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Freak storm pushes North Pole 50 degrees above normal
Posted On Dec 30 2015
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On Wednesday morning, temperatures over a vast area just to the east of the North Pole were somewhere between 30 and 35 degrees Fahrenheit, and for at least a brief moment, surpassed the 32-degree threshold at exactly 90 degrees North, according to data from the GFS forecast model.
It’s only the second instance in which we’ve seen above-freezing temperatures at the North Pole this time of year- minus 20 degrees Fahrenheit is more typical.
The North Pole is getting a taste of the warm late-December temperatures that have caused such havoc in the United States.
Temperature fluctuations are fairly common in the Arctic, where shifts in sea ice cover can significantly affect local air temperatures, but such a strong variation is extreme.
It was then that Alexandra Sifferlin at Time.com reported the Alaska town’s temperature as if it came from the North Pole.
Bob Henson, a meteorologist at the Weather Underground, said there had only been three instances of above-freezing temperatures at the North Pole in December since 1948.
Climate blogger Robert Scribbler gets into the specifics of the “daisy chain” that’s at play involving two other low-pressure systems in the North Atlantic, and he adds that it “reeks of a human-forced warming of the Earth’s climate”. Storm Frank lashed the north of England, Scotland and Northern Ireland with downpours and gale force winds on Wednesday.
Neither system is uncommon this time of year but their power and combination is unusual. “If you’re going to have an ice-free Arctic and you’re going to have big melts in the summertime but also limit ice recovery in the winter, you’re going to have to have events like this happen”. Early this afternoon, Maue tweeted: “Hope you enjoyed the North Pole heat-wave – now back to normal programming down to -25°F… warm up next week”. That, as Discovery explains, is a good 50 degrees warmer than usual, and means that a place now engulfed in darkness 24 hours a day could be warmer than Southern California.
