Seasonal variations of gravity wave activity in the lower stratosphere over an Antarctic Peninsula station

An 8 year series of 965 high-resolution radiosonde soundings over Rothera (67 degrees S, 68 degrees W) on the Antarctic Peninsula are used to study gravity wave characteristics in the lower stratosphere. The gravity wave energy is shown to have a seasonal variation with peaks at the equinoxes; the largest peak is around the spring equinox. During the winter months and extending into the spring, there is both an enhancement in the downward propagating wave activity and a reduction in the amount of critical-level filtering of upward propagating mountain waves. The horizontal propagation directions of the gravity waves were determined using hodographs. It was found that there is a predisposition toward northward and westward propagating waves above Rothera. This is in agreement with previous observations of gravity wave momentum flux in the wintertime mesosphere over Rothera. These results are consistent with a scenario whereby the stratospheric gravity wavefield above Rothera is determined by a combination of wind flow over topography-generating waves from below, and sources such as the edge of the polar stratospheric vortex-generating waves from above, especially during winter and spring

Antarctic temperature variability and change from station data

Variability and change in near‐surface air temperature at 17 Antarctic stations is examined using data from the SCAR READER database. We consider the relationships between temperature, and atmospheric circulation, sea ice concentration and forcing by the tropical oceans. All 17 stations have their largest inter‐annual temperature variability during the winter and the annual mean temperature anomalies are dominated by winter temperatures. The large inter‐annual temperature variability on the western Antarctic Peninsula has decreased over the instrumental period as sea ice has declined. Variability in the phase of the SAM exerts the greatest control of temperatures, although tropical Pacific forcing has also played a large part, along with local atmospheric circulation variability at some locations. The relationship of positive (negative) SAM and high (low) Peninsula and low (high) East Antarctic temperatures was not present before the mid‐1970s. Thirteen of the 17 stations have experienced a positive trend in their annual mean temperature over the full length of their record, with the largest being at Vernadsky (formerly Faraday) (0.46° ± 0.15 C dec−1) on the western side of the Antarctic Peninsula. The deepening of the Amundsen Sea Low as a result of the more positive SAM and changes in the IPO and PDO have contributed to the warming of the Peninsula. Beyond the Antarctic Peninsula there has been little significant change in temperature. The two plateau stations had a small cooling from the late 1970s to the late 1990s consistent with the SAM becoming positive, but have subsequently warmed. During spring there has been an Antarctic‐wide warming, with all but one station having experienced an increase in temperature, although the only trends that were significant were at Vostok, Scott base, Vernadsky and Amundsen‐Scott. In this season much of the Peninsula/West Antarctic warming can be attributed to tropical Pacific forcing through the IPO/PDO

Measuring changes in snowpack SWE continuously on a landscape scale using lake water pressure

The seasonal snowpack is a globally important water resource that is notoriously difficult to measure. Existing instruments make measurements of falling or accumulating snow water equivalent (SWE) that are susceptible to bias, and most represent only a point in the landscape. Furthermore the global array of SWE sensors is too sparse and too poorly distributed to adequately constrain snow in weather and climate models. We present a new approach to monitoring snowpack SWE from time series of lake water pressure. We tested our method in the lowland Finnish Arctic and in an alpine valley and high-mountain cirque in Switzerland, and found that we could measure changes in SWE and their uncertainty through snowfalls with little bias and with an uncertainty comparable to or better than that achievable by other instruments. More importantly, our method inherently senses change over the whole lake surface, an area in this study up to 10.95 km2 or 274 million times larger than the nearest pluviometer. This large scale makes our measurements directly comparable to the grid cells of weather and climate models. We find, for example, snowfall biases of up to 100% in operational forecast models AROME-Arctic and COSMO-1. Seasonally-frozen lakes are widely distributed at high latitudes and are particularly common in mountain ranges, hence our new method is particularly well suited to the widespread, autonomous monitoring of snow-water resources in remote areas that are largely unmonitored today. This is potentially transformative in reducing uncertainty in regional precipitation and runoff in seasonally-cold climates

Item 1. Apologies

Apologies were received from Stephen Burt & Dave Bullock. Item 2. Agreement of agenda The agenda was agreed. Item 3. Minutes of last meeting The minutes of the committee meeting & AGM held on 12 th September 2014 were agreed as being correct. Item 4. Items arising Actions from the previous committee meeting were considered and the following matters were discussed: Rain gauge raffle – At the 2013 RMetS Amateur Meteorologist Symposium, MD organised a SIG stand where he raffled an EML rain gauge, signed-up 29 new members & raised £145. MD was thanked for his hard work. New committee member – MD has contacted, but not yet had a reply from, Mark Wilkinson (James Hutton Institute, Aberdeen) to invite him to join the SIG committee. The SIG has offered to pay travel expenses for Mark for one trip/year to attend a SI

Causes of the Antarctic region record high temperature at Signy Island, 30 January 1982

On 30th January 1982, the research station on Signy Island (South Orkney Islands) reported a daily maximum temperature of 19.8 °C. This is a record maximum for any station south of 60°S. We use surface observations, atmospheric reanalyses and high-resolution atmospheric model simulations to investigate the drivers of this extreme event. At the time of the record temperature exceptionally warm air was being advected southwards towards the South Orkney Islands from the subtropical South Atlantic. This air mass cooled significantly at levels below 1 km during its long track over the cold Southern Ocean but remained relatively warm above this level. Atmospheric model simulations show that warm air from upper levels was brought down towards the surface over Signy Island in a föhn wind generated by northerly flow over Coronation Island, a mountainous island just to the north of Signy Island. Modelled temperatures over Signy Island are in good agreement with observations and thus support the hypothesis that the record temperature was caused by a combination of exceptional warm advection with conditions suitable for the generation of föhn. Since conditions conducive to föhn occur relatively frequently, föhn warming may have a significant influence on the local climate and ecology of Signy Island

Metagenomic Profiling of Microbial Pathogens in the Little Bighorn River, Montana

The Little Bighorn River is the primary source of water for water treatment plants serving the local Crow Agency population, and has special significance in the spiritual and ceremonial life of the Crow tribe. Unfortunately, the watershed suffers from impaired water quality, with high counts of fecal coliform bacteria routinely measured during run-off events. A metagenomic analysis was carried out to identify potential pathogens in the river water. The Oxford Nanopore MinION platform was used to sequence DNA in near real time to identify both uncultured and a coliform-enriched culture of microbes collected from a popular summer swimming area of the Little Bighorn River. Sequences were analyzed using CosmosID bioinformatics and, in agreement with previous studies, enterohemorrhagic and enteropathogenic Escherichia coli and other E. coli pathotypes were identified. Noteworthy was detection and identification of enteroaggregative E. coli O104:H4 and Vibrio cholerae serotype O1 El Tor, however, cholera toxin genes were not identified. Other pathogenic microbes, as well as virulence genes and antimicrobial resistance markers, were also identified and characterized by metagenomic analyses. It is concluded that metagenomics provides a useful and potentially routine tool for identifying in an in-depth manner microbial contamination of waterways and, thereby, protecting public health

A new daily observational record from Grytviken, South Georgia: exploring 20th century extremes in the South Atlantic

Although recent work has highlighted a host of significant late 20th century environmental changes across the mid to high latitudes of the Southern Hemisphere, the sparse nature of observational records limits our ability to place these changes in the context of long-term (multi-decadal and centennial) variability. Historical records from sub-Antarctic islands offer considerable potential for developing highly resolved records of change. In 1905, a whaling and meteorological station was established at Grytviken on sub-Antarctic South Georgia in the South Atlantic (54°S, 36°W) providing near-continuous daily observations through to present day. Here we report a new, daily observational record of temperature and precipitation from Grytviken, which we compare to regional datasets and historical reanalysis (Twentieth Century Reanalysis; 20CR version 2c). We find a shift towards increasingly warmer daytime extremes commencing from the mid-20th century and accompanied by warmer night-time temperatures, with an average rate of temperature rise of 0.13°C per decade over the period 1907-2016 (p<0.0001). Analysis of these data, and reanalysis products, suggest a change of particular synoptic conditions across the mid to high-latitudes since the mid-20th century, characterised by stronger westerly airflow and associated warm föhn winds across South Georgia. This rapid rate of warming and associated declining habitat suitability has substantial negative implications for biodiversity levels and survival of key marine biota in the region

The performance of the ERA-Interim and ERA5 atmospheric reanalyses over Weddell Sea pack ice

We use meteorological measurements from three drifting buoys to evaluate the performance of the ERA-Interim and ERA5 atmospheric reanalyses from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts over the Weddell Sea sea ice zone. The temporal variability in surface pressure and near-surface air temperature is captured well by the two reanalyses but both reanalyses exhibit a warm bias relative to the buoy measurements. This bias is small at temperatures close to 0 °C but reaches 5 – 10 °C at -40 °C. For two of the buoys the mean temperature bias in ERA5 is significantly smaller than that in ERA-Interim while for the third buoy the biases in the two products are comparable. 10 m wind speed biases in both reanalyses are small and may largely result from measurement errors associated with icing of the buoy anemometers. The biases in downwelling shortwave and longwave radiation are significant in both reanalyses but we caution that the pattern of bias is consistent with potential errors in the buoy measurements, caused by accumulation of snow and ice on the radiometers. Overall, our study suggests that, with the exception of near-surface temperature, both reanalyses reproduce the buoy measurements to within the limits of measurement uncertainty. We suggest that the significant biases in near-surface air temperature may result from the simplified representation of sea ice used in the reanalysis models, and we recommend the use of a more sophisticated representation of sea ice, including variable ice and snow thicknesses, in future reanalyses

Extreme temperatures in the Antarctic

We present the first Antarctic-wide analysis of extreme near-surface air temperatures based on data collected up to the end of 2019 as part of the synoptic meteorological observing programs. We consider temperatures at 17 stations on the Antarctic continent and nearby sub-Antarctic islands. We examine the frequency distributions of temperatures and the highest and lowest individual temperatures observed. The variability and trends in the number of extreme temperatures were examined via the mean daily temperatures computed from the 0, 6, 12 and 18 UTC observations, with the thresholds for extreme warm and cold days taken as the 5th and 95th percentiles. The five stations examined from the Antarctic Peninsula region all experienced a statistically significant increase (p < 0.01) in the number of extreme high temperatures in the late Twentieth Century part of their records, although the number of extremes decreased in subsequent years. For the period after 1979 we investigate the synoptic background to the extreme events using ECMWF ERA-Interim reanalysis fields. The majority of record high temperatures were recorded after the passage of airmasses over high orography, with the air being warmed by the Föhn effect. At some stations in coastal East Antarctica the highest temperatures were recorded after air with a high potential temperature descended from the Antarctic plateau, resulting in an airmass 5-7°C warmer than the maritime air. Record low temperatures at the Antarctic Peninsula stations were observed during winters with positive sea ice anomalies over the Bellingshausen and Weddell Seas