Today we’ll switch gears and examine a different part of the Arctic that has not gained much attention lately, northern Siberia. An area of some size can be picked out having an anomaly of the +20 type. As I write, which is late night over there, using current data from Windy, actual temperatures are as high as -5C. Not far away, no more than one or two hundred miles, they dip to -30C and lower, which is a more normal figure at this time of year in that remote part of the world. The line of break is sharp, and there is nothing of a geographical nature that I can see which would account for so much temperature difference. The anomaly we’ll get tomorrow, as always based on full-day averages, has at least gotten off to a similar kind of start.
Northern Siberia gets very little sunshine at this time of year, and is also relatively arid. I have checked to see if there is much snow on the ground and find an entire large area that is well-covered. The next image is interesting because it shows both widespread cloud cover and quite a bit of scattered snowfall in the same large area. These are all factors that need to be taken into account when analyzing the makings of an anomaly.
Now we can look for the usual suspect in an event of this type, which would be the total input of precipitable water for that day, including the amounts at high altitude that arrive from outside sources and either just pass over or drop precipitation as they move on by. I can’t use the term “water vapor” as freely as I normally like to do when extensive clouding and precipitation are so clearly a part of the mix. Who knows how much pure vapor is in this mix when there is no such data available? Moreover, when the primary object of the search is simply to gain data that can be assigned to greenhouse energy effects, will it necessarily make a difference? I”ve been getting the feeling that condensed forms of water—when they consist of particles suspended in the air—may have close to the same greenhouse energy effect per molecule as vapor itself. The particles will certainly be capturing and re-emitting long-wave energy as it comes by, just like any other objects that exist up in the air. Total capturing surfaces should be reduced relative to those of individual molecules, and bulky processing may create a timing gap, but incoming energy should be captured over the full range of spectra instead of just the few bands that set limits for individual gas molecules. Do these or other variations tend to balance out? Observations often make it look that way, giving us something to keep wondering about. This next map is only about readings for the total amount of precipitable water at all levels. It has nothing to say about vapor. Therefore whatever effects we see on air temperatures can only be construed as total precipitable water effects, period, so that is the only term that should be used in this context. So that is what I’m going to start doing, calling it TPW for short as a convenience. TPW is technically not a greenhouse gas, but it truly does bear comparisons that are of considerable interest in their own right.
When you compare this map with the one at the top just focus on the lightly shaded gray arrowhead shape in the upper center and use plenty of magnification to distinguish between all the different kilogram readings, which range from about 7kg inside the arrowhead down to 2kg just outside and directly to the east. Remember that 2kg represents anything between 2 and 1, or as little as 1.1kg. I’m not ready to make any changes in the interpretation of multiple observations that any double in the kg number, from any given level, represents a potential addition of 10C to surface air temperatures via the singular working of greenhouse energy effects. I think water vapor alone would probably deliver a similar outcome, just because every combination of TPW components that we can make out from the images in hand, regardless of how much pure vapor they contain, seem to come up with the same kind of results when doing an analysis. As an aside, the TPW-induced anomaly we are seeing today can mainly be attributed to vapor streams that originated in several warm parts of the Atlantic Ocean, verified by imagery on the 5-day animation website.
Carl