Weather For The Past Month – Observed temperatures over the past month have been quite cold in basically the entire West – among the coldest such periods in the last 40 years, in fact, across a fairly wide region including parts of California. (climatetoolbox.org)
This is the first time I’ve been able to say this in quite some time: the past 30 days have been a remarkably cool to cold spell across basically the entire American West, including California. In fact, in some places, the past 30 days or so have been among the coldest such mid-October to mid-November periods in the past 40 years! (We’ve become so used to recording heat in this part of the world that any widespread, sustained period of unusually cold weather feels all the more remarkable.) These unusually cool temperatures coincided with a relatively active weather regime for most of the period. , with healthy early season snowpacks in many mountain regions across the West.
Weather For The Past Month
Total precipitation over the past 60 days in California exhibited a mild dipole pattern: slightly below average precipitation in northern CA, near average precipitation in central CA, and slightly above average precipitation in southern CA. This is pretty much the opposite of the space track one might normally expect during a La Nina, but I strongly believe that this dipole will look very different in a few months (read more in the sections below). For now, though, basically all of California has at least seen significant precipitation so far this season.
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Animation of the EPS-projected 500mb height anomaly pattern suggests a progression from a strong west coast ridge around Thanksgiving to a weak trough by early December – an indication of a wide range of possible outcomes for the Day 10+ period.
The weather this Thanksgiving week will be, frankly, pretty awesome across most or all of California: hot and dry, with temperatures at lower elevations into the 60s in NorCal and possibly even into the low 80s in SoCal. Things look good enough for travel, outdoor gatherings and the like.
The only concern will be the potential for Santa Ana winds in SoCal, which could become quite strong and gusty at times in the usual areas – leading to high and possibly even locally critical fire weather conditions (exact time window TBD). Although all of California has received widespread soaking rainfall over the past two months, the recent drier pattern in SoCal under repeated low humidity/high wind conditions has dried fuels south just enough to potentially support substantial fire growth under Santa Ana wind conditions. So while fire weather risk probably won’t be extreme, it will certainly be elevated in SoCal (but probably not in any meaningful sense anywhere else in the state, where vegetation remains fairly wet and greening is well underway now).
Multi-model ensembles show relatively dry conditions over California for the next week or so, but with increasing chances for rain and mountain snow starting around December 1st.
Prairie Pest Monitoring Network Blog: Weather Synopsis (august 22, 2019; Wk 20)
The good news? A return to more seasonal wetter and cooler conditions may happen sooner rather than later. For some time there have been hints of a possible shift back to a more active pattern in California around early December. While it certainly doesn’t seem dramatic at the moment, multi-model ensembles continue to suggest a reasonable shot at more rain and mountain snowfall again around December 1st.
The hard part? It will all depend on the exact position of the northeast Pacific ridge axis (sound familiar? Read more below.). If it’s too far east, we’ll continue to see more mostly/completely dry inside skates-with cool temperatures, but little rain/snow and possibly offshore wind events. If it’s far enough west, CA could see another round of cold “outside sliders” – offshore low pressure systems that plunge south just off the coast but still retain just enough moisture to deliver healthy mountain snowfall and rain elsewhere. The ensembles are, at the moment, somewhat divided on which scenario will win for early December. So, for now, I’m pretty optimistic that California will get wet again in early December—but there’s certainly no indication of blockbuster storms at the moment.
The NMME and IMME (shown here) continue to show fairly high confidence in drier than average conditions during the peak of the wet season across most of California and the Lower Colorado Basin. (NOAA CPC)
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Long story short: La Niña is still rocking in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean, and the tropical Western Pacific is still really warm. This is a pattern that, as discussed in many previous posts, favors the persistence of a Northeast Pacific ridge during winter – and this winter is unlikely to be an exception. The exact placement of that ridge axis dictates whether California ends up warm and dry near the central ridge axis, or cool and relatively wet just far enough east of the ridge axis to see frequent cold storms plunge south from the Gulf of Alaska and western Canada. Right now, the seasonal models continue to suggest that the ridge is likely to set up in a position that keeps most or all of California — along with much of the Lower Colorado River basin — drier than average during the Dec-Mara peak of the rainy season. . season, and into the spring after. This is true of both the US and international seasonal model series at present (including the ECMWF), so there is relatively higher confidence that this outcome will materialize (despite a fairly decent start to the season through mid-November in many of the same areas ). So I don’t expect recent activity to be predictive of future conditions this winter across California, probably.
Annual 2022 National Climate Report
And, for a few reasons, I’m willing to entertain some preliminary discussion about what might happen after this winter/spring: I think there’s a pretty good chance that El Niño will make a long-awaited return in 2023. First, from a basic theoretical/physical perspective : the Pacific Ocean system has spent an awful lot of time in a permanent La Niña state over the past decade (including 3 consecutive La Niña years as of 2022 – a very rare event historically). A whole mass of anomalously warm water has been subducted into the ocean floor in the Western Pacific, and then some of that will reappear when the trade winds relax and that mass of water locks eastward (quite literally, actually: during La Niña, the Pacific Ocean surface slopes down from the west to the east, but that gradient relaxes or sometimes even levels out completely during El Niño). To the extent that ENSO (the El Niño-Southern Oscillation) can be viewed as a “spring oscillator” as a coupled ocean-atmosphere system, the spring has been pulled back far enough in one direction, and will then release.
And now there’s some dynamic model support for that, too: several leading global models predict the rapid emergence of El Niño during late spring and summer 2023. I’d even go out on a limb and say there’s probably a higher-than-usual chance of a moderate-to-strong El Niño event Niño by next fall (but that is, no doubt, a shaky limb). It’s still too early to discuss details or potential impacts—I’m just offering some informal thoughts here. But it also serves as a reminder that the very dry conditions that much of California has grown accustomed to in recent years won’t last forever.
Frozen flowers on a pond near Boulder, CO. Phenomena are relatively rare on fresh water bodies, although they are somewhat more common on salt sea ice in the Arctic. (Photos by Daniel Swain, November 20, 2022) pic.twitter.com/18bPy447lq— Daniel Swain (@Weather_West) November 21, 2022Madrid, December 3, 2019 – The year 2019 concludes a decade of exceptional global heat, retreating ice and record sea levels driven by greenhouse gases from human activities. Average temperatures for the five-year (2015-2019) and ten-year (2010-2019) periods will almost certainly be the highest on record. According to the World Meteorological Organization, 2019 is the second or third warmest year on record.
The WMO’s interim statement on the State of the Global Climate, says that the global average temperature in 2019 (January to October) was about 1.1 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial period.
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Concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere hit a record high of 407.8 parts per million in 2018 and continued to rise in 2019. CO
According to the report, sea level rise has accelerated since satellite measurements began in 1993 due to the melting of the ice sheet in Greenland and Antarctica.
The ocean, which acts as a buffer by absorbing heat and carbon dioxide, is paying a heavy price. Ocean heat is at record levels and widespread marine heat waves have occurred. Sea water is 26 percent more acidic than at the start of the industrial age. Essential marine ecosystems are being degraded.
The daily minimum of Arctic sea ice extent in September 2019 was the second lowest in the satellite record and October saw further record low extents. In Antarctica, 2019 saw record low ice extents in a few months.
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“If we don’t take urgent climate action now, then we are headed for an increase in temperature
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