October Status

New PIOMAS data is now out for October, I've no intention of continuing with monthly status posts, but will do so when there's something to say. So here's an October's status blog post, and at the end there's a link to my new sea ice spreadsheet.

The 2013 Sea Ice Rebound (that never was)

There was no sea ice rebound in 2013, what happened was variation due to weather, the process underway in the Arctic has not stopped. But the increased volume of 2013 could still be one of the most useful features of the post 2010 situation. In this post I use PIOMAS data both from the PIOMAS main volume series, and PIOMAS gridded data, also Cryosphere Today Area (CT Area) and NSIDC Extent.

European Precipitation and Sea Ice Loss

James Screen has released a lot of important papers on Arctic sea ice loss and the atmosphere, he's done it again, in "Influence of Arctic sea ice on European summer precipitation.", not paywalled.

I'm particularly excited about this because it goes some way to supporting something I've been going on about for two years now. I should point out at the outset - it is very unlikely that Dr Screen is aware of my persistent blogging on this subject!

Winter warming and sea ice thinning.

Arctic Amplification is the tendency of the Arctic region to warm more than the global average with Global Warming. While it is an effect initially seen in modelling studies it has been recently found to be emerging from natural variability. I have used PIOMAS gridded sea ice thickness data and NCEP/NCAR atmospheric temperature data to examine the connection between sea ice thinning and winter warming.

Mid Monthly Miscellenea: October.

The time has come, the Walrus said, to talk of many things...

Siberian and Greenland geopotential height anomalies

Early last year I wrote a post on Eurasian snow cover, link, I've revisited this as part of my continuing attempt to explain the Greenland centred summer pattern.

Francis/Vavrus and the slower jetstream.

I've previously mentioned the Francis/Vavrus paper linking mid latitude persistent weather to Arctic Amplification, copy here, but haven't properly blogged on it. However I have drawn the paper in as a possible factor in the behaviour of blocking activity in a previous post. But the conclusions drawn there are not central to that post, merely an aside.

I say this because I'm pretty sure that the Francis/Vavrus paper is wrong in doubt. EDIT - amended in light of reading Dr Francis's response in the WP - see comments.