My winter 2013-14 weather prediction for North America!

NOAA has released its graphs for the winter forecast of winter 2013-14 and I'd say it was rather boring. Precipitation – average, temperatures – average. Well, you get the picture. On the other hand the newly released Farmer's Almanac is going to the extreme of calling for really COLD conditions!

So, who's right?

My best guess is that the reality will lie somewhere in between. But, let's take a look anyway at four of the things that actually do influence our global weather from time to time:

Solar insolence – This is a fancy way of talking about how much heat old Sol puts out. Right now, we are climbing out of a rather prolonged and wimpy solar maximum that has not seen much in the way of sunspots, solar storms or anything else for that matter. Historically, when the sun behaves this way we can look for cooler weather globally.

ENSO – The  El Niño Southern Oscillation refers to variations in the temperature of the surface of the tropical eastern Pacific Ocean (warming and cooling known as El Niño and La Niña respectively). We have been locked in a ENSO neutral phase for quite some time and it looks like that trend may persist on into the early portions of the coming winter. So, to me, that implies a more or less average influence for cold winter-like conditions. Neither good or bad.

Vulcanism – Of the eighty or so active volcanoes located all around the world (any one of which can go bonkers and spew enough particulates into the atmosphere to cause a measurable drop in temperature), it's a throw of the dice. When, where and how severe such an eruption might be is very uncertain and so this is a climatic wild card in the deck that could change the dynamics of our coming winter overnight.

CO2 – Carbon dioxide is a so-called 'greenhouse gas' that has been steadily climbing ever since the Industrial Revolution. It's measured in part per million (ppm) and in lieu of the presence of mankind, would read at around 272 ppm. The official level of the gas in our atmosphere, aka the Keeling Curve, put it at 394 ppm when this post was written in late August. That's higher than it's ever been over the last three million years and, yes Victoria, it does play a major role in warming the earth's atmosphere!

Taking just those factors into consideration, (I've left out the Milanovitch Cycles for this discussion), I've come to feeling that this winter will be a little on the cold side, but still well within the historical averages. That said, (the fly in the ointment being CO2 and the anthropogenic climate forcing it causes), we may see some really weird winter storms this time around. Time will tell...