Timothy Birdnow

I'ts cold and icy up yonder ways!

For the first time on record it did not get above freezing in the Arctic. Greenland had near record gains in ice. The pole is looking like we expect it to, not like a resort in the Bahamas.

The Warmiacs are going to have a hard time spinning this, but no doubt they will. I'm sure they'll say "it's cold because it's hot" as they always do.

D. Boss asks:

So daily mean is an average, therefore it has gotten above freezing during the day and then below freezing at night. At least day/night by the clock as the sun never sets in the summer up there.

And how do we reconcile Roy Spencer’s global average anomaly

figures from satellite data with this massive cooling of the Arctic and Greenland regions? I personally have never bought Spencer’s charts or data, but let’s suppose his data is correct for a global anomaly compared to past 30 years:

Does this mean that the heat transport mechanisms from the tropics to the poles has slowed down, making polar regions cooler and the rest warmer? Or has the polar region increased it’s radiation to space making it cooler while transport from tropics remains unchanged? Or am I being too simplistic?

What do you think?

I reply

Good question D. Boss. Here is what I think (for what it's worth; I'm not a scientist):

The tropical sea surface anomaly in the Atlantic was near zero, so that means certainly the Arctic wasn't getting a lot of warmer water. https://wmo.int/media/update/global-seasonal-climate-update-july-august-september-2026

"Meanwhile, wide-scale positive sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies continued to persist in the southern and northwest Atlantic Ocean. In the tropical Atlantic, SST anomalies in the North Tropical Atlantic (NTA) were near zero,"

Which means the warm water is getting in, but not staying warm.

This also displays a map showing a very cold spot where the Gulf Coast current comes into the Arctic Ocean.

It MAY be the current is reduced, which could explain the cold spot just east of Greenland, but that is more likely a result of the phase shift between La Nina and El Nino, which are probably coinciding with a shift in the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation from a positive to a negative phase. There is considerable evidence of that, but the phase shift to El Nino masks many of the signs so we can't say for sure.We've been in a warm phase for decades now and are due for a shift.

The AMO certainly impacts Indian Ocean temperatures, and the strength of El Nino. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00382-026-08208-x So it seems logical to me that if we are entering a phase shift of the AMO we would see just this sort of thing.

Hide Comments | Add Comment