North Atlantic Oscillation Tanks To Potentially Lowest June Value On Record!

Written by on June 5, 2012 in United Kingdom & Ireland with 0 Comments

We’ve seen a predominantly POSITIVE NAO throughout the past winter with a significant late December/early January warm spell on both sides of the Atlantic correlated well with what likely was the strongest + phase of the NAO. We saw another strong positive episode in March which brought the off-the-scale heat wave to North America and record warmth over Scotland also. Interestingly just a slight dip into negative territory in February saw Europe shiver in one of the worst cold blasts in years from Belgium to Russia.

We’ve seen a good correlation between warm and cool/unsettled spells depending upon whether the NAO has been positive or negative.

The NAO since going positive during the later 10 days of May, supporting a warm spurt over NW Europe, the flip back to negative has been dramatic, so much so that it may have tocuhed or even surpassed the lowest June value on record, going beyond -2.

The above NAO ensemble forecast from NOAA shows the current tanking but also has clear agreement of recovery back to at least neutral or even positive by June 16th. This means this unsettled/cool pattern will continue well into next week for both Northwest Europe and eastern North America as the NAO takes time to recovery from such depths. However, the point is, we will likely see that recovery and I feel strong about a return to high pressure and summer warmth for both the UK/Ireland and the rest of NW Europe as well as the eastern US.

This current 500mb Geopotential Height Anomaly shows the strong blocking over the pole with troughs dominating Western Europe, Eastern North America as well as the West, indicative of a strongly negative NAO. (Courtesy of Penn State- E-Wall)

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