Extreme reporting ‒ The United Nations IPCC (International Panel of Climate Change) chose to focus on ex­treme weather in their 2012 report. This led 220 authors from 62 countries to focus on and report extreme weather events. This in­ternational project has increased the search for, reporting on and availability of data on extreme weather events. Some increase in extreme event numbers can be credited to this growth of scientific reporting.  

Extreme cold - As regular readers are familiar with, our current weather has been partially shaped by recent volcanic activity – specifically ‒ the large erup­tions of two polar volcanoes. In 2011, Mt. Grímsvötn in Iceland and Sheveluch volcano on Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula. While these eruptions were not tremen­dously powerful, they were both large enough to enter the stratosphere. There the volcanic ash and chemical aerosols lin­gered for three years, increasingly cooling the polar air mass.

Recent volcanic activity has not been as powerful, but we are seeing constant activ­ity in both Russia and Iceland. In Russia, several volcanoes are currently active. Sheveluch, Klyuchevskoy and Chiku­rachki have had a series of 5 – 7 km erup­tions in February. While this is not high enough to change the climate for years, it is entering passing fronts. Some of the intensely cold air that has hit the US and Canada have been cooled by these erup­tions. Meanwhile, in Iceland, Bardarbun­ga volcano continues to leak lava and gas at low levels. Unfortunately, much of this debris is in altitudes that a recent report published by the October 31 issue of Geo­physical Research Letters noted is poorly covered by satellite observations.

The last time we saw this pattern of eruptions in both the Polar Regions of the North Atlantic and Pacific was back in the 1780s, so we are seeing patterns that haven’t existed in centuries. The dust and chemicals blocked out incom­ing sunlight, decreasing the Arctic’s summertime warming. Indeed, the end of the summer found 1.5 million sq. km (more than 579,000 sq. miles) more sea ice than two years previously. Win­ter has allowed this cold to shift south, creating extreme, even record-breaking cold from Michigan to Miami. Only the fact that the North Atlantic Oscillation is currently positive, shifting weather patterns eastward quickly, has kept this year from be­ing a repeat of last year’s awful polar vortex weather.

David Fuller's view

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