Sunday, May 26, 2013

Spring Temperature Anomalies

The cold spring over Interior Alaska is fading into the past now as "insta-summer is upon us: the high was 77ºF at Fairbanks on Saturday and snow is melting fast at higher elevations. This has pushed rivers draining the uplands well up, though so far no flooding on the Chena or Salcha.

For the spring as a whole (Mar-Apr-May), the anomalies are not especially remarkable, and will be even less so by the end of the month. Low level temperature anomalies from the NCEP/NCAR Reanalysis through May 24th, are depicted below for Alaska and vicinity, The warm anomaly over the Arctic Ocean north of Wrangel Island is much more impressive than the cold anomalies over Alaska.
Courtesy of NCEP/NCAR Reanalysis
The cold temperatures show up in this short loop of weekly temperature anomalies (ºC) since March 1st:


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3 comments:

  1. UnknownApril 21, 2015 at 12:46 PM

    Hello! My name is Agnieszka and I write to you from Poland (sorry, my English is not perfect). I write a master thesis about temperature anomalies in Alaska and I find your blog extremely interesting and helpful! Sooo thank you for that :-) I have one question. And this is very laic question but I hope you will help me. I need some composite maps of temperature and sea level pressure in Alaska between 1951 and 2010. Many times I saw on your blog that you use Alaska-centred maps like that. I've searched the esrl.noaa.gov website but the maps I found are Canada-centred or they cut the Southeast Panhandle... Maybe I am not a good searcher ;-) but the maps you use (e.g. in this post) are perfect for me and I would be sooo grateful if you told me where I can find them.
    Greetings from Kraków!
    Agnieszka

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    Replies
    1. Richard JamesApril 21, 2015 at 2:05 PM

      Agnies,

      It is possible to choose a "custom" map projection on the ESRL page, and then you can enter the latitude and longitude of your choice. For example, on the following page

      http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/cgi-bin/data/composites/printpage.pl

      I entered 50-75N and 170-235E and obtained an Alaska-centric map. You should be able to reproduce the map by going to this URL:

      http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/cgi-bin/data/composites/comp.pl?var=Air+Temperature&level=Surface&mon1=0&mon2=0&iy=1951&iy=&iy=&iy=&iy=&iy=&iy=&iy=&iy=&iy=&iy=&iy=&iy=&iy=&iy=&iy=&iy=&iy=&iy=&iy=&ipos[1]=&ipos[2]=&ineg[1]=&ineg[2]=&timefile0=&tstype=0&timefile1=&value=&typeval=1&compval=1&lag=0&labelc=Color&labels=Shaded&type=2&scale=150&labelcon=1&switch=0&cint=&lowr=&highr=&proj=Custom&xlat1=50&xlat2=75&xlon1=170&xlon2=235&custproj=Northern+Hemisphere+Polar+Stereographic&level1=1000mb&level2=10mb&Submit=Create+Plot


      Let me know if this helps. Good luck with your thesis!

      Delete
    2. UnknownApril 24, 2015 at 12:21 PM

      Hi Richard!
      This is exactly what I need! Thank you soooo much, now I can visualise the pressure and temperature patterns during the greatest anomalies. It was not so difficult, eh, sometimes you just have something stuck in your mind and do not see other solutions. I am very grateful for your help :-)
      Have a nice day!

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