet across the lakes back building- euro backs it too much for us- and the digging wave in the SW. Looks quite similar

Laymen terms please? Are you saying the oceans as a global scale as a whole are warmer than they ever have been right now? The amount of energy in the warm oceans right now. I thought Chris shared a post from Ryan Maue mentioning how colder ocean temps are maybe leading to a record cyclone in terms of pressure. Sorry I'm an amateur to knowing what happens in the oceans. Other than some of the indexes, basic idea of La Nina and El Nino, this is all foreign language to me! Thanks!

00z gfs is a progressive wave with some post frontal winter weather. 00z ggem is a cutter.

Neither option is that appealing. At least they both have a storm at this range.


Edit:
00z gfs ensembles look a lot more interesting than the operational run, so that’s good.

robins! Now if i can just keep them from pecking at my screen windows to build their nests and if i can keep them from nesting in my dryer vent.

Thanks for always sharing the ensembles. 

I'll take #26. 12" in 6 hours would be fun...

The ocean from 0-2000 meters globally is warmer than it has been in at least 60 years. Some areas and layers have actually cooled though most notably the high North Atlantic just south of Greenland. This is likely due to a decline in the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) which is a mechanism that transports heat from the low North Atlantic to the high North Atlantic.

The Earth Energy Imbalance (EEI) is the net of the outgoing longwave radiation and incoming shortwave radiation at the top of atmosphere (TOA). A positive value means the system is gaining heat/energy. A negative value means the system is losing heat/energy. An EEI of 0.87 W/m2 over one year is 0.87 W/m2 * 510e12 m2 * 365.24 d * 24 h/d * 3600 s/h = 14 zetajoules.

The energy is stored in 4 primary reservoirs: ocean, land, air, and cryosphere. The excess energy from a positive EEI is taken up by all 4 reservoirs. But the stored energy also moves from one reservoir to another. For example, El Nino increases the transfer from ocean to air while La Nina decreases it. That's why the air warms during an El Nino and cools during a La Nina. It's also why the rate of energy uptake in the ocean declines during El Nino and increases during La Nina.

There are obviously several mechanisms that modulate the transfer of energy to/from the cryosphere as well. The cryosphere can be subdivided into sea-ice and land-ice. Sea-ice can be subdivided into NH and SH. There can be extended periods (decades) where the net energy transfer from the NH sea ice is zero or even negative (more freezing than melting) even though all of the other reservoirs have net energy gains. Eventually though the imbalance gets big enough that NH sea ice is forced to start taking on energy/heat again (more melting than freezing) to bring it into an equilibrium with the other reservoirs. Arctic sea ice will continue melting at some point. It might be 2030 or it might begin again this year. Either way it will continue to melt and decline eventually. BTW...as of Feb. 8th Antarctic sea ice in the SH is at its lowest extent for this date in the satellite era. And globally sea ice is at it's 2nd lowest area just a bit above 2017.

For point of comparison 14 ZJ is enough to melt all of the Arctic sea ice with some left to spare or to raise the temperature of the atmosphere by 2.8 C. But because of the huge amount of thermal inertia in the ocean it can only raise the temperature of the first 200 meters of the ocean by 0.05 C or the first 2000 meters by a measly 0.005 C. The ocean has a lot of buffering capacity and keeps the climate of Earth relatively stable. About 89% of the gained energy goes into the ocean with the land taking 6%, the cryosphere taking 4%, and the air taking 1%. The ocean's buffering capacity essentially bottlenecks the gain/loss rate of the other reservoirs because heat/energy transfer is modulated by the temperature differential of the reservoirs. If the ocean surface increases by only 0.05 C then the air temperature increase is essentially capped at around 0.05 C as well give or take short term perturbations.

I wasn't really tracking the Greenland cyclone so I can't comment on it too much unfortunately.

I'm probably not adding a whole lot of value here since you guys have already been discussing it, but the EPS and GEFS ensembles both have a strong signal for a weather maker next week. Both show troughing to our west and both show plenty of QPF in association with it. The bigger question is...will it be mostly rain or mostly snow?