Wild Arctic weather: Siberian temperatures swing 100 degrees Fahrenheit in 2 weeks
On weather maps, the high pressure area looks like a pockmark in the Arctic. The reddish, almost pink blotch goes from far eastern Russia across the Bering Sea and up into the Chukchi Sea, extending well north, into the Arctic.
The unusually strong high pressure area is sweeping anomalously warm air into Siberia, northeast Russia, parts of Alaska, and the Arctic Ocean. One community affected by the unusually high temperatures is the small Russian community of Omolon, where an all-time January high temperature record was reportedly set on Monday, when the temperature hit 3 degrees above Celsius, or 38.4 degrees Fahrenheit.
That might still sound a bit chilly, but consider that the average daily high temperature there at this time of year is minus-32 degrees Celsius, or minus-25.6 degrees Fahrenheit, according to data from Meteo France, cited by meteorologist Bob Henson of Weather Underground.
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Omolon isn't that far to the east of parts of Siberia that are infamous for their cold weather. Oymyakon, about 540 miles west of Omolon, has been described as having temperatures so low that “eyelashes freeze, frostbite is a constant danger, and cars are usually kept running even when not being used.” The temperature in Oymyakon plunged to minus-88 degrees Fahrenheit in early January.
In Oymyakon, and other parts of Siberia, temperatures also were about 60 degrees above average on Tuesday, thanks to the clockwise circulation of air around the high pressure area. That's a 100-degree Fahrenheit temperature swing from two weeks ago, when temperatures were as cold as minus-40 to minus-88 degrees Fahrenheit in that area, leading to viral videos of people with icicles hanging from their eyelashes.
Much of Siberia was plunged into deep cold during late December through mid-January, when the polar vortex spun southward out of the Arctic and parked itself above the massive, sparsely populated region.
As the Washington Post reported on Tuesday, Oymyakon is known as "the coldest permanently occupied human settlement in the world."
The ridge in the upper atmosphere is not just resulting in a Siberian winter heat wave. It's rerouting weather systems across North America, which is downstream as winds blow generally west-to-east across the Northern Hemisphere.
As Mashable reported last week and the Post discussed on Tuesday, the ridge of high pressure is kicking into motion a chain of events that may result in frigid air encroaching on parts of the U.S. during February, as the jet stream dives south to form a trough over Canada and the U.S.
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Meanwhile, the unusually high temperatures over Siberia will slide northeastward, toward Alaska and the Pacific side of the Arctic. Once there, it may impede the buildup of winter ice cover, which has been hovering at or near all-time lows for this time of year.
Some computer model simulations sweep an unusually warm air masses across a broad swath of the Arctic Ocean during the next 2 weeks, from the Atlantic and Pacific sides of the Far North. These warm pulses could ensure that Arctic sea ice sets another record low winter maximum.
This is yet another sign of the rapidly changing Arctic, where sea ice is thinning and shrinking, temperatures are rising at more than twice the rate of the rest of the globe, and nearly every aspect of natural and human life is affected.
Andrew Freedman is Mashable's Senior Editor for Science and Special Projects. Prior to working at Mashable, Freedman was a Senior Science writer for Climate Central. He has also worked as a reporter for Congressional Quarterly and Greenwire/E&E Daily. His writing has also appeared in the Washington Post, online at The Weather Channel, and washingtonpost.com, where he wrote a weekly climate science column for the "Capital Weather Gang" blog. He has provided commentary on climate science and policy for Sky News, CBC Radio, NPR, Al Jazeera, Sirius XM Radio, PBS NewsHour, and other national and international outlets. He holds a Masters in Climate and Society from Columbia University, and a Masters in Law and Diplomacy from The Fletcher School at Tufts University.
