Causes of the Russian heat wave and Pakistani floods
The Great Russian Heat Wave of 2010 is one of the most intense, widespread, and long-lasting heat waves in world history. Only the European heat wave of 2003, which killed 35,000 - 50,000 people, and the incredible North American heat wave of July 1936, which set all-time extreme highest temperature records in fifteen U.S. states, can compare. All of these heat waves were caused by a highly unusual kink in the jet stream that remained locked in place for over a month. The jet stream is an upper-level river of air, between the altitudes of about 30,000 - 40,000 feet (10,000 - 12,000 meters). In July over Europe and Asia, the jet stream has two branches: a strong southern "subtropical" jet that blows across southern Europe, and a weaker "polar" jet that blows across northern Europe. The polar jet stream carries along the extratropical cyclones (lows) that bring the mid-latitudes most of their precipitation. The polar jet stream also acts as the boundary between cold, Arctic air, and warm tropical air. If the polar jet stream shifts to the north of its usual location, areas just to its south will be much hotter and drier than normal. In July 2010, a remarkably strong polar jet stream developed over northern Europe. This jet curved far to the north of Moscow, then plunged southwards towards Pakistan. This allowed hot air to surge northwards over most of European Russia, and prevented rain-bearing low pressure systems from traveling over the region. These rain-bearing low pressure systems passed far to the north of European Russia, then dove unusually far to the south, into northern Pakistan. The heavy rains from these lows combined with Pakistan's usual summer monsoon rains to trigger Pakistan's most devastating floods in history.
Figure 1. Winds of the jet stream at an altitude of 300 millibars (roughly 30,000 feet high). Left: Average July winds from the period 1968 - 1996 show that a two-branch jet stream typically occurs over Europe and Asia--a northern "polar" jet stream, and a more southerly "subtropical" jet stream. Right: the jet stream pattern in July 2010 was highly unusual, with a very strong polar jet looping far to the north of Russia, then diving southwards towards Pakistan. Image credit: NOAA/ESRL.
What caused this unusual jet stream pattern?
The unusual jet stream pattern that led to the 2010 Russian heat wave and Pakistani floods began during the last week of June, and remained locked in place all of July and for the first half of August. Long-lived "blocking" episodes like this are usually caused by unusual sea surface temperature patterns, according to recent research done using climate models. For example, Feudale and Shukla (2010) found that during the summer of 2003, exceptionally high sea surface temperatures of 4°C (7°F) above average over the Mediterranean Sea, combined with unusually warm SSTs in the northern portion of the North Atlantic Ocean near the Arctic, combined to shift the jet stream to the north over Western Europe and create the heat wave of 2003. I expect that the current SST pattern over the ocean regions surrounding Europe played a key role in shifting the jet stream to create the heat wave of 2010. Note that the SST anomaly pattern is quite different this year compared to 2003, which may be why this year's heat wave hit Eastern Europe, and the 2003 heat wave hit Western Europe. Human-caused climate change also may have played a role; using climate models, Stott et al. (2004) found it very likely (>90% chance) that human-caused climate change has at least doubled the risk of severe heat waves like the great 2003 European heat wave.
Figure 2. A comparison of the departure of sea surface temperature (SST) from average just prior the the start of the great European heat waves of 2003 and 2010. Temperatures in the Mediterranean Sea were up to 4°C above average in 2003, which has been implicated as a major cause of the Western European heat wave of 2003. Image credit: NOAA/NESDIS.
References
Feudale, L., and J. Shukla (2010), "Influence of sea surface temperature on the European heat wave of 2003 summer. Part I: an observational study", Climate Dynamics DOI: 10.1007/s00382-010-0788-0
Stott, P.A., Stone, D.A., and M.R. Allen (2004), "Human contribution to the European heatwave of 2003", Nature 432, 610-614 (2 December 2004) | doi:10.1038/nature03089. (Here is a free version of the paper, presented at a conference.)
The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has posted an analysis of the recent extreme weather events, concluding, "the sequence of current events matches IPCC projections of more frequent and more intense extreme weather events due to global warming."
See also my posts, The Great Russian Heat Wave of 2010: 102°F in Moscow and, Over 15,000 likely dead in Russian heat wave; Asian monsoon floods kill hundreds more.
Moscow sees real relief from the Great Russian Heat Wave of 2010
For the first time in more than a month, temperatures at Moscow's Domodedovo airport failed to exceed 30°C (86°F) today. Clouds and thunderstorms blew into the city this morning, keeping the high temperature down to just 29°C (84°F). This breaks a string of 35 straight days when the temperature reached 30°C. At Moscow's official observing site, the Moscow Observatory, this string was 30 days. Moscow's average high temperature for August 13 is 20°C (68°F), so today's temperatures were still well above normal. However, today's cool-down marks the beginning of the end for Russia's great heat wave. The latest forecast for Moscow calls for high temperatures below 30°C for the coming week, and Moscow may not exceed that threshold for the remainder of summer. Long range forecasts from the ECMWF and GFS models continue to suggest that a series of troughs of low pressure will attack the ridge of high pressure anchored over Russia, bringing cooler temperatures just 5°C (8°F) above average to Russia late next week. By ten days from now, the ECMWF model shows a strong trough of low pressure over Moscow, and a end to the Great Russian Heat Wave of 2010. Moscow still has to concern itself with smoke from the wildfires burning southeast of the city; winds are expected to shift early next week and bring the smoke towards the city again. However, the cooler weather should aid fire-fighting efforts, so the smoke problems should not be as bad as last week's nightmare.
Figure 2. Image from NASA's Aqua satellite of smoke from wildfires burning to the southeast of Moscow yesterday, August 12, 2010. Northerly winds were keeping the smoke from blowing over the city. Image credit: NASA.
The tropics are quiet
The remnants of Tropical Depression Five continue to bring heavy rain to portions of Southeast Louisiana today. Up to five inches of rain has fallen in regions near New Orleans. The GFS model predicts that the remains of TD 5 could move off the coast of Mississippi by the middle of next week and regenerate, but none of the other models is making this forecast. Both the GFS and ECMWF models are predicting that a tropical storm will develop off the coast of Africa by next Friday, August 20.
Donations urgently needed in Pakistan
The devastation wrought by the worst flooding in Pakistan's history requires a huge response by the international community. Wunderblogger Dr. Ricky Rood, author of our Climate Change Blog, has a friend working in Pakistan who underscored the desperate situation there:
This is the worst natural disaster in the history of Pakistan in terms of number of people and area affected. Although not as many people have been killed as in the 2005 earthquake, we have already nearly 900,000 displaced persons thus far just in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Crops are destroyed; shops, hotels, and other business have simply been swept away in Swat, which had just this year been cleared of Taliban and was on the way to recovery; and districts closer to Peshawar and parts of Peshawar district are still, or perhaps again after yesterday/today, under water. After the immediate emergency response, it will be years of rebuilding to replace what has been lost and to start to develop again. I know you have the power to control the weather, so if you cold give us a week or two without more rain at least we could keep the helicopters flying and give people a chance to go to their homes, recover what might still be there, set up tents if we can get enough to them, and start to clean up."
She gave the following recommendations for charities that do work in the flood-ravaged zone, and are effective at getting aid to those who need it the most:
Doctors Without Borders
The International Red Cross
MERLIN medical relief charity
The mobile giving service mGive allows one to text the word "SWAT" to 50555. The text will result in a $10 donation to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) Pakistan Flood Relief Effort.
She mentioned that it is better to send money to the organizations doing the relief work than to try to organize shipments of goods.
Jeff Masters
Reader Comments
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Also, just thinking about it, technically, an IR image will catch them too, since they are burning up and all... they would just show as a very hot spot in a field of dark (like over thunderstorms or snowpack)
This is a repost from the last page. Please feel free to participate!
Legends of the Wunderground Poll
If you want to participate in the poll, you can go to my blog and post your response. I'm going to be in and out today, so it'll be a lot easier for me to collate all the responses that way. I put guidelines below, and I've repeated them in my blog post.
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Legends of the Wunderground nominees in cronological order
1. Katrina 2005 "StormTop said it would hit NOLA"
2. Rita 2005 "I tried to evacuate"
3. Wilma 2005 "the definitive pinhole eye"
4. Chris 2006 "Sheared again. . . Naturally"
5. Ernesto 2006 "yes it is; no it's not"
6. Dean 2007 "is that cat 5 landfall????"
7. Felix 2007 "graupel in the guts"
8. Humberto 2007? "Talk about explosive cyclogenesis"
9. Karen 2007 "never say die"
10. Dolly 2008 "no closed low"
11. Fay 2008 "Florida vacation"
12. Gustav 2008 "I can fake u out"
13. Ike 2008 aka "Ike Jr."; "Beeline for South Florida! ... NOT"
14. Portlight 2008 formation "We are the Blog"
15. Marco 2008 "World's Smallest 'cane or Largest Tornado"
Now we are ready to vote on the top five legends of the blog. The main requirement is that each event has to have entered the "history" or collective memory of the blog as a notable event. This is beyond simply the fact that a storm was notable for breaking a record or causing a lot of damage.
List your top FIVE picks in order from most legendary to least. If you wish, you can add a comment that explains why you feel your top pick is the most legendary blog event.
The poll will close at midnight EDT [0400 UTC] and I will post results tomorrow morning.
Have fun!
EEEEEEEEEEEEEK
My $.02 has been added. :) (and bump for more replies)
Repost
World: Maximum Surface Wind Gust (3-Second)
Record Value 113.2 m/s (253 mph; 220 kt)
Date of Record (DMY) 1055 UTC 10/4/1996
Length of Record 1932-present
Instrumentation heavy duty three-cup Synchrotac anemometer
Geospatial Location Barrow Island Australia [20°40'S, 115°23'E, elevation: 64m (210ft)]
References
WMO Evaluation Panel of experts in charge of global weather and climate extremes within the WMO Commission for Climatology (CCl)consisted of the following experts: Dr Pierre Bessemoulin, MeteoFrance and President of CCl; Dr Tom Peterson, NOAA National Climatic Data Center; Dr Blair Trewin, Australian Bureau of Meteorology; Dr Jose M. Rubiera Torres, Cuban Instituto de Meteorología; Dr John (Jack) Beven, USA National Hurricane Center; Dr John King, British Antarctic Survey; Dr Randy Cerveny, Arizona State University and CCl Rapporteur of Climate Extremes.
Discussion
In "A review of extreme wind gusts at Barrow Island during Tropical Cyclone Olivia, 10 April 1996" by Joe Courtney and Steve Buchan: "The Barrow Island anemometer was a heavy duty three-cup Synchrotac anemometer positioned 10 m above ground level and 64 m above sea level, mounted on a mast as shown in Figs. 3 and 4. The mast was a cyclone-rated Hills telescoping 10m tower comprising 2 x 4.5m sections with a 1m mast extension. Each section was guyed with 3 x 6mm stainless steel wires.
The instrument was sited towards the centre of the island about 4 km from the coast to the southeast and about 7 km inland from the south southwest, the direction of the strongest wind gusts. The instrument is well exposed in all directions, the site is slightly elevated above the surrounding reasonably level terrain and the vegetation is very low.
The instrument was in good working order and was regularly inspected with comparisons made against a hand-held anemometer. The instrument was owned by WAPET, which has since been transferred to Chevron. Maintenance was performed by WNI Science and Engineering (now known as MetOcean Engineers). Synoptic data was ingested into the Bureau of Meteorology system for forecasting and climate applications.
The peak wind gust measurement was one of five extreme gusts during a series of 5-min time periods. Gusts of 199, 220 and 202 knots (369, 408, 374 km/h) were measured followed by a series of four lower values (minimum of 114 knots (211 km/h)) which were then followed by two more extreme gusts of 187 and 161 knots (347 and 298 km/h) in the 5-min time intervals. The elapsed time between gust maxima was 30 min, representing a scale of 8 nm (15 km) compared to the eye diameter of 40 nm (75 km). The 5-min average winds showed maxima and a minimum at the same time periods as the gusts. The pattern and scales suggests that a mesovortex was imbedded in the already strong eyewall mean winds (5-min mean maximum wind = 95 knots (176 km/h)). The extreme gusts represented extreme gust factors of 2.27-2.75, nearly twice the average gust factor throughout the storm of 1.33. This clearly suggests that some process other than mechanical turbulence is important during this period.
Previous record: 231 mph (372 km/h)at Mt. Washington, New Hampshire, USA
Looking at this last run the GFS is really beefing this storm up...
Not the only model either, CMC and ECMWF also show this.
It seems like a pretty interesting subject.
thanks.
so is TX looking like a good bet here or should this swing back to LA? Not sure how trustworthy these models are....
I live right outside of Mobile, it's called Satsuma and it has turned out to be a beautiful day, no flooding around here. We had some storms but all cleared up know. Hopefully it will be a great weekend.
sheri
To others, please take a minute to add your vote on my blog.
OF THE REMNANTS OF TD 5. THE LATEST RUNS OF THE NAM/GFS/ECMWF ALL
LOOP THE LOW THROUGH ALABAMA...SOUTHWARD ACROSS THE FLORIDA
PANHANDLE...AND WESTWARD ALONG THE COAST TO SOUTHEAST LOUISIANA BY
MONDAY NIGHT OR TUESDAY. THE NAM AND GFS ARE SURPRISINGLY CLOSE IN
EVERYTHING EXCEPT THE STRENGTH OF THE LOW...WITH THE ECMWF BEING
VERY SIMILAR PLACEMENT WISE...BUT ABOUT 12 HOURS SLOWER.
NEVERTHELESS...IT IS BECOMING CLEARER THAT THE REMNANTS WILL AGAIN
IMPACT SOUTHEAST LOUISIANA AND SOUTH MISSISSIPPI TOWARD THE MIDDLE
OF NEXT WEEK...BRINGING HIGH CHANCES FOR PRECIPITATION AND AN
ELEVATED THREAT OF HEAVY RAINFALL AND ADDITIONAL FLASH FLOODING.
THIS FORECAST BUMPS POPS AND QPF UP THROUGH THE TUESDAY TO
WEDNESDAY TIME FRAME...WITH CONFIDENCE INCREASING THAT THIS WILL
BE THE MAIN IMPACT TIME. TEMPERATURES SHOULD RUN BELOW NORMAL
DURING THIS TIME FRAME DUE TO THE INCREASED CLOUD COVER AND
PRECIPITATION. THE LOW IS FORECAST TO CONTINUE TO PUSH TO THE
WEST...WHICH WILL LEAD TO A MORE DIURNAL THUNDERSTORM
PATTERN...AND INCREASED TEMPERATURES THROUGH THE LATTER PART OF
NEXT WEEK. KAH
&&
new orleans Forecast Discussion
update
There is agreement among several extended range weather models oftaking a weak low pressure system over the deep south and loopingit back to the west later in the weekend.The low is forecast to emerge back over the water...off theNorthwest Florida Coast...later in the day Sunday. Then movingwestward...skirting the Northern Gulf Coast Monday.The weather will remain unsettled with the potential of numerousshowers/tstms...mainly closer to the main low pressure system withscattered coverages on its periphery. At this time...the low is notforecast to regenerate into a tropical system...but will be closelymonitored. stay tuned for later updates.Seas are forecast to range between 3 and 5 feet. /10
I think over-beefing it up, too. It would have to be either a small storm, or further out than it looks... and the wind is only on one side, too, which is unusual.
Up on the right side of this page you will see:
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The paper that Baha posted an excerpt from indicates that they figured it for an embedded mesoscale feature rather than any mechanical issue with the device, so figure a tornadic feature that is itself moving at the speed of the storm and providing that extra "little" push.
All I can say is that the heavy duty three-cup Synchrotac anemometer must be some really serious instrumentation!
I say 30% right now b/c it hasn't really moved hardly and with most models agreeing with each other.. But my percent could change later on..
Also in the southern caribbean is getting interesting.. if the T'storms do persist and maybe a center does develop.. It could get interesting.. specially the waves will be coming coming off Africa..
Link
Nothing much on the satellite view to suggest why. But I do know a Twave was analysed in the SE Bahamas earlier today. Maybe it's Wward propogation of that matched against that Eward bound trough...
It's been a bit rainier than average so far this month.
folks in S.Miss./Al./La. should be ready for
possibility of several days of rain..maybe
ridge will strengthen more than forecast and get it all out of here sooner rather than later. Emerging waves off African coast look interesting..maybe things are on the upswing
for a CV storm to develop..oh well, stay tuned!
With the highs set as they are in this image, if this comes true there's nowhere to go but here...
Look at Baha's post a little further up the column; he has a link to it. The data has been verified and this is considered the new wind speed record
Boy am I glad models are not right that far out.... whew.
:o Both of them look impressive. I'm scared.
Probably cause they use multi names. Some just don't understand, they think they can do what ever they want and get away with it.
sheri
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