Arctic sea ice melt season usually lasts from March till September. After reaching the minimum extent in September, sea ice starts to grow back in October. But this year, the growth is much slower than last year, with almost no growth in some places.
Growth has obviously begun since mid-September, but the rate was rather weak and is not increasing with time, evident by the recent daily increase rate on the image below. At this point, the daily growth should slowly increase over time, but we can see the daily growth area is not increasing and has rather been almost decreasing over time.
Also looking at the raw temperatures, we can see the eastern Arctic ocean is actually in positive surface temperatures, which means a low to zero chance of freezing over at this point. In normal conditions, almost the entire Arctic ocean should be at or below the freezing point – 0°C (black color) by the end of October.
What about Winter 2020/2021? As we head towards winter, the connection/effect of the lack of sea ice is getting blurred or not so clear. There is a known effect on the jet stream, as we discussed. But when winter arrives, we have a lot of external factors that mask or reverse a potential sea ice effect.
The first factor is that by the time winter arrives, the Arctic sea ice is already regrown to a certain extent, not exposing so much (or none) open water. The second factor is the Stratospheric Polar Vortex. A strong polar vortex can influence the jet stream and potentially make it stronger, creating a more west-east flow and milder winter across North America and Europe.
But the strength of the polar vortex is also determined by the weather patterns, so here we have a very delicate feedback loop. The sea ice (or lack thereof) can influence the weather patterns, which affects the polar vortex, which then affects back at the jet stream and the weather patterns.
The third factor is the tropical ENSO region, with its developing La Nina phase. A La Nina has a very specific effect on the jet stream, which can override other potential effects from the sea ice. And it can also affect the polar vortex.
Hurricane Zeta hits Yucatan and moves towards Louisiana
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Hurricane Zeta slammed into the storm-weary Gulf Coast on Wednesday, pelting the New Orleans metro area with rain and howling winds that ripped apart buildings, knocked out power to thousands and threatened to push up to 9 feet of sea water inland in a region already pounded by multiple storms this year.
The storm killed at least one person, a 55-year-old man who a Louisiana coroner said was electrocuted by a downed power line in New Orleans, and officials said life-threatening conditions would last into Thursday.
St. Bernard Parish President Guy McInnis said emergency workers were doing their best to respond to reports of people in distress after their roofs were blown off.
“Guys, we received the brunt of Zeta, and Zeta gave us a good punch,” McInnis told WDSU-TV.
Roads were flooded near the coast, where forecasters said Zeta made landfall around Terrebone Bay near Cocodrie, an unincorporated fishing village at the end of a highway with few if any full-time residents and a marine laboratory where a building was inundated.
Streams of rainfall ran off roofs in New Orleans' famed French Quarter, signs outside bars and restaurants swayed back and forth in the wind and palm trees along Canal Street whipped furiously. Officials said a person was hospitalized with minor injuries after a structure collapsed, but further details weren’t available.
With much of the city in the dark and more than 200 trees reported down, New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell implored residents to stay home and let city officials assess the damage instead of going out and doing it themselves.
More than 875,000 customers were without electricity in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, including about 350,000 in metro New Orleans. Outages were mounting quickly as the storm moved northeastward across the Deep South.
Wow indeed a magnificent sight and you are right, it is quite extensive for this time of the year as official snowfall stats aren’t usually reported this early into the season, but numbers of up to 20cm (8 inches) were widely registered across the Austrian and Italian peaks, with some areas saying they had received 80+cm (nearing 3 feet) by Tuesday morning. In total, around 25 ski areas are already open in the Alps and Scandinavia, and the first ski areas have also opened in U.S. and Canada where recent vast accumulations of record-smashing snow has helped drive the Northern Hemisphere Total Snow Mass to a staggering 300 gigatons above the 1982-2012 average.I've took this photo two days ago while flying from Frankfurt to Zagreb, over the Austrian Alps. Seems quite extensive snow cover for this time of year.
The COLD TIMES are returning, the mid-latitudes are REFREEZING in line with historically low solar activity, cloud-nucleating Cosmic Rays, and a meridional jet stream flow.
Both NOAA and NASA appear to agree, if you read between the lines, with NOAA saying we’re entering a ‘full-blown’ Grand Solar Minimum in the late-2020s, and NASA seeing this upcoming solar cycle (25) as “the weakest of the past 200 years”, with the agency correlating previous solar shutdowns to prolonged periods of global cooling here.
Furthermore, we can’t ignore the slew of new scientific papers stating the immense impact The Beaufort Gyre could have on the Gulf Stream, and therefore the climate overall.
COAST TO COAST AM - September 23, 2020. Robert Felix, a former architect, became interested in the ice-age cycle back in 1991 and has been researching and writing about the possibility of a coming ice age ever since. In the first half, he argued that we are seeing the beginnings of a mini-ice age, which several astrophysicists have also recently concluded, he noted. This cycle may be similar to what happened in the 1600s when the sun had no sunspots.
The ground of some orchards in East Kelowna is blanketed by soon-to-be-spoiled apples.
“I could cry,” apple grower Julius Kish said. “People are hungry, and it’s so much waste.”
In 50 years of farming, Kish said he’s never seen a worse growing season.
It started in the spring with hail and too much rain.
Apple growers then struggled to find fruit pickers because the COVID-19 pandemic brought about a shortage of temporary foreign workers to tend the crops, Kish said.“I only had three people the whole summer working for me. Can’t get any local people,” he said.
Kish is frustrated that his apples were left to rot because of a lack of fruit pickers, while many Canadians were sitting at home collecting $2,000 a month through the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB), he says.
The labour shortage was then followed by a record-breaking snowfall and the earliest cold snap Kish can remember seeing in his half-century of growing.
Arctic Sea Ice is not freezing In October for the first time since measurements began, now having an unknown effect on weather development towards Winter
Ocean Current Disrupted Arctic Basin Not Freezing
The Arctic Ocean has not refrozen in October the first time in "recorded history". The new incredible fast moving current that is blocking water circulation is coming from the Gakkel Ridge where the Earth's crust has split and water in the planet's crust is pouring out like a pressurized aquifer, disrupting the Murman and Spitzbergen Currents in the Laptev and Kara Seas.