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| Barefoot kayaking in January Photo: Phillip Lott, Lake Theresa, Florida |
Climate change and the Arctic Oscillation combine to keep cold from moving south.
Pine Island Glacier is one of the fastest-retreating glaciers in Antarctica. Watch the glacier's ice front as it retreats and sheds some notable icebergs over the past two decades.
With just weeks left to go, the world is heading toward the warmest winter ever recorded as an unusual weather pattern at the top of the world combines with the temperature-boosting influence of climate change.
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| climatecentral.org |
A stubbornly extreme low-pressure system over the North Pole has pulled the jet stream north, backing it up against the fast-moving winds that constantly ring the polar region. The result: A tight barrier that’s kept the cold locked in place, upsetting fall forecasts for an icy winter ahead.
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| Florida winters are typically warmer than the rest of North America, but this winter has been exceptional with temperatures consistently in the 80°s and higher. The pattern may change soon with a cool down coming in early March. Photo: Phillip Lott, Lake Theresa, Florida |
Now, with temperatures 3° Celsius higher than the 20th century average across the contiguous U.S., the uniqueness of the pattern is expected to spark an avalanche of new research into its cause. If the trend continues through Feb. 29, when winter ends for meteorologists, it will set a global high for the season in U.S. records going back 141 years.
“What really jumps out is not a particular hot spot,” said Bob Henson, a meteorologist with the Weather Underground. “But the sheer breadth of the warmth.”
The Arctic oscillation, modeled above by Tropicaltidbits.com, is forecast to remain extremely positive through at least Feb. 24.
Source: Tropicaltidbits.com
Last month marked the hottest January ever in Europe, according to the Copernicus Climate Change Service, with surface temperatures 3.1° C warmer than average (about 5.6° F warmer***). It was 5° C milder across much of Russia and parts of Scandinavia and eastern Canada (about 9° F warmer***), according to the U.S. National Centers for Environmental Information.
***How does 1° increase of Celsius differ from 1° Fahrenheit?
The degree in the Celsius scale is larger than the Fahrenheit equivalent. The conversion is Celsius times 1.8 equals Fahrenheit. Thus a 1° C rise in temperature is equivalent to a 1.8° F rise.
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| climatecentral.org |
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The Arctic oscillation, modeled above by the GFS at Tropicaltidbits.com, is forecast to tilt more neutral around the first of March allowing a lobe of cold air to penetrate as far south as Florida. Source: Tropicaltidbits.com
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“But it simply didn’t pan out that way,” said Ryan Truchelut, the president of Weather Tiger LLC in Tallahassee, Florida, which provides forecasts for the agriculture industry. “A lot of existing forecasting methods didn’t capture this.”
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| climatecentral.org |
It’s a mystery that will lead to new research on why it happened, and if it’s directly related to climate change given the fact that it comes at a time when the four warmest Januaries on record have all occurred over the last four years. The one upside to this winter is that it has allowed the Arctic to gain back some of its sea ice, which has been shrinking in recent winters.
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The European Model also shows the jet stream digging into the Deep South around Feb 28, 2020. Arctic oscillation, ECMWF model above by Tropicaltidbits.com.
Source: Tropicaltidbits.com
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“We are still in the early days of an evolving climate era,” Henson said. “The climate will keep changing under our feet as we try to get our arms around it.”
As the sun sets on the Arctic and darkness settles over the North Pole, a deep reservoir of frigid air builds up across the region. Normally, the pressure system sitting directly over the pole will swing back and forth between high and low pressure, strengthening and weakening the surrounding polar winds. When they’re at their weakest, the cold escapes.
But not this year. The Arctic oscillation reached record intensity on Feb. 10, and will likely increase in strength in the next few days, said Craig Long, a meteorologist with the U.S. Climate Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland. The oscillation is rarely this intense, and its hold rarely lasts this long.
In New York, some plants are already pushing up through the Earth, convinced that spring has sprung, while many southern states have seen sprouted leaves three weeks early in many places. Meanwhile, the mild readings depressed energy consumption and prices.
$2300 a Night: Overwater bungalows became the pinnacle of aspirational travel.
Experience the original in Bora Bora for about half the price
A bedroom in the Sandals Royal Caribbean over the water bungalows. (Sandals Resorts International)
Hotel operators in destinations from Mexico to Aruba to Walt Disney World are increasingly planting their own versions of the kind of water-top lodgings that originated in French Polynesia more than 50 years ago. Royal Caribbean International, the Miami-based cruise line, even added its own take: 20 floating cabanas that opened last month on its newly renovated private island in the Bahamas, CocoCay.
More than 200 resorts around the world offer some type of accommodations over the water, according to numbers compiled by Roger Wade, founder and editor of the online guide OverwaterBungalows.net. Wade started the site about a decade ago after coming across his first such property in Moorea a few years earlier.
“When you see a photo for an overwater bungalow, you say: ‘That’s the greatest thing ever. That’s the greatest hotel room in the world, why can’t I stay there?'" he said. “Then you find out it’s because it’s $800 a night, or higher.”
Floating cabanas on Royal Caribbean’s CocoCay in the Bahamas. (Royal Caribbean International)
The growth of the overwater bungalows in North America doesn’t mean the experience is getting any less exclusive, at least when it comes to price. There are some good deals in the low hundreds of dollars available in Malaysia, the Maldives and French Polynesia, but options closer to home for Americans tend to be priced much higher.
The Bora Bora Bungalows at Disney's Polynesian Villas & Bungalows. (Matt Stroshane/Disney)
The least-expensive price for one of the Sandals bungalows in Jamaica was between $2,000 and $2,300 a night. Disney’s Bora Bora Bungalows, which opened in 2015 at the Polynesian Village Resort in Central Florida, start at about $2,600 a night at the slowest time of year. And Royal Caribbean’s floating cabanas start at $999 — which only includes the hours a ship is docked at the island.
“I think there’s incredible pent-up demand in the United States,” Wade says. He points out that geography and hurricane risks make it more difficult to add the structures in the Caribbean than in places like Bora Bora.
And the experience is different depending on the location too, says Greg Kiep, a Beverly Hills-based luxury travel adviser with Protravel International.
He says most of his clients who contact him about an overwater bungalow want to go to Tahiti or Bora Bora looking for the whole high-end package.
“I think it’s a combination between an exotic destination and having the pinnacle experience at that destination,” he says. “It’s sort of everything wrapped into one.”
The bungalows at Disney, Kiep says, are for people who want something different.
“You’re never going to compare the water by Disney World to the water in Bora Bora,” he says. “I think if anything, it’s maybe giving people a taste of something that’s been so aspirational for so long. I don’t think most people would compare it as the same experience.”
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