Storms that wreaked Christmas havoc across the US now supercharged, headed for the North Pole

 

 

 If you live on the East Coast, Christmas 2015 was one of the most bizarre on record. Temperatures were in the 60s and 70s across the Midwest and in the major coastal cities, with dozens of high temperature records broken across the United States. From December 21 – 28, at least 68 tornadoes were reported across 15 states, and the US collectively experienced more tornado deaths in December than in the entire rest of the year combined.

This is a dandelion in my front yard. Photo taken the evening of December 23, in Buffalo NY. Average temperature on that day is 28F.

The warm air that drove these events has moved on, moving over the Atlantic. As it shifts, it’s dragging more warm air from Spain and the Mediterranean northwards, creating one of the most massive North Atlantic storms on record. The image below shows the forecast temperature of roughly 33.8F (1C) at a time when the average temperature at the North Pole is -18F (-28C).



That huge surge of warmth hit the North Pole this morning, but the storm traveling behind it is expected to strike both Iceland and the already flooded areas of Northern England. Storm Frank is also expected to qualify as a “bomb cyclone” (a storm with a drop in pressure of 24mb or more within 24 hours).

Unprecedented warming

What makes this heat surge truly unusual is the total lack of sunlight at the North Pole. From late September to late March, the sun is completely below the horizon and the pole is shrouded in darkness. There’s a twilight period of approximately two weeks before the sun appears or disappears, but we’re deep in polar night right now, only days past the Winter Solstice.

According to Slate, winter temperatures have only crept above freezing during the Arctic winter once, and never between December and early April (winter begins when the sun falls below the horizon in late September).

If you’re familiar with air currents and weather patterns at all, you’re probably aware of the polar-night jet stream, which forms at 30,000 – 39,000 feet. These air currents shape weather in the northern and southern hemispheres; the East Coast deep freeze of 2014 was caused when the northern jet stream dipped much farther south than is historically normal, blanketing the eastern half of the United States in arctic air. This type of event has become more common in recent years; the jet stream’s course around the planet is wobbling more than it used to.

According to climate blogger Robert Scribbler, El Nino years typically reinforce the jet stream and would work to prevent this kind of storm from pushing warm water so deep into the North Atlantic, but that’s not the case this year. As always, the question of whether any single storm or event is “caused” by climate change is impossible to answer — but there’s no arguing that we’re seeing increasingly erratic winter weather. This week’s storm is just the latest example of how the old rules of what we considered “normal” increasingly do not apply.