Fickle Autumn: UK/W Europe Goes From Mild To Cold, Back To Mild Next Week

Written by on November 19, 2013 in Rest of Europe, United Kingdom & Ireland with 0 Comments

Well both GFS and ECMWF unsurprisingly have turned warmer for next week with the cold and trough shifting east as the NAO/AO look set to bounce back in a positive direction. This week was never going to hold.

We turn windy tomorrow as a deep low slides over top of Scotland’s north coast before dropping south over the North Sea. By late week, high pressure settles things down and it turns colder, especially at night.

In tonight’s post I want to look deeper at the late November, December and overall winter pattern.

Below is the GFS 850mb temp chart through the rest of this week and weekend and you can clearly see the cold exiting this weekend into next week. The ECMWF shows the same.

24 hrs

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48 hrs

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72 hrs

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120 hrs

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Back To Mild Next Week

The latest runs of both GFS and ECMWF have shifted to mild again for the UK next week with the NAO bouncing. That’s often the nature of these types of autumn season with the cold PDO/warm AMO and a neutral ENSO. Remember we’re still in the fickle transition period so don’t get too hung up on the fact we’re warming back up next week and beyond.

Check out the indexes.

nao_sprd2

ao_sprd2

CFSv2 500mb height anomalies support the return to positive AO/NAO.

wk1_wk2_20131118_z500

I believe we will go mild for a period of perhaps 2 even 3 weeks with a positive AO bundling the cold over the pole once again. A good thing for maximum cold during the heart of winter.

We saw this wild back and fourth back in November 2009 and remember that December remained mild until around the 15th when all of a sudden the entire hemispheric pattern flipped with the crash into the AO/NAO. Many great winter’s have seen a mild first half to December and this could be the case this time around.

Check out the similar water temperature profile now compared to this time back in 2009.

Now

anomnight_11_18_2013

2009

anomnight_11_19_2009

As also previously alluded to, the CFSv2 shows little blocking through December but that DOES NOT mean there won’t be any at all. I believe the model is suggesting that we see little blocking through the first half of the month but I strongly suspect a flip occurs at some point during the second half with the ocean-atmosphere feedback kicking in.

glbz700MonInd1

If I am on the right track and we have not exactly, but ‘similar’ to December 2009, then our SST chart should look something similar to this (below) around Christmas…

anomnight_12_24_2009

What does that mean? The NA tripole of warm-cold-warm is complete, allowing the perfect feedback for a stronger and more persistent Greenland blocking pattern for the heart of winter like we saw in 2009-10. Let’s not forget, the arctic sea ice and snow cover extent across the N hemisphere is also on par with 2009 which coincides nicely, however, the solar cycle isn’t so much as we’re close to a maximum, albeit a rather weak one. The weak, central Pacific based Nino also set up beautifully, will be interesting to see if see can warm the central Pacific some over the next month or so.

Another key difference is the warm NE Pacific, not cold like in 2009. So, yes, there are differences as well as similarities but we shall just have to wait and see.

The North Atlantic tripole and all that warm water over the North Pacific and Arctic should along with other things trigger a high latitude blocking pattern during December which takes us into a cold, locked down pattern for the heart of winter.

Here’s the same model for January and note the blocking with troughs over eastern North America and western Europe.

glbz700MonInd2

The CFS mirrors the CFSv2

cfs-3-12-2013

cfs-3-1-2014

Although there’s NO guarantees, there is however tremendous potential in this global setup.

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