PIOMAS on 31 January

As promised in the comments of my previous post, I am going to break down the difference between January 2015 and January 2016 in terms of region and thickness.

How is the Volume Pulse going?

Earlier this month I didn't have the time to look at January's PIOMAS data, and still don't really aim to cover PIOMAS in detail until April's data is out in early May. At that stage I will make my prediction for this year's SIPN. However I have been looking at how the volume pulse is going and thought I'd do a quick update on it.

Why is extent so low?

This post looks at why Northern Hemisphere (NH) sea ice extent is so low at present. A commenter Dreesen asked what I thought about it, and due to work pressures I hadn't looked at sea ice for weeks. The low sea ice is likely due to a combination of long term reduction due to global warming and weather in the North Atlantic. But temperatures in January were extreme, and I lack a convincing answer as to why.

(This post was largely written on Sunday but I've been too busy to do a final check and post until now.)

2015 Record Temperature

As you already know 2015 was the warmest year on record in the instrumental record, at an anomaly of 0.87degC this is a substantial new record. Anyway, for what it's worth, here are a few comments and graphs (late because I've been too busy at work).

How goes the Arctic Night?

Well, there's been more UK flooding, this time in Scotland, however I'm not going to get into the habit of covering every flood event, I've said all I can say at present in my my previous post. For this post I want to take a quick look at how the cold of the winter's 'Arctic night' is proceeding.

UK Rainfall: Loading the Dice

Using UK annual precipitation, the probability of a very wet year has increased, from 1/6 before 1990 to 3/6 after 1990.

In simple terms:

Before 1990 a very wet year had the same probability as that for rolling one dice for the number you picked, after 1990 three sides have the number you pick.

Anthropogenic Climate Change and the flooding in the North of England

I cannot really add much more than my recent comments on the Cumbria floods of early December, denying a role for AGW really isn't sound as I explain in that post. However it is an issue worthy of some comment.