A heat dome coming to the Arctic this week

Arctic Forecast for Heat Wave This Week

Nicholas Humphrey,

29 July, 2019

Highly anomalous heat from Europe will surge over Greenland surrounding areas Monday, peaking Tuesday-Thursday before decreasing in intensity over the weekend. This will cause a rapid rise in Greenland surface ice melt extent and more rapid Arctic sea ice losses. 

Also note a significant cool air mass for late-July/early August will surge across Scandinavia, Eastern Europe and western Russia this week. Sweden, Norway and Finland just saw some of their hottest temperatures on record. 

Normalized atmospheric height (pressure) anomaly in the middle atmosphere. Very prominent heat dome of high pressure over much of Greenland Tuesday night. 

Normalized near-surface temperature anomalies, with very high standard deviations (>2-5 sigma) over Greenland normal Tuesday night. Note, this ensemble model's climatology is 1999-2018, so it is certainly far more significant relative to pre-industrial (1720-1800) and even the most recent 30 yr period typically used in climate analysis in the US (1981-2010). 

7-Day Average forecast temperature anomalies over the Arctic Region. These values are relative to 1981-2010 climatology. Here they are relative to estimated 1720-1800 climatology (pre-industrial; +1.8 C to these values):

60-90 N: +2.556 C

66-90 N: +2.908 C

Greenland: +5.112 C

Arctic Ocean: +2.338 C

Forecast high temperatures over Greenland Wednesday.

As I showed in my previous Arctic post, in addition to heat causing widespread surface melt on the Greenland Ice Sheet and additional sea ice melting, a Pacific to Atlantic windflow pattern will be favorable to pulling sea ice away from the Canadian Archipelago and north coast of Greenland. Open water is likely to grow north of the coast of Greenland and farther to the West. This is concerning because it means the waters locally can warm significantly and the entire thin ice area will be more vulnerable to cyclones later in August and September. 

Current Arctic Conditions:

1. Overall sea Ice Extent - Daily record lows

2. Chukchi Sea Ice Extent - Daily record lows

3. Beaufort/Chukchi Combined Extent - Daily record lows

Special note: Global sea ice...which includes Antarctica...at daily record lows.

For daily Cryosphere updates, see HERE.

---Meteorologist Nick Humphrey

As temperatures soar, a ‘heat dome’ is coming to the Arctic