Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Positive AMO Losing Grip


The positive Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) appears to be losing its grip on the waters near Greenland in the past month.

Above shows a side-by-side comparison of water temperatures on October 17th and November 14th. If we look on the left side (October 17), we see a wide swath of above normal water temperatures stretching from Greenland, through northern Canada and to the waters south of Greenland. The waters off the East Coast also showed heavy warming during that time period. If we look to the right image, taken on November 14th, we now see neutral water temperatures in place around much of Greenland and in Northern Canada. However, waters remain warm to the east of eastern Canada, and have actually intensified off the coast of the Northeast US.

What is setting up here is something called the Atlantic Tripole. In a nutshell, the Atlantic Tripole is shown by cool waters off the coast of the Northeast and East Coast, warm waters in the Gulf of Mexico, Caribbean and southeast Atlantic, and warmer than normal water temperatures in the Greenland waters. Below are temperature and precipitation anomalies during the Atlantic Tripole.

Temperature Anomaly

Precipitation Anomaly
Andrew

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

when sould we start to see the effects of this?

dillon said...

this is meaning what?lol..cold air?good thing for winter?what

Eric said...

This does not appear like it will be a perfect tripole pattern as the waters remain warm off the new England and coasts of Canadian Maritimes, but the central atlantic is not quite as warm in comparison to the tropical atlantic. The warmer waters currently over the tropical atlantic will have implications for next hurricane season as the 400 millibar temperatures flip to warm, relaxed wind shear, and the warmer waters will promote activity in the deep tropics where there was little activity to speak of this year.

Anonymous said...

does that good snow for mid atlantic or less snow

Anonymous said...

Can't texas get a break? El NiƱo was our one hope at getting rain, now it appears we will be below average yet again. Hopefully we will get a wet spring