[Howard Kirby]

bbc page

[Dave W]

AS far as i can see isnt this just saying the sea has been rougher than normal with higher waves?

[Howard Kirby]

Yes and the height was actually falling for the first 7 years of data. Seems more of a cycle than a trend, not sure how they can draw much from only 15 years of data.

[ChaserUK]

never even knew such a thing could happen! I did think to myself what a sudden release of that bulge would do then scrolled down that page!

[Uskys]

It also seems that more than usual freash water entered the ocean from russia over the past 18months. I had come to this thread from going though the artic ice site and seeing there how the current data of ice coverage is being shown.

[John Mason]

Yes, freshwater output from the many large rivers coming out of Siberia has upped dramatically in recent years. The Arctic Ocean was relatively well stratified but with less sea-ice, shallower areas can get quite mixed by storms. This is one of the reasons cited by Dmikentro et al for the very sharp subsea warming over the East Siberian Arctic Shelf, that began in the 1980s and is ongoing (see http://www.ukweather...n-investigation for links to my investigations into that). The Arctic was always expected to be the canary in the coalmine.....

Cheers - John

[ldavidcooke]

Hey John,

Quite true, the combination of synoptic changes in this region and the rivers you note, along with warmer lower latitude ocean currents (both from West and East) moving North, all appear to contribute to the warming of the coastal waters. Looking at the Northern Jet, the region stretching from the longitude of the Mongolian Desert through to Central Canada has seen a major disturbance in zonal flow.

Either the Jet splits turning into the polar vortex near North Central Asia, as was the pattern last year. Or the Jet Stream breaks down to form a very tight vortex centered North of the Scandiavian region, with the Jet Stream diving South as it leaves the Eurasian Continent, as it appears to be doing this year.

This pattern seems to be related to the large scale La Nina pattern with the cooling of the Western Pacific actually being the transport of the warmth either North up the China coast or in retrograde into the Eastern Indian Ocean region near Singapore.

The though that comes to mind is that the surface Easterly or Walker circulation has increased significantly driving the higher SST/SSS bearing waters either north or west of the normal El Nino pool. At issue is trying to understand why the change n the Walker circulation. It was theorized as early as 2000, that the changes in the Northern Jet Stream was driving the Walker Easterlies. The current pattern would seem to suggest the inverse and that the Walker pattern could affect the Polar synoptics. At issue is trying to understand the forces driving the large scale weather/climatic patterns. Where the Equatorial flow is warm and apparently less dense, as well as slow moving, it is very moist, where as the character of the Arctic winds are very dense, fast moving and relatively dry.

For some reason the three point meeting of the land/ocean interface and the two different air masses converge in the Western NA region leading to either warmer temperatures or colder temperatures depending on the Arctic phase.

This would seem to suggest cross zonal heat flow is the primary culprit, the question seems to be: Is the cross zonal heat flow due to more CO2 or is it related to aerosol/cloud pattern changes? So far it would seem to be a product of both, plus the current upper tropopause/stratosphere cooling.
(To me this comes back to the change in the Ozone levels more then the CO2 shading; but, without a clear cause and effect definition, it is all best guess.) The end result of all of this is going to be reduced sea ice and and an apparent sea level rise in the Arctic region as the lack of ice coverage will result in an apparent Arctic buldge when it can easily be explained away with a change in sea surface character.

[skanky]

Interview with one of the authors on today's Material World. Will appear here later today: http://www.bbc.co.uk...rammes/b006qyyb