While pleasurable, it felt odd to bike comfortably in shorts and a t-shirt in late December in the D.C. suburbs.
Roses and Azaleas blooming in DC-area garden, late Dec 2015
The table is pretty with a vase of roses, but weird to have them coming from the garden.
So, DC at 72 degrees Fahrenheit on 27 December 2015 didn’t just break records — it felt bizarre to have temperatures 30 degrees warmer than normal.
That bizarre, however, has nothing on the Arctic. It isn’t 72 Fahrenheit in the middle of winter at the North Pole.
Do “bad kids” become global warming denying fossil fools? (Courtesy of Skeptical Science)
The Arctic is, however, predicted to be somewhere in the range of 72 degrees above “normal” temperatures in the coming days. Talk about starting the New Year off with a bang!
We’ve probably never seen weather like what’s being predicted for a vast region stretching from the North Atlantic to the North Pole and on into the broader Arctic this coming week. But it’s all in the forecast — an Icelandic low that’s stronger than most hurricanes featuring a wind field stretching over hundreds and hundreds of miles. One that taps warm tropical air and hurls it all the way to the North Pole and beyond during Winter time. And it all just reeks of a human-forced warming of the Earth’s climate…
A massive storm, with impacts from the North Pole down through (already hard hit) England. The storm will also warm the Arctic in an “extraordinarily” severe way.
These winds will bring with them extraordinarily warm temperatures for the High Arctic region during Winter time. By Wednesday, the North Pole is expected to see temperatures in the range of 1-2 degrees Celsius or 41-42 degrees C above average (73-75 degrees Fahrenheit above the normal daily temperature of -40 F for a typical Winter day).
Yes, roughly around New Year’s Day, the North Pole have above freezing temperatures rather than life-endangering cold building up ice packs.
Such an extreme departure would be like seeing a 120 degree (Fahrenheit) December day in my hometown of Gaithersburg, MD.
Yes, 72 degrees in the DC-area in late December was pretty nice while weird and disconcerting. 120 degrees — that is hard to fathom.
Needless to say, a 1-2 C reading at the North Pole during late December is about as odd as witnessing Hell freezing over.
Read more at Warm Arctic Storm To Hurl Hurricane Force Winds at UK and Iceland, Push Temps to 72+ Degrees (F) Above Normal at North Pole.
A note on messaging and discussion: Remoteness does not communicate well. Focusing solely on the Arctic Circle is, by definition, remote from the daily lives and experiences of >99% of humanity. Remote, however, does not mean irrelevant — even if people don’t see it. Thus, linking this to what is being experienced in our backyards (e.g, the opening re how climate change(d) my backyard) or relating what it would mean in the backyard (that 120 degrees in Gaithersburg analogy) helps people bring the understandable ‘gap’ from the remote to their own lives.