We have nothing to do with it… Angela Fritz - Washington Post - Dec. 30, 2015 This is a video loop of the Meteosat-10 enhanced infrared imagery and the SEVIRI RGB air mass product (courtesy of the GOES-R Proving Ground). It shows the explosive cyclogenesis that occurred over the past few days in the NE Atlantic and includes the full life cycle of the intense hurricane force that recently passed through Iceland. A very strong low pressure system developed over the past couple of days in the North Atlantic. It deepened to a very intense central pressure of 928 mb at 0600 UTC 12/30/15, and is one of the strongest systems to have impacted the Atlantic in recorded history. The system rapidly intensified as it strengthened to a hurricane force low pressure system enroute to the NE Atlantic producing very high winds and seas. A powerful winter cyclone — the same storm that led to two tornado outbreaks in the United States and disastrous river flooding — has driven the North Pole to the freezing point this week, 50 degrees above average for this time of year. From Tuesday evening to Wednesday morning, a mind-boggling pressure drop was recorded in Iceland: 54 millibars in just 18 hours. This triples the criteria for “bomb” cyclogenesis, which meteorologists use to describe a rapidly intensifying mid-latitude storm. A “bomb” cyclone is defined as dropping one millibar per hour for 24 hours. NOAA’s Ocean Prediction Center said the storm’s minimum pressure dropped to 928 millibars around 1 a.m. Eastern time, which likely places it in the top five strongest storms on record in this region… As this storm churns north, it’s forcing warm air into the Arctic Circle. Over the North Sea, sustained winds from the south are blasting at 70 mph, and gusting to well above 100 mph, drawing heat from south to north… Temperatures in the Arctic Circle were hovering around 32 degrees on Wednesday morning, using data from the GFS model. On Wednesday morning, temperatures over a vast area around North Pole were somewhere between 30 and 35 degrees Fahrenheit, and for at least a brief moment, surpassed the 32-degree threshold at exactly 90 degrees North, according to data from the GFS forecast model… Freak storm pushes north Pole 50 degrees above normal
My first thought when reading the title (hey, no coffee), was that the earth had been shifted on it's axis, and hey: how'd I miss that? One thing I recall from Al Gore's movie is that environmental changes can happen precipitously, ie: status quo hangs on, hangs on, then crosses some threshold, and change comes fast and cataclysmic. Hope that ice holds!
That's crazy, especially since they are right in the middle of the period where the sun doesn't rise for 4 months.
Love the "driven the North Pole to the freezing point" line. Let's hope our readers forget the 50 degrees higher than normal that follows it.
Well I checked the three closest weather stations to the North Pole (Magnetic) not North Pole Alaska and everything is back to normal at a nice cool -15 to -22 degrees Fahrenheit as of no more than 90 minutes ago.
This claim (north pole above freezing) is based on the results of a computer model, not actual temperature measurements taken on location. So how do we know that this temperature rise actually occurred? Also how long of a time period are we looking at? It could be that this kind of thing has occured once every 10, 20, or 50 years over the past few centuries but hadn't been observed or modeled.
The hardest/best-est number for Global warming meaning good-est number Is probably sea level rise from meling land ice and increasing ocean temperature There are places that have been sea ports for 1000's of years and the ocean is "moving in" Of course you can always argue that the land is sinking
