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High solar, warm ocean and westerly QBO favours wet, windy and often stormy neutral to +NAO winters for Western Europe. Since the intense and persistent cold of late winter 2008, 2009 and 2010, it’s turned warmer and wetter, largely thanks to the rise in solar cycle 24 off the minimum towards maximum. Britain’s coldest winters tend to coincide with solar minimums and weak to moderate El Ninos (2009-10), our warmest winters occur when solar cycles reach their maximum as was the case in 2013-14 which was significantly reflective of the unusually warm, wet winter of 2006-07 which interestingly occurred during a moderate El Nino a couple of years prior to the solar maximum.

Low solar favours high latitude blocking while high solar favours low pressure and a stronger polar vortex within the arctic with dominant Atlantic influence flooding the continent underneath.

Because we’re still middle ground of solar cycle 24’s decline and with a deep westerly QBO, blocking in the Atlantic is less likely even if Greenland blocking is likely. In other words a Greenland block DOESN’T mean the shut down of westerly into Europe. You must extend that block southward from Greenland down into the North Atlantic to have a better chance at reversing the upper winds allowing a colder flow from Russia towards the UK.

Strong westerly QBO favours mild winters.

Middle ground solar cycles on the whole tend to lean towards warm and wet rather with only brief cold spells, especially with a westerly QBO (above). Cycle 23 was down 25% from cycle 22, cycle 24 down over 30% from cycle 23 but despite this, I think we have a similar winter coming to 1996-97/1998-99, 2005-06, 2006-07, 2011-12. With the ENSO index neutral to weak La Nina, there is room of decent cold spells. Quieter cycles are typically longer and that has been the case.

It’s interesting when looking back to see the variation of winters with a similar solar state. About 1-3 years prior to a minimum you can get late December 1995 cold which drove the thermometer to -20C in Glasgow and -27C at Altnaharra or the warmth of 2006-07 and 2007-08. Incidentally the 1995-96 winter turned out uneventful on paper despite that record cold blast.

We also must watch for a significant GLOBAL temperature decline following a record strong El Nino and global warming. Tough to predict how fast the decline will be.

There’s a LONG way to go but these are my initial thoughts.

Latest Dec-Feb forecast off the Canadian.

See today’s video.

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Tags: europe winter 2016-17, uk winter, winter forecast 2016-17