It sure seems like high pressure has been the rule over the Arctic Ocean, and sure enough, it has been. Here's a plot of mean seal level pressure for the two months between January 15th and March 15th (the units are in Pascals: divide by 100 for millibars). That's quite a big high north of Barrow. The bottom plot shows the anomaly over the same time period. The 12 millibar anomaly is quite substantial for a two month period..
Here's a POES IR visual of the HP area Rick describes. Good for this AM only as it will change over time. A true polar shot would be better.
ReplyDeletehttp://pafg.arh.noaa.gov/arhdata/sat/hrpt/latest/4acf.jpg
The archived image for today will be here for a while.
http://pafg.arh.noaa.gov/archive.php?sat=hrpt§or=4acf