>I’ll be honest with you, I am sick and tired of looking at low clouds, cold breezes and rain hitting my windshield. Unless you live in Cape Race, Newfoundland or Alaska’s Aleutians you don’t know just how depressing it can be to experience LITERALLY weeks of gloomy, cold damp days. Sure, in mid-winter it’s bad enough but since the commencement of July my wife and I have had to say goodbye to the BBQ. It has been remarkably cold for summer and this is becoming an ugly habbit when looking at recent summers. Sure we get cooler, wetter summer weather but this in my opinion is far worse than what is considered normal as we would more typically get perhaps a few days or at most 2 weeks of gloomy, wet, cool weather but then nice days or weeks in between. It’s like our weather is stuck on gloom..

ARE SUMMERS GETTING GLOOMIER? 2002, 2007, 2008 and 2009 a UK WASHOUT!

Well what I’ve noticed over recent years is the seemingly increased precipitation during summer across the eastern half of the United States. After the drought of 2002 in which I was in New Jersey and experienced hot, dry weather for my 2 week visit, cooler, wetter summers seem to have been the mainstay of the overall summertime atmospheric regime… Like the UK which have endured crazy wet, chilly summers and this makes me ask questions as 2002, 2007, 2008 and 2009 have all been shockingly wet. When arriving home from New Jersey in July 2002, my dad drove me up from Manchester to Scotland, only to find the city Center of Glasgow (Scotland’s largest city) was flooded and the water supply was contaminated.. Since then persistent flooding (wettest summer on record for England in 2007) has been occuring with the dramatic exception of 2003 and 2005 which were scorchers and record breakers in the all-time heat department. The Northeast US has not had a hot, dry summer since 2002, the UK has seen an increase in wet, cooler weather and this makes me wonder is this a signal of change?

The Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation has been locked in a warm mode since 1979 or thereabouts and a warmer North Atlantic brings us here in the UK warmer, wetter and stormier winters which has been very much the case the past 10 to 20 years, but signs are showing all over that the warm mode of the AMO is waning as cooling of the tropics is the first telltale signs of change in a dramatic scale and has been since the peak in 2005, a sharp drop off in tropical water temps in the Atlantic has been striking and although the waters have remained much above normal from the UK to Newfoundland all the way into the Arctic, this is also evidence of a waning warm cycle as greatest above-normal temperature anomalies spread outwards towards the surrounding continents and poles especially therfore reasonging the ice-melt max in September 2007, lagging from likely peak in AMO in 2005. As the Atlantic begins a transition, the heat heads north and south towards the poles therefore explaining why waters are still so abnormally warm around Britain (although a large cold pool has migrated over the summer from New England to Ireland) and why many think Global Warming is happening and winters don’t exist here anymore, afterall these oceanic cycles last half a life time! I believe the warm summers in the UK and a mix between drought and wet begins to wane and warm and wet, transitions to cool and wet and may be becoming wetter as oceans cooling could be releasing more water vapor as the AMO flips. A an end-game AMO also signals cooling and higher precipitation in eastern North America as well as western Europe with winters cooling off with more concentrated cooling processes inland and away from the ocean.

The Northeast US however I feel is more Pacific driven, Arctic cold and prevailing flow comes from the west and where the Atlantic comes into play is how much the warm waters near and along the coast moderate temperatures in winter and can increase humidity and depending upon the ENSO, precipitation in summertime. The Atlantic’s heat can effect precipitation or lack of but during these warm years of the AMO we have seen both wintertime versions of the Bermuda-Azores ridge keep the heat on well into fall or even mid-winter as well as create an increase in drought (2002). But as things begin to cool off, an increase in precipitation in summer is possibly occuring as well as the potential for a cooler Gulf/Western Atlantic weakening the winter Bermuda high! This weakening Southeast ridge and cooling of the actual ocean waters will allow from an intensifying Arctic high to weaken less as it drives into the Appalachain-Coastal Plain region of the East!

The Pacific may have started off the grand transition to a cooling planet with North America and South America experiencing the chill first. Europe’s interior may begin to see the chill as Arctic air masses expand as the Arctic’s se ice grows and with distance from the warm Atlantic and Meditereannean, major cold will start to grip places like St Petersburg and Moscow whilst fingers of these colder high’s will bring the chills back to the UK again with last years more sustained cold and against the grain of the past 15 years, may remain on the warm-wide until the waters in the Atlantic turn around to cold. Until then however, I can see where winters become colder and with each cold spell comes new lows not seen for many years. The winter-long or month long deep freeze will arrive again but that is likely 10-15 years away…

2008-2009

The major snows in October and February for London and the surprisingly amount and longivity of cold spells throughout Britain last winter may have been an early sign of change. I even think the cold Pacific may have been to blame as the dictation of building Arctic sea ice and the shut down in supply of El Nino warmed Pacific waters into the Arctic Ocean is rebuilding the magnitude and capabilities of truely bitter Arctic air production and this expanding and deeping of cold pools has set up shop in western and central Europe last winter. North America and Europe were very cold last winter whilst the warmth dominated the Asian subcontinent.

Does a Cold AMO mean cold, wet summers for Britain?

However, a waning or even turnaround to cold AMO does not nessesarily point to no heat or dry weather during summers in either Europe or eastern North America, in fact a cooler Atlantic may mean either 1 of 2 things, warmer, drier weather for the UK as high pressure dominates and rainfall slackens off or it maintains a cooler, wet bias as winter become, cold once again. The California fires can be in part a case of a colder Pacific. The Pacific Decadal Oscillation which turned cold but became increasingly colder in 2006 displays more drought in southern California, that coupled with vast amounts of new resodents, spells big trouble..

I strongly believe an end-game in the 25-30 year old warm AMO is increasing precipitation and floods in Great Britain and eastern North America as warmest waters push against the shores of surrounding continents and therefore added cloudcover is reducing summer temps, natures way of pulling down SST’s but feedback more cloud covered skies and therefore less solar radiation getting to the ocean surface to heat it up?? I also wonder if the Pacific cold mode is also working to help out the cool down of the Atlantic by drawing colder waters north finally and building the Arctic sea ice, therefore feeding to colder air masses in both summer and especially winter.

Over the past 10 years especially, the lack of Arctic air across the Northern hemisphere has forced warm winters in both North America and Europe, but expanding ice and therefore Arctic air, winters will and have started to show signs of the old man’s return, first off in North America (commencing in 2006 in western N.A) then across the heart of N.A. towards the east in 2007-08 and now this upcoming winter looks to be the eastern half of N.A., where waters are warm still in the Atlantic, they may be increasing rains and that’s a way of shutting things down. Great Britian is getting the Atlantic’s wrath with very windy, wet winters as very warm waters have been the mainstay in the past 10-15 years but what’s really caught my attention is not only the cooling of the tropics and reduction in tropical cyclone production but the dramatically cool May-June period in the western US and May-July period from the Plains to East Coast with much above normal precipitation, in part because of the cold PDO bringing colder Arctic and North American winters and slower ice melt means, slower warm up? Hudson Bay was still mostly frozen by the close of June with plenty of ice remaining into July! I put the lack of Arctic Ocean and Hudson Bay ice-melt down to a highly amplified pattern across North America. Northwest flow aloft blowing from Dawson or Yellowknife to Memphis transported unusually cold air that hovered over the still frozen north into the eastern half of North America bringing a cool overall summer, Winter’s dirty work that’s pre-planned summer ahead! It was the same in 2008. Where it was cold during winter (brutal Alaskan, central Canada winter in 07-08) brought an unusually chilly summer in 08. Where 08-09 was chilly to cold, it was then chilly to cold in summer 09. The Pacific took time to reflect it’s new mode that was swicthed in the late 90s with stronger signalling in late 2006 with the building cold over Alaska and western Canada.. Whilst El Nino will likely bring at least a normal to above normal winter from Fairbanks to Denver, I fear the East Coast may be in for a similar magnitude of cold that Midwest recieved in 2009, remember just how cold the Midwest and Ohio Valley got the morning of January 16, 2009? Remember that morning at the site of Big Black River, Maine?? That’s the type of cold that’s set to shiver a region from Detroit to Atlantic City..

More on this later..

Thanks for reading.
-Mark