The record #ridgepic.twitter.com/N191ZUfxmA— Stu Ostro (@StuOstro) February 22, 2018
The Day After Tomorrow is Today
Heat Dome on North American East Coast
Bitter Cold Across Europe and the UK
ME and NH set new record highs for the month of Feb yesterday.— NWS Gray (@NWSGray) February 22, 2018
In NH the old record was 73 at Nashua on 2/24/2017. The new preliminary record is 77 set at Manchester. #nhwx
In Maine the old record was 68 at Sanford on 2/22/1997. The new preliminary record is 77 at Wells. #mewxpic.twitter.com/CSdWX7g9Z3
Records were dropping on the third week of February 2018 amid what appears to be an unprecedented North American ridge of high pressure and all the heat that comes along with it.
Suffice it to say that temperatures have been downright hot for a lot of places across the eastern half of North America that are usually much, much colder. The most ridiculous record broken on February 20, 2018 was probably Pittsburgh’s all-time February warm temperature. In 1891, a big winter “heat wave” swept across the eastern United States. During that wave, a number of all-time records were set (including in the nation’s capital). On Tuesday, Pittsburgh broke that 127-year-old record when it climbed to 78° F (26°C).
ME and NH set new record highs for the month of Feb yesterday.— NWS Gray (@NWSGray) February 22, 2018
In NH the old record was 73 at Nashua on 2/24/2017. The new preliminary record is 77 set at Manchester. #nhwx
In Maine the old record was 68 at Sanford on 2/22/1997. The new preliminary record is 77 at Wells. #mewxpic.twitter.com/CSdWX7g9Z3
On Wednesday, Maine saw its first 70-degree high temperature in February. No where in Maine had it ever reached 70 in February until yesterday when the city of Fryeburg broke that streak. Fitchburg, Mass., hit 80 degrees on Wednesday — the first time any climate station in Massachusetts reached 80 degrees in February.
This heat wave is breaking more records than just those at ground level. The heat is also significant in the upper levels of the atmosphere. It may even be unprecedented in modern record-keeping, though things get tricky when we start talking about extremes above our heads, higher in the atmosphere.
Here’s what we do know, though: Meteorologists (ourselves included) are stunned by the size and intensity of the high pressure over the Eastern part of the nation this week, which is inherently related to the warmth. The bigger the ridge, the hotter it gets.
“This is BANANAS,” tweeted Ryan Hanrahan, a meteorologist from NBC Connecticut. He was referring to data collected by weather balloon soundings over Long Island. It was indicating that this week’s ridge was the most intense not only for the month of February, but also for the months of December, January and March. It was also tied for the month of April.
“This is not normal,” Hanrahan wrote Tuesday night.
The same record-breaking data was collected by weather balloons all over the Northeast Tuesday evening, including DC, where it broke the 70-year record for December, January, February and March. Maps of the ridge shown in red, day-glow pink and white — because it was literally off the scale — look like someone dumped a can of paint across the Northeast. The most intense part of this ridge was out over the Atlantic, but even so it toppled records from New England to Virginia.
This heat wave is breaking more records than just those at ground level. The heat is also significant in the upper levels of the atmosphere. It may even be unprecedented in modern record-keeping, though things get tricky when we start talking about extremes above our heads, higher in the atmosphere.
Here’s what we do know, though: Meteorologists (ourselves included) are stunned by the size and intensity of the high pressure over the Eastern part of the nation this week, which is inherently related to the warmth. The bigger the ridge, the hotter it gets.
“This is BANANAS,” tweeted Ryan Hanrahan, a meteorologist from NBC Connecticut. He was referring to data collected by weather balloon soundings over Long Island. It was indicating that this week’s ridge was the most intense not only for the month of February, but also for the months of December, January and March. It was also tied for the month of April.
“This is not normal,” Hanrahan wrote Tuesday night.
The same record-breaking data was collected by weather balloons all over the Northeast Tuesday evening, including DC, where it broke the 70-year record for December, January, February and March. Maps of the ridge shown in red, day-glow pink and white — because it was literally off the scale — look like someone dumped a can of paint across the Northeast. The most intense part of this ridge was out over the Atlantic, but even so it toppled records from New England to Virginia.
The amount of moisture in the air is extreme, too. Summer-like precipitable water, which is how we measure the moisture in the atmosphere, is present across much of the eastern United States this week. In particular, Detroit and Alpena, Mich., set records for that moisture metric. From Michigan to Maine, the moisture in the air was about four times more than what’s normal for Feb. 20.
This week’s heat wave and wild weather are certainly a symptom of climate change, which — according to an overwhelming majority of climate scientists — is caused by our fossil fuel emissions. The intensity of these high pressure ridges has increased significantly since 1960. “Bananas” heat waves, even in the winter months, will become more common due to climate change.
A look at the loss of thicker (usually older) #Arctic sea ice in Octobers from 1979-2016 (PIOMAS, ice < 1.5 meters masked black) pic.twitter.com/BtHCwVUdKk— Zack Labe (@ZLabe) November 14, 2016
Arctic temperatures soar 45° above normal, flooded by extremely mild air on all sides
While the Eastern United States simmered in some of its warmest February weather ever recorded, the Arctic is also stewing in temperatures more than 45 degrees above normal. This latest huge temperature spike in the Arctic is another striking indicator of its rapidly transforming climate.
On Monday and Tuesday, the northernmost weather station in the world, Cape Morris Jesup at the northern tip of Greenland, experienced more than 24 hours of temperatures above freezing according to the Danish Meteorological Institute.
Long conveyor belt of moisture feeding the intense poleward intrusion event - characteristic of anomalous wintertime warming in the #Arctic— Zack Labe (@ZLabe) February 24, 2018
Graphic from @UWCIMSS at https://t.co/Qi01csSdlWpic.twitter.com/1wICqufojT
The Danish Meteorological Institute wrote that only twice before had it measured temperatures this high during February at this location, in 2011 and 2017. It is a mere 400 miles from the North Pole.
This thaw occurred as a pulse of extremely mild air shot through the Greenland Sea.
Warm air is spilling into the Arctic from all sides. On the opposite end of North America, abnormally mild air also poured over northern Alaska on Tuesday, where the temperature in Utqiaġvik, previously known as Barrow, soared to a record high of 31 degrees (minus-1 Celsius), 40 degrees (22 Celsius) above normal.
February? This is crazy. Retreat of sea ice in the Bering Sea continues - well below the previous record low in the satellite era. pic.twitter.com/9UoqZvaFr2— Zack Labe (@ZLabe) February 21, 2018
The lack of ice has real consequences for villages along the Bering Sea whose shores are normally protected from big storms and their giant waves. Without the ice as a buffer, waves can hammer the coastline and damage homes and buildings.
“Scary stuff, on many levels,” tweeted Rick Thoman, an Alaskan meteorologist.
Temperatures over the entire Arctic north of 80 degrees latitude have averaged about 10 degrees (6 Celsius) above normal since the beginning of the calendar year. These kinds of temperature anomalies in the Arctic have become commonplace in winter in the past few years. “[T]he *persistence* of the above average temperatures is quite striking,” tweeted Zack Labe, a PhD candidate in climate science at the University of California at Irvine.
As of Friday, the whole region had spiked more than 35 degrees (20 Celsius) above normal, which Labe called a “truly remarkable event” and the warmest in February ever recorded.
Some of the most extreme warmth of the year so far is forecast to flood the Arctic February 23-25, 2018, with a number of areas seeing temperatures 45 to 60 degrees (25 to 34 Celsius) above normal. The mercury at the North Pole could well rise above freezing.
This next batch of abnormally warm air is forecast to shoot the gap between Greenland and northern Europe through the Greenland and Barents seas. Similar circumstances occurred in December 2016, when the temperature at the North Pole last flirted with the melting point in the dark, dead of winter. Comparable jumps in temperature were documented in November 2016 and December 2015.
An analysis from Climate Central said these extreme winter warming events in the Arctic, once rare, could become commonplace if the planet continues warming. A study in the journal Nature published in 2016 found the decline of sea ice in the Arctic “is making it easier for weather systems to transport this heat polewards.”
Arctic sea ice was at its lowest extent on record this past January, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
“I have sailed boats through [the Arctic Sea] but never this time of year,” tweeted David Thoreson, an Arctic photographer. “It’s amazing to watch this unfold.”
The record-setting temperatures and lack of ice is exactly what scientists have projected over the Arctic for years and it’s fundamentally changing the landscape.
“Arctic shows no sign of returning to reliably frozen region of recent past decades,” NOAA concluded in its Arctic Report Card, published in December.
Correction: This post originally incorrectly identified Robert Rohde as a physicist at the University of California-Berkeley. Rhode completed his Ph.D. there but is presently employed at Berkeley Earth. The appropriate text was modified.
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Meanwhile:
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Europe braces for 'beast from the east' cold snap, potentially the most severe cold in decades.
A bone-chilling, frigid air mass will soon stretch from Ireland to Siberia, as a record-shattering weather pattern establishes itself across the North Atlantic Ocean. The cold will cause temperatures to plunge well below freezing in London, where snow is likely to fall during the next 1 to 2 weeks.