In today’s post I want to look at the longer term briefly and show you what the models are showing as of June 21.

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Unsurprisingly, there is already a fight and contradiction.

Here’s the CFSv2 for November and December. Note the WARMTH. Uh oh!

While the strong easterly QBO, caused by a strong solar flux (solar cycle max), likely caused our warm winter last year, the solar cycle has now peaked (back in Feb) and is heading down. Projections show a moderate solar flux and more easterly QBO next winter. This suggests a greater chance at seeing not just north Pacific blocking which helped support a cold North America winter last year but we’ve a better chance at seeing north Atlantic blocking with full scale sudden stratospheric warming events more likely.

Here’s the latest solar cycle chart.

The question I’m asking is this, will the solar cycle dip off the max, albeit a weak max, be enough for us here in western Europe to see a colder winter.

The thing is, we’re coming off a weaker max than with cycle 23, does that make a difference? Also, we’ve seen some rather big volcanic eruptions of late over the equatorial region and when Pinatubo blew back in 1991, we saw some rather cold winters following.

Pinatubo in ’91

Last month

Both of the above eruptions were in the tropics!

While the CFSv2 shows a warm December, both January and February isn’t available yet but I want to show you the projected water temps for December.

The warm water over the central Pacific suggests a weak/moderate El Nino and with that warmth being in the central and not eastern Pacific, this would be a positive to a cold Western Europe winter.

As well as the warm water in the central Pacific, look at the North Atlantic and the tripole of warm-cold-warm. This, along with the higher volcanic activity over the equator and reduction in solar activity suggests more N Atlantic blocking which would lead to colder air flows into Western Europe from the arctic and Siberia.

Check out the Jamstec SST’s for the entire 2014-15 winter. Classic N Atlantic tripole and modoki style El Nino.

Here’s the latest land temperatures.

There are some fairly strong similarity in both of the above charts to winter 2009-10 and both sides of the Atlantic know what kind of winter we got back then.

After last year’s Europe bust (got US right though!), I use caution. The CFSv2 continuously showed warm for much of Europe last winter and I ignored this for other signals. While I don’t buy the initial warm December simply because of the fact it’s still 6 months out, I can’t completely dismiss it either but this, like all other models will chance, perhaps flipping back and forth but there are signs which contradict this warm scenario the model currently shows.

Will have more winter ideas as we press forward.

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