Causes of the Russian heat wave and Pakistani floods
The Great Russian Heat Wave of 2010 is one of the most intense, widespread, and long-lasting heat waves in world history. Only the European heat wave of 2003, which killed 35,000 - 50,000 people, and the incredible North American heat wave of July 1936, which set all-time extreme highest temperature records in fifteen U.S. states, can compare. All of these heat waves were caused by a highly unusual kink in the jet stream that remained locked in place for over a month. The jet stream is an upper-level river of air, between the altitudes of about 30,000 - 40,000 feet (10,000 - 12,000 meters). In July over Europe and Asia, the jet stream has two branches: a strong southern "subtropical" jet that blows across southern Europe, and a weaker "polar" jet that blows across northern Europe. The polar jet stream carries along the extratropical cyclones (lows) that bring the mid-latitudes most of their precipitation. The polar jet stream also acts as the boundary between cold, Arctic air, and warm tropical air. If the polar jet stream shifts to the north of its usual location, areas just to its south will be much hotter and drier than normal. In July 2010, a remarkably strong polar jet stream developed over northern Europe. This jet curved far to the north of Moscow, then plunged southwards towards Pakistan. This allowed hot air to surge northwards over most of European Russia, and prevented rain-bearing low pressure systems from traveling over the region. These rain-bearing low pressure systems passed far to the north of European Russia, then dove unusually far to the south, into northern Pakistan. The heavy rains from these lows combined with Pakistan's usual summer monsoon rains to trigger Pakistan's most devastating floods in history.
Figure 1. Winds of the jet stream at an altitude of 300 millibars (roughly 30,000 feet high). Left: Average July winds from the period 1968 - 1996 show that a two-branch jet stream typically occurs over Europe and Asia--a northern "polar" jet stream, and a more southerly "subtropical" jet stream. Right: the jet stream pattern in July 2010 was highly unusual, with a very strong polar jet looping far to the north of Russia, then diving southwards towards Pakistan. Image credit: NOAA/ESRL.
What caused this unusual jet stream pattern?
The unusual jet stream pattern that led to the 2010 Russian heat wave and Pakistani floods began during the last week of June, and remained locked in place all of July and for the first half of August. Long-lived "blocking" episodes like this are usually caused by unusual sea surface temperature patterns, according to recent research done using climate models. For example, Feudale and Shukla (2010) found that during the summer of 2003, exceptionally high sea surface temperatures of 4°C (7°F) above average over the Mediterranean Sea, combined with unusually warm SSTs in the northern portion of the North Atlantic Ocean near the Arctic, combined to shift the jet stream to the north over Western Europe and create the heat wave of 2003. I expect that the current SST pattern over the ocean regions surrounding Europe played a key role in shifting the jet stream to create the heat wave of 2010. Note that the SST anomaly pattern is quite different this year compared to 2003, which may be why this year's heat wave hit Eastern Europe, and the 2003 heat wave hit Western Europe. Human-caused climate change also may have played a role; using climate models, Stott et al. (2004) found it very likely (>90% chance) that human-caused climate change has at least doubled the risk of severe heat waves like the great 2003 European heat wave.
Figure 2. A comparison of the departure of sea surface temperature (SST) from average just prior the the start of the great European heat waves of 2003 and 2010. Temperatures in the Mediterranean Sea were up to 4°C above average in 2003, which has been implicated as a major cause of the Western European heat wave of 2003. Image credit: NOAA/NESDIS.
References
Feudale, L., and J. Shukla (2010), "Influence of sea surface temperature on the European heat wave of 2003 summer. Part I: an observational study", Climate Dynamics DOI: 10.1007/s00382-010-0788-0
Stott, P.A., Stone, D.A., and M.R. Allen (2004), "Human contribution to the European heatwave of 2003", Nature 432, 610-614 (2 December 2004) | doi:10.1038/nature03089. (Here is a free version of the paper, presented at a conference.)
The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has posted an analysis of the recent extreme weather events, concluding, "the sequence of current events matches IPCC projections of more frequent and more intense extreme weather events due to global warming."
See also my posts, The Great Russian Heat Wave of 2010: 102°F in Moscow and, Over 15,000 likely dead in Russian heat wave; Asian monsoon floods kill hundreds more.
Moscow sees real relief from the Great Russian Heat Wave of 2010
For the first time in more than a month, temperatures at Moscow's Domodedovo airport failed to exceed 30°C (86°F) today. Clouds and thunderstorms blew into the city this morning, keeping the high temperature down to just 29°C (84°F). This breaks a string of 35 straight days when the temperature reached 30°C. At Moscow's official observing site, the Moscow Observatory, this string was 30 days. Moscow's average high temperature for August 13 is 20°C (68°F), so today's temperatures were still well above normal. However, today's cool-down marks the beginning of the end for Russia's great heat wave. The latest forecast for Moscow calls for high temperatures below 30°C for the coming week, and Moscow may not exceed that threshold for the remainder of summer. Long range forecasts from the ECMWF and GFS models continue to suggest that a series of troughs of low pressure will attack the ridge of high pressure anchored over Russia, bringing cooler temperatures just 5°C (8°F) above average to Russia late next week. By ten days from now, the ECMWF model shows a strong trough of low pressure over Moscow, and a end to the Great Russian Heat Wave of 2010. Moscow still has to concern itself with smoke from the wildfires burning southeast of the city; winds are expected to shift early next week and bring the smoke towards the city again. However, the cooler weather should aid fire-fighting efforts, so the smoke problems should not be as bad as last week's nightmare.
Figure 2. Image from NASA's Aqua satellite of smoke from wildfires burning to the southeast of Moscow yesterday, August 12, 2010. Northerly winds were keeping the smoke from blowing over the city. Image credit: NASA.
The tropics are quiet
The remnants of Tropical Depression Five continue to bring heavy rain to portions of Southeast Louisiana today. Up to five inches of rain has fallen in regions near New Orleans. The GFS model predicts that the remains of TD 5 could move off the coast of Mississippi by the middle of next week and regenerate, but none of the other models is making this forecast. Both the GFS and ECMWF models are predicting that a tropical storm will develop off the coast of Africa by next Friday, August 20.
Donations urgently needed in Pakistan
The devastation wrought by the worst flooding in Pakistan's history requires a huge response by the international community. Wunderblogger Dr. Ricky Rood, author of our Climate Change Blog, has a friend working in Pakistan who underscored the desperate situation there:
This is the worst natural disaster in the history of Pakistan in terms of number of people and area affected. Although not as many people have been killed as in the 2005 earthquake, we have already nearly 900,000 displaced persons thus far just in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Crops are destroyed; shops, hotels, and other business have simply been swept away in Swat, which had just this year been cleared of Taliban and was on the way to recovery; and districts closer to Peshawar and parts of Peshawar district are still, or perhaps again after yesterday/today, under water. After the immediate emergency response, it will be years of rebuilding to replace what has been lost and to start to develop again. I know you have the power to control the weather, so if you cold give us a week or two without more rain at least we could keep the helicopters flying and give people a chance to go to their homes, recover what might still be there, set up tents if we can get enough to them, and start to clean up."
She gave the following recommendations for charities that do work in the flood-ravaged zone, and are effective at getting aid to those who need it the most:
Doctors Without Borders
The International Red Cross
MERLIN medical relief charity
The mobile giving service mGive allows one to text the word "SWAT" to 50555. The text will result in a $10 donation to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) Pakistan Flood Relief Effort.
She mentioned that it is better to send money to the organizations doing the relief work than to try to organize shipments of goods.
Jeff Masters
Reader Comments
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GFS 200mb Forecast, Day 4:
Anyway, let's hope that those waves that are ready to move exit Africa don't decide to give us a visit. It's too early in the season to start worrying about whether or not we'll get hit.
Yes one model the GFS that has been out to lunch over and over again. While the low may follow that track I am looking outside and there is no punch with it. Moisture is not as high as the models say. You can even see that on water vapor. Rain is very drizzely. We had a few solid storms last night and only got about an inch of rain...by 8am everything was pretty dry.
2. Katrina 2005 "StormTop said it would hit NOLA"
3. Felix 2007 "graupel in the guts"
4. Rita 2005 "I tried to evacuate"
5. Marco 2008 "World's Smallest 'cane or Largest Tornado"
*Initial reaction was to go woth StormTop andKatrina as a first pick, but on the third thought realized that, since wilma, at least one person always has to pull out the "pin hole eye card" once any storm really gets going
BahaHurican,
Here are my pick from lowest to highest (you will see why in a second):
#5 - Wilma 2005
#4 - Ike 2008
#3 - Gustav 2008
#2 - Katrina 2005
The Number 1 Spot is permanently retired for those of us old enough to remember the legend of yesteryear, the one and only, Camille.
Camille is like Secretariat (the only non-human in ESPN's ranking of the Top 50 Athletes of all time a few years ago; the horse was, I believe #32, situated ironically between two individuals who also were like mythical athletes, #33 was Mickey Mantle and #31 was Larry Bird); each could do things, that the legend surrounding them, well it gives them special, almost mythical status.
And if you were lucky to have seen the 1973 Belmont Stakes, live on TV or at the Belmont track, you probably saw something that was pretty much beyond belief or will never be approached by a thoroughbred horse. A horse that had a heart that upon examination during autosopy was found to be 250% larger then the normal thorougbred's heart.....
Let's hope that the same thing can be said of Camille; nothing like it will ever happen again....
I remember that race. Secretariat was an amazing horse.
#16 Sorry Baha , Hurricane Ivan 2004 , most underrated Tyrant Hurricane of all times, Winds guage at Owen Roberts Airport Grand Cayman broke at 219mph sustained , not gusts!!! #1 in power in my opinion , I know others beg to differ and they have the right!
Huh? When were the winds 219 sustained?
If a Hurricane is approaching, and you are told to evacuate, do it!
Do not opt to see what some here have seen.
Electing to do so will leave scars that you will live with the rest of you life, as stated by some who elected to see what they did not really want to, but had no choice after their choice was made.
One should appreciate the sharing we have on this blog.
That sharing comes from life, and it is not in digital format, or able to be put in a graph folks. Just my take. >>>>> out>>>>>>
Agreed, that time is usually from early to mid September.
Is this the link to the 219 mph winds? I looked for that and couldn't find it, but I found this:
"Ivan's strength continued to fluctuate as it moved west on September 11, and the storm attained its highest winds of 170 mph (270 km/h) as it passed within 30 miles (48 km) of Grand Cayman..."
Weren't the highest sustained winds in Camille and Keith with winds of about 190 mph?
Heard that the other models are now in agreement with the return of 5 into the GOM
And the redevelopment of it
What are you looking at? All Global Models including regional models show not only a return into the Gulf of Mexico but a re-intensification to tropical cyclone status.
Nope I agree...I think GFS is overdoing it again.
But it's not just the GFS.
I saw the devastation there in 69 as my Grandparents Lived in Bay St. Louis off of Hwy 90 3.5 Miles from the Beach.
I was 9.5 at the time and saw Man walk on the Moon a Month earlier.
Katrina pushed 7 feet of water across My Grandparents Home and Highway 90...and for 6 miles more inland.
It takes 3 Hours to Drive across her Impact Zone.
1500 plus Lives lost and 240,000 folks were displaced.
The largest US Shift in Population since reconstruction after the Civil War.
Camille was only talked about in Hushed tones for decades. Till August 2005.
And those who saw Both,,would in a moment say there is no Comparison,,period.
And if you saw Coleman Ave,,in Waveland,Miss where a 30ft plus Surge went thru..one can see easily from Pascagoula and east of Mobile Bay to Houma,La. what that Historic storm toll was and remains.
Impact is the determining factor.
Always.
Camille although A powerful cat 5 at Landfall,was a relatively small Hurricane in Size.
To compare one Storm over another isnt like comparing dogs and cars.
.."Calamity Knows no Borders,only men's minds and Maps do....
Katrina Base Map with thumbnails,re-loaded
Its not just the GFS
Ok so I think the models are overdoing it again. Remember all the models agreed that 05L was going to be a TS as well but did that pan out? Nope because looking at water vapor the ULL to the NW was pulling all that moisture away not allowing the broad low to tighten up and build. To this point the models have not had the intensity anywhere close. Even over forecasted rainfall rates for today.
You're right, I should Have mentioned unofficial, It is widespread knowledge here that the Government of the time actually tried to cover up and underestimated the damage caused by Ivan strictly for political reasons and in the interest tourism , but they were tossed out the following year, what most failed to realise is that PPM that took over were respeonsible for our great recovery and growth after Ivan, they were thrown last year to my dismay and many others with a grain of sense only to put the same person back in power that covered up the devastation of Ivan, not that it means anything to you , just shows what a bright electorate we have here :)
Actual forecasts and not just models.
Are those fires?
Trying to read that in one sentence was hard. :)
Are there any links to this? I never heard of that before and that's 49 mph or like 30% more than the recorded peak wind speeds which is an enormous amount when you're considering the wind speeds of a cat. 5. This would been have been huge news at the time and tough to keep silent.
They all were out to lunch on the intensity for TD05 so yes they all could be out to lunch again. Look at the verification of the models today and dont take them for what they are. They are way off on intensity. While I agree the track may be ok it will not be a TC. No way it because a Depression. Look at the real data and not just a math equation trying to forecast the weather.
I asked bc sometimes fires get picked up on radar and it seems its not moving much...
Looks like radar to me.
You would probably need to be in clear air mode to pick up on fires as smoke does not reflect energy back as well as water does with rayleigh scattering. You would not get returns like that with smoke from a fire.
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