Is anyone else getting the impression from the lrf models that this summer will be controlled by blocking to the NE, making for a change from recent years when they were steered by blocking to the NW?

I'd just like to know if I'm out on a limb or not

Yep...very much so, I'm with you SC.

Looking at the longer range charts being churned out we have to concede that the weather patterns are remaining broadly similar to the recent winter patterns we have just experienced. The big difference from now on is that bitter continental airmasses will be replaced with stifling continental airmasses as we progress into summer.

My reckoning (hunch) is for a Moscow 2010 style of heat wave affecting the UK this summer, courtesy of blocking to the NE and occasional but noteworthy wafts of extreme heat courtesy of the meridonal aspects that have prevailed for some time now.

 

 

Urgggh I wouldn't like a Moscow 2010 heatwave Steve - look at these max temps below they recorded in July.

Also a minimum temp of 26C on 29th July, truly remarkable!! try sleeping in that without air conditioning. And it heated up again similar in August to near 40C! http://www.weatheronline.co.uk/cgi-bin/klibild?WMO=27612&ZEITRAUM=04&ZEIT=31072010&ART=MAX&LANG=en&1366824531&ZUGRIFF=NORMAL&MD5=

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Joe B reckons on a cooler than normal summer for the UK

https://twitter.com/BigJoe******i/status/327038424773177345

EDIT: So does Paul Hudson:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/paulhudson/posts/Arctic-ice-and-the-possible-implications-for-summer-2013

It's all very well expecting higher heights to the NW because of a weaker jet stream, but blocking to the NE could work against that if it does crop up a lot this coming summer, so I still think we have a chance of something warmer at least... not sure about settled, as the mean trough could well end up over the UK again if the blocking is too far away.

In fact I've had this long-standing concern over the potential for a summer dominated by warm but thundery weather, leading to ridiculously high rainfall accumulations and a lot of flash flooding.

What we really need in combination with blocking to the NE is low heights in the Arctic to keep it from drifting too far away from the UK. The analogue years point to that very strongly, but they did not have nearly as much Arctic sea ice reduction as we've been seeing over the past few years.

 

So just for the record, I'm not actually anticipating a fine summer at this stage, just a warmer one than the past two, which to be honest isn't saying much. In my opinion it could feature anything from from a lengthy hot and dry period to prolonged runs of fine dawns, showery noons and thundery afternoons or even a total washout under the boundary between cooler maritime air and warm/hot continental air.

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A continental based summer with winds from east/northeast would do me just fine (or hot). Im not fussed if those Kent/ east anglia/ London lot have a chillier summer. Past few years all the 30+ temps have been their way due to the warming and drying of the air comming from south towards them, let the tables be turned this year I say 🙂

All this talk about not having had a cold summer recently... last year my stats were as follows for maximum temps (the only thing that matters temp wise in summer) against the 1981-2010 average:

June (-2.62C)

July (-1.92C)

August (-0.28C)

If that wasn't cold then heaven help us!

As far as I'm concerned any talk of a cold summer being overdue is just a deliberate attempt to wind up the majority of members who are utterly pig sick of the run of vile summers we've been enduring recently.

The facts speak for themselves and it's a warm, sunny and dry summer that is long overdue

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/anomacts/2012/14/2012_14_MaxTemp_Anomaly_1981-2010.gif
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/anomacts/2011/14/2011_14_MaxTemp_Anomaly_1971-2000.gif

2007 was also very cool and though 2008-10 were near average the sunshine/rainfall elements, which in my opinion are more important, were dire. 2009 managed average sunshine, all of the other 5 summers below average and all 6 above average for rainfall.

Last summer had a mean max only 0.2C warmer than 1965 at Dyce and that was the coldest summer on record as clearly shown in this graphic from http://eca.knmi.nl/indicesextremes/index.php

It also shows that the last two successive summers as cold as 2011 and 2012 were 1962 and 1963

Maybe all this is true for Aberdeen. But Aberdeen is at one end of the country and has perhaps been exposed to undue easterliness. For the rest of the UK, the facts speak for themselves - we're still waiting for the first notably cold summer since the mid 1980s

Joe B reckons on a cooler than normal summer for the UK

https://twitter.com/BigJoe******i/status/327038424773177345

EDIT: So does Paul Hudson:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/paulhudson/posts/Arctic-ice-and-the-possible-implications-for-summer-2013

 

Looks like another forcaster going for a poor summer

http://uk.weather.com/story/news/041913_may_outlook-20130419

 

Their March forecast hardly screamed a 2.5C month: http://uk.weather.com/story/news/021513feb_march_outlook-20130215 

And how many forecasts last year went for exceedingly wet and dull?

Their March forecast hardly screamed a 2.5C month: http://uk.weather.com/story/news/021513feb_march_outlook-20130215 

And how many forecasts last year went for exceedingly wet and dull?

 

I guess they are just making a forecast based on the information in front of them.

As a poster on the model output says, anything past 120hrs is really just for fun. It will be interesting to see out of all the summer forecasts issued by the end of spring who will have called it right. i guess we'll know come the end of august.

To me it looks mostly average, maybe the northern blocking dragging in some hot air from the east/south east if models are correct at the moment.

http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/people/wwang/cfsv2fcst/htmls/glbz700e3Mon.html

Turns out CFS is now seeing a summer featuring anomalous heights to the NE. In the broadest sense, the model indicates that troughing will be close to hand, but with us often on the warm side of it. Good thunderstorm potential, especially if and when troughs scoop up continental air from well SE of the UK.

The projected anomalies keep squirming about, reducing confidence in them, but the broad theme of blocking to the NE has been fairly commonplace across the June and July udpates over the past couple of months. August has been all over the place to be honest.

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Copied from the MOD thread:

Interesting... GFS toyed with blocking developing to the W then NW, but residual energy over/near Canada is now being modelled to prevent that evolution, with blocking instead developing to the NE while the Atlantic dominates around Iceland. The UK is at risk of some slow moving troughs, but the pattern allows for some warmer air at times and also some ridges of high pressure, most likely from the SW extending to the blocking to our NE.

It all sounds like what we saw for a large part of the winter, and fits in well with what CFS shows for both May and June:

http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/people/wwang/cfsv2fcst/imagesInd3/glbz700MonInd1.gif

http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/people/wwang/cfsv2fcst/imagesInd3/glbz700MonInd2.gif

In fact, hints of the same pattern remain in July as well:

http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/people/wwang/cfsv2fcst/imagesInd3/glbz700MonInd3.gif

Just look at those -ve anomalies across Greenland - a good sign for a reasonable or decent two months of summer, which has been missing from the projections for the past few.

Shame it's only one model, but it sure has been trending in a positive direction for some fine summer conditions at times - long may that continue!

 

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My thoughts at the moment are that Summer 2013 will probably be a fairly average Summer overall.  I think this year has been quite similar to 1984 and 1996 so far, both of which had pretty decent Summers here.   I don't think we'll see an awful Summer like 2012, as these seem more likely to follow mild Winters.  

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My one major concern is over whether CFS incorporates the impacts of low Arctic Sea ice, and if so, how effectively. The current long range output charts for May-July closely resemble what the analogue years indicate:

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1ABNAaKs5zk0Ua1pcX-nW2hEaUfFpe3UpiMjrk1Pbn9w/pub?start=false&loop=false&delayms=3000

If you look at the left image on slide 16 and compare it with this:

http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/people/wwang/cfsv2fcst/imagesInd3/glbz700SeaInd1.gif

You can see the great similarities (ridge far NE U.S., trough over Greenland, ridge from UK extending NE across Scandinavia), although the CFS period is a month sooner - as if everthing is expected to unfold faster than normal. Or is CFS being too progressive? Or it could all be a load of codswallop... we can only wait and see.

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The way the current model output looks reminds me of how things used to be in the better years pre-2007, with the jet not meandering to a particularly extreme extent across the Atlantic, driving a ridge-trough-ridge-etc. sequence.

I see our current pattern as a  (slightly) better starting point in terms of where it could lead for the summer, but the trouble is, we're not yet far enough into the melting season for the Arctic sea ice to have much of a say in things, so if it falls in extent as sharply and to as low values as seen in recent years... then will be the time that we find out whether we can possibly escape a poor summer when the jet is weakened by the below-normal thermal gradient between the tropics and the pole.

Even without the Arctic influence, there are extreme patterns across the U.S. that could propogate to the UK within the next month, so it looks like we're going to need a fair bit of luck!

 

One good thing this year is that CFS is predicting below average temperatures across a large part of the Arctic Ocean. Perhaps, then, we have a shot at getting something more 'normal' for the June pattern?

 

If you're wondering why I keep posting so much about this... well, the link betwee Arctic sea ice and summer conditions has become a fascinating subject for me over the past couple of years - and a rather worrying one.

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There I go, rambling on about the summer again - I just can't seem to help myself! Adapted from my post in the MOD thread:

This year, for the 7th consecutive time, we're finding outselves faced with the old theme of a southerly tracking jet and high-latitude blocking.

But as I've posted before, the pieces are this time arranged differently to most recent years. Last year did serve up something very similar for much of the last third of May, but in many ways that one was closer to a UK high which retrogressed NW, something we've seen all to much of in recent May-August periods. It just managed to find it's way NE a bit first. I actually noted it down as a sign of higher heights to the NE starting to become more of a feature in our weather, the first sign having been in early February that year. Winter 2012/13 then saw blocking to the NE a lot more than to the NW, which was a change from the previous four (or more) winters. March... we all know about March 2013

At the moment, heights keep on rising somewhat periodically to our NE, and the models seem keen on developing major blocking there. After the winter which finally saw a change in the main blocking region, will this summer follow suit?

Bringing my previous post in this thread into things, I believe it will come down to whether the low Arctic sea ice extent promotes blocking to our NW so strongly as to override the influence of the various forces promoting blocking to our NE.

It should make for an interesting summer from a research point of view, whatever the surface conditions here.

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By complete coincidence, I've just stumbled across this post on wunderground by 'MississippiWx':

"A lot of this year's different weather can be attributed to the orientation of the negative PDO. The North Pacific high is much farther east this year compared to the last few years when we flipped to a negative PDO. This makes a huge difference in weather across the CONUS because a persistent trough is being carved out across the Central US instead of the West Coast this year. Therefore, arctic air is being allowed to spill down into the US at a more persistent pace. This pattern during the heart of winter would have put most of the US in a serious deep freeze. We got lucky that it waited until after the coldest air had disappeared."

The downstream impacts of that shift east could well explain the blocking to the NE instead of NW.

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Could get lucky with a hot summer then with easterly based weather 🙂

By complete coincidence, I've just stumbled across this post on wunderground by 'MississippiWx':

"A lot of this year's different weather can be attributed to the orientation of the negative PDO. The North Pacific high is much farther east this year compared to the last few years when we flipped to a negative PDO. This makes a huge difference in weather across the CONUS because a persistent trough is being carved out across the Central US instead of the West Coast this year. Therefore, arctic air is being allowed to spill down into the US at a more persistent pace. This pattern during the heart of winter would have put most of the US in a serious deep freeze. We got lucky that it waited until after the coldest air had disappeared."

The downstream impacts of that shift east could well explain the blocking to the NE instead of NW.

I see this as a positive development as far as summer prospects for the UK are concerned, but it is only one piece of the jigsaw.

My summer 2013 thoughts can be found on my website under the 'here' link on the home page or from the Summer Seasonal Prediction page within the menu buttons on the left. i will post it across to here when I have more time.

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Just read the prediction as site is bookmarked being just up the hill ...Certainly a lot better outlook than last year.. Thanks for the prediction...

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I'm expecting fairly normal weather most of the time, with probably some parts seeing more rainfall than average whilst others get less and temperatures averaging out at close to average, despite some very hot days and some quite cool and breezy days.

ie, similar to 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012

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