In my area I have way more temps swings last year and this year. One reason I come with are the big forest fire out west. These fronts have no problem going south much deeper. 35* tonight. Colder temps east? Crazy!
China and Japan are buying all the timber coming out the Amazon! Strange?
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Increased CO2 makes the atmosphere less viscous.
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Impossible to say if this is a long term trend or a short term trend. I think it is unlikely caused by the forest fires but who knows?
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The USA use to warn South American countries about not to mess with the Amazon for development. Reason? Changing weather patterns.
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We have a lot more ice in the arctic ocean than most of the past 13 years. That leads to more powerfull blasts from the north.
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Temperature swings during this time of year are normal where I live. In fact I welcome the cold during April because of the type I get. During November-January we tend to always be below freezing even without snow. Our highs may not get above 30s-40s for weeks. As a result snow really never melts or if it does it snows again right after. In February-April we get snow but it gets super hot the day after thus melting it. It may get warm enough snow does not stick to the streets so you get a nice watering from it. I have learned how to use this weather to my advantage due to local Facebook gardening groups. In CO if I plant leaf lettuce on April 1st it will be warm enough weather for it to germinate and it will grow for the month of April being watered constantly by the snow. I can then harvest it all of May and I can generally get 2-4 harvests of it by June when it heats up. When it gets hard is when we have weather like the 2021-2022 season where we do not get snow until January but we get snow until March and then no snow until last week of May where we get 2 snows. This year was the opposite where instead of having a super warm winter we had a freezing cold winter.
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Huh? Arctic sea ice extent is relatively low now, and this year roughly follows the 2011-2020 average (currently slightly above that line after most of the winter slightly below):
If you mean ice volume rather than ice extent, the most recent monthly report is for March 2023, but that month was the 6th lowest on record:
Average Arctic sea ice volume in March 2023 was 21,700 km3. This value is the 6th lowest on record for March, about 2,100 km^3 above the low record set in 2017.
In reality, the increased strength of polar cold fronts is likely due to the increasingly erratic jet stream, which becomes less stable as the Arctic warms up, causing more Arctic air masses to “leak out” from the polar vortex and get pulled south by the jet stream.
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It is a lot more light reflecting out to space this year.
In that case you might mean the Siberian or North American snow cover. Snow does increase the surface albedo making it reflect more light.
I have no idea what the snow cover is relative to historic norm.
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The best I could find is this snow cover extent map from the Rutgers University Global Snow Lab, which shows at least in March most of the Arctic had normal snow cover, most of Eurasia was below normal, and some parts of the lower 48 were above normal:
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March I don’t feel was reflective of this year for me. In November-December I felt unsafe to drive in snow for the first time in my lifetime. I got stuck in my driveway during December when they predicted 2 inches but was at least 10 inches of snow in a matter of hours. Other times I just felt unsafe to drive because I was supposed to drive down the mountain when it was -15,-10 and -8 3 days in a row and the roads were pure ice so I felt like I would crash into someone driving. I had never felt like I would run into someone and rear end them for means that I could not easily control until last December. Meanwhile March was warm. I started at my new office March 11th I believe and for a week or 2 I did not have snow tires and did not need them. Yesterday was our first decent snow in A month or 2. Quite contrary to what many old locals of CO to say where April and March are supposed to be our snowiest months. Last year was the same where we had little to no snow in March and April. Last year my Starks Saturn peach tree came out of dormancy in March. This year even though it is not as snowy we must be keeping a colder temperature overall than last year as my buds are swelling but only my pears and Zestar! apple is out of dormancy. Heck I have a pear from last year that is still not out of dormancy though it might just be dead as all my other pears are out of dormancy including other varieties of this pear.
Oh, I wasn’t denying that it’s been a cold winter for many areas, just the reason given. Here’s a version of the sea ice chart that includes 2022 too, which was very close to the 2011-2020 average line as well, in the November-December part at least:
It has been a very cold winter this year in our area, by which I mean the NW quarter of the north american continent. Here’s the temperature anomaly map for December, you can see we are basically in a cold air bullseye:
Somehow gardeners almanac seemed to know how our winter would be at least here in CO. I believe a member that posts here a bunch posted it in a weather thread back around December. There is clearly some science behind whatever it is that the gardeners almanac uses.
In Nov 2022 the snow extent started off very strong, but now it’s a bit awash.
Anyway, I’m surprised no one mentioned “La Nina”
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