sSpring Arrives Friday: What To Expect, And Hopes For A (Slightly) Wet Season

Astronomical spring starts this coming Friday. I
am definitely ready for it!

 Spring arrived on March 1 for people enmeshed in meteorology and climatology. 

But the rest of the world goes by the start of astronomical spring. For us, spring starts at 10:46 a.m. this Friday. Hallelujah! 

The early signs of spring are already here: 

Red wing blackbirds have been doing their "conk la REE" song for a week or two now. There's rumored sightings of crocuses in protected southern exposures around the state. The first green nubs of my daffodils have tentatively poked through the ground in may gardens. 

Clearly,  the worst of winter is over for most of us. Don't tell that to anybody in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, which just had a record blizzard there, and some places in the region have four to as many as six feet of snow on the ground. I'm glad that's not our problem!  

Average temperatures around rise fastest from around mid-March to mid-April.  In Burlington, the  normal high temperature today is 41 degrees. By April 18, a mere month from now, normal afternoon temperatures will be 57 degrees, so that's quite an improvement.. 

Even though a generally cooler the normal weather pattern has set up, it will get more and more difficult to see some truly wintry cold waves. Difficult but not impossible. It's been below zero in Burlington as late as March 29 1923   Widespread subzero cold froze Vermont as late as April 7, 1972.

But spring is volatile in Vermont. It's also been as hot as 84 degrees in March (1946 and 1998) and 92 degrees in April (1976).

On the negative side, measurable snow has fallen well into May in the past. Let's hope that history doesn't repeat itself this year.  

As far as how the weather will turn out this spring, the short answer - as always, - is "Who knows?" The folks at NOAA pretty much throw up their hands at this one. They give us in the Northeast equal chances of above or below norma temperatures this spring. They also give us equal chances of above or below normal rainfall. 

Believe it or not, there's still a lingering drought in parts of the Green Mountain State. It's not nearly as bad as it was last summer and autumn, but it's still a potential problem. Since things have been frozen all winter, the U.S. Drought Monitor maps have also been "frozen," in Vermont, with no change since mid-December.

The U.S. Drought Monitor maps still show drought in northeastern Vermont and abnormal dryness in southern areas of the state through the winter. The next Drought Monitor maps comes out tomorrow, and it will be interesting to see if anything changed now that things have begun to thaw out. 

In any event, precipitation hasn't been that impressive this winter. The first half of the season brought is near to slightly below normal precipitation.

February and so far March have been dry. It seems for the past couple months, the bigger storms have sent their heaviest precipitation west, north, south and east of us, but never quite hitting Vermont directly. It's almost as if last year's drought has a kind of "muscle memory" that causes precipitation to avoid us.

Sure, we want a lot of bright, sunny, balmy spring days. We also want a wet spring to erase the last vestiges of last years's deep drought.  

Too bad we can't put in an order for what what would really work: Rainy nights and sunny days through the spring. 

But it's Vermont. Expect anything. Sunny and 80 one day, snow the next. Vermont's weather always keeps us on our toes. Especially in the spring 

"Rusting Rivers" in Arctic An Ominous Sign Of Climate Change

Rusty water in a waterway in the Arctic. The permafrost
is melting, which releases metals that were once frozen
into place, onto the surface. 

High up in the Arctic, rivers and streams are turning red-orange, as if billions of nails were rusting away and flowing into what should be pristine brooks way up there. 

As NPR reports, these rusty rivers are now widely documented in the Brooks Range in northern Alaska. 

"Hundreds of Arctic rivers and streams are turning bright red-orange, not from chemical pollution, but from naturally occurring iron spilling from long-frozen ground as temperatures warm. 

The "rusting rivers" phenomenon, which has been documented across the Brooks Range in northern Alaska, offer a vivid example of the effects of climate change in a region that is warming faster than the global average."

Other metals, like aluminum and copper are also being release from the thawing permafrost, NPR says. Those metals can do a number on fish and other animals in the food chain. People are also wondering if the metals might contaminate rural drinking supplies, but so far, there's been no evidence of that. 

This information comes from an annual  "Arctic Report Card" that was recently released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). They've been doing this for 20 years because the Arctic is the fastest warming place on Earth. And what goes on in the Arctic doesn't stay in the Arctic. 

This annual report is threatened because - big eye roll - the Trump administration does not want any government reports to even hint at climate change. He's terribly allergic to the term, constantly referring to idea of a warming world as a "hoax"

Scientist hope to keep the report card going, maybe by working around the United States.  

As NPR reports:

"An independent network of global scientists writes and compiles the research in the annual report, offering it some shelter from political winds. Some sections of this year's edition openly discuss the effects of climate change, and at least one study notes its major cause - burning fossil fuels."

Let's hope Trump doesn't find out about that line.

It's depressing to realize that basic scientific facts are now much like Soviet-era samizdat, publications that take great risks at offending the Fascist In Chief. We can't be sure if there will be another valuable Arctic Report Card next year 

Other information in the 2025 Arctic Report Card:

-- The Greenland Ice Sheet lost 129 billion tons of ice in 2025, continuing its long term trend. 

-- Alaskan glaciers have lost an average of 125 vertical feet since the 1950s. 

-- Arctic sea ice reached its lowest level on record this fall and early winter. 

-- The period from October 2024 to September, 2025 was the Arctic's warmest and wettest on record. 

-- Because of the increased precipitation in the Arctic, snow cover was above average during the heart of winter.  But the snow cover was well below normal by June, because of the unusual Arctic warmth. 

-- The relative lack of ice and snow allows the sun to heat the ground and water in the Arctic more than it would otherwise. That makes existing left over snow and ice melt even faster. It's called a feedback loop.    

As I've said before, what goes on in the Arctic doesn't stay in the Arctic. As much as climate change is messing up the top of the world, its effects will bleed down to the mid-latitudes through higher sea levels on the coasts, and bigger, more destructive storms. 

Arctic Now Becoming Emitter Of Carbon Dioxide, That Dreaded Greenhouse Gas

In this photo from U.S. Bureau of Land Management,
permafrost, which has been increasingly thawing in
the Arctic, erodes into the Beaufort Sea.

Once upon a time, the Arctic used to be the place where carbon dioxide went to die.  

At least it seemed that way. It would get stored in the permafrost, seemingly locked in that icy prison never to bother us in the atmosphere again. never to bother us in the atmosphere again. 

Back in the day, that didn't matter much anyway.  There wasn't so much carbon dioxide in the air, so no real climate change. At least that's the way it was a century or more ago.

Now, just when we don't need more greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the Arctic is starting to belch it out, according to new information from NOAA. 

 The world has warmed up enough through climate change to alter the ecosystems of the Arctic, and that is prompting that stored carbon in the permafrost to come out of hiding to join the world's hot and getting hotter party. 

The news comes the 2024 Arctic Report Card, researched and written by 97 scientists from 11 countries.

NOAA says

"After storing carbon dioxide in frozen soil for millennia, the Arctic tundra is being transformed by frequent wildfires into an overall source of carbon to the atmosphere, which is already absorbing record levels of heat-trapping fossil fuel pollution."

Wildfires in the areas of North America with permafrost have increased in the past couple decades. The report says that since 2003, emissions from polar wildfires averaged 207 million tons of carbon each year. That's more than the annual carbon emissions from nations like Argentina and Austria. 

Arctic wildfires are only a relatively small piece of the problem.  The permafrost is melting more and more, releasing carbon into the air instead of storing it. That's why, for the first time, the Arctic is making the climate change problem worse, not better.

I found a good explanation of this at NPR:

"Twila Moon, lead editor of the Arctic Report Card and  scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center, likened permafrost to chicken in the freezer: As long as it stays frozen, microbes stay away.

'Once you have that chicken out of your freezer, it's thawing and all those microbes are getting to work, breaking down the chicken, making it rot,' she said. 'The permafrost is really doing the same thing.'"

There was the tiniest glimmer of good news from Greenland, but it was definitely nothing to get the Champagne and confetti out to party. 

The Greenland Ice sheet mass loss was the lowest since 2013, mostly because it snowed more than usual up there. Still, the ice shoot lost somewhere in the broad range of 22 and 77 billion tons of ice last year. 

That was enough to raise the global sea levels by 0.15 millimeters. Which is too small for anybody to notice. But if you add in all the other sources of sea level rise, and compound them year after year, it starts to make a big difference. 

This report demonstrates that the Arctic has changed much in just a few decades. There's no way it's going to stay as it is  now, either. It's going to get worse.

The Arctic is the fastest warming region of the world.  There's no signs, and no reasons for that warming to slow down as fossil fuel emissions keep cranking.  Since the Arctic is also adding those emissions, if anything, the pace at which the Arctic deteriorates will also increase.  

The Arctic:: Humid, Rainy, Stormy, Smoky And A Typhoon?

A storm surge pushes into Nome, Alaska earlier this year
as a former typhoon raked much of the state. The Arctic is
turning wetter, stormier, more fiery and less icy due to
climate change. 

When you think of the Arctic, torrential rains, smoky skies, fires, storm surges, humid weather and typhoons don't really come to mind. 

As the latest annual report on the Arctic tells us, though, those weather patterns might not dominate the top of the world just yet, they are increasingly become factors in a rapidly warming environment.  

NOAA releases an Arctic report card every year. The latest publication, released last month,  is the 17th annual summary of a vastly changing Arctic.

Some of the top takeaways from the latest report as quoted from the document: 

"Arctic annual air temperatures from October 2021 to September 2022 were the sixth warmest dating back to 1900, continuing a decade-long trend in which Arctic air temperatures have warmed faster than the global average. The Arctic's seven warmest years since 1900 have been in the last seven years."

My take: Being the sixth warmest and not #1 is no big accomplishment. Earth has been in a La Nina pattern for three years now. That tends to cool the world a little bit. Sixth warmest isn't a great sign if we've been in a La Nina for so long. 

"Arctic sea ice extent (coverage) was higher than many recent years, but much lower than the long-term average. Multiyear ice extent, sea ice thickness and volume rebounded after a near record low in 2021 but was below conditions in the 1980s and 1990s, with older ice extremely rare."

My take: I'm glad to hear Arctic sea ice rebounded somewhat. I bet that won't be a long term trend, even if the coming year has good ice, compared to recent years. You're going to get periods when ice rebounds, then melts away again. You want to see many years of increasing sea ice to breathe any kind of sigh of relief. A year or two tells you nothing. 

"The 2021-2022 Arctic snow season saw a combination of above average snow accumulation but early snowmelt, consistent with long term trends of shortening snow seasons in several areas. 

Wetter than normal conditions predominated over much of the Arctic from October 2021 to September 2022. Precipitation has increased significantly since the 1950s across all seasons and datasets. Heavy precipitation events are more common in the North Atlantic subarctic, while much of the central Arctic shows increases in consecutive wet days and decreases in consecutive dry days." 

My take: No surprise there. A warmer world is in general a wetter world. Warmer air can hold more moisture. Given the right conditions, it can rain and snow a lot. The Arctic is still really dry compared to places, like, well, here in Vermont, but it is getting a lot wetter pretty fast on and near the roof of the world.

"The Greenland ice sheet lost ice in 2022, the 25th consecutive year of ice loss. In September, 2022, the Greenland ice sheet had unprecedented late season warming, creating surface melt conditions over 36 percent of the ice sheet on September 3, including the Greenland ice sheet's summit at 10,500 feet. This followed a July 18 large surface melt observed across 42 percent of the Greenland ice sheet surface."

My take: I'll be really surprised if there ever is another season in which the Greenland ice sheet actually expands over the course of a year. Decades ago, this happened pretty frequently. Not every year, but often enough. 

On some years the net loss of Greenland ice won't be that much, relatively speaking. But I think we're going to see more years like 2012 which was a super melt year that still has scientists gasping.

By the way, the remnants of Hurricane Fiona, which trashed southeastern Canada in late September, moved on toward Greenland, causing a smaller, but still unprecedented late season melt. 

The unseasonable melts are "challenging how researchers define the Greenland summer melt season," according to the report. 

The earlier than usual snow melt, and this summer's hot dry conditions in interior Alaska contributed to major wildfires. By July, 2 million acres in Alaska had burned. Visibility at the Fairbanks airport was reduced on several days by smoke. 

There's some geopolitical aspects to the melting Arctic as well. Shipping is increasing up there, which adds political, environmental and society effects to those living in the Arctic, and for governments competing for commerce on top of the world.  

The annual Arctic report has been generally been getting more comprehensive and detailed as the years go by. This year's edition was compiled by 147 experts from 11 nations. 

This year's model pays more attention to the indigenous population near the top of the world. Says NOAA:

"The 15th chapter of the report card, authored by a team that includes Native Alaskan scientists, describes how warming air temperatures, shrinking sea ice, shorter periods of snow cover, increased wildfire, rising levels of precipitation and changes in animal migration patterns and their abundance profoundly affect the safety, food security health, economic wellbeing and cultural traditions of indigenous people."

This chapter on how the changing Arctic is affecting indigenous people is pretty fascinating, and disturbing. 

As the Washington Post reports:

"The sea ice retreat forces hunters to travel as far as 100 miles from their homes to find walruses during the spring harvest. The thinning of sea ice has also made seal hunting dangerous in some communities."

It takes longer for indigenous people to hunt, given the more challenging conditions. With a lack of sea ice, wave heights are higher, which makes hunting on the water more dangerous. People near the Bering and Chukchi seas are also seeing more die-offs of birds like ducks and puffins because of starvation and a lack of sea ice.

Although there are naturally yearly ups and downs in the Arctic, I don't see any evidence suggesting that climate change will slow its assault on the top of the world. In fact, few people would be surprised if it all accelerates. 

Just remember: What goes on in the Arctic doesn't stay in the Arctic.

 

Subzero Winter Mornings Diminishing In Vermont

Vermont is experiencing a trend toward fewer subzero nights
during the winter. If this keeps up, Bernie Sanders might
need to give up his famous mittens 

A familiar and unwelcome feeling is coming to us here in Vermont tonight: Subzero cold. If you're crazy enough to like that sort of thing, such frigid days are become less common. 

As WPTZ Chief Meteorologist Tyler Jankowski noted on Twitter recently, the number of yearly subzero mornings has declined markedly in the past several decades. At least around Burlington. 

In the mid 1960s, Burlington would go below zero around 27 times each winter.  By 1980 that number was down to 22 days. It declined further to 17 subzero days around 1990, to twelve such days in 2010 and about eight subzero days now. 

I don't have the data for other areas of Vermont, so I don't know how pronounced the trend is elsewhere in the state.

 I suspect part of Burlington's decline in subzero days has to do with the urban heat island effect. Roads and buildings retain some of a winter day's meager heat, and that could sometimes make the difference between a day that would have been a couple degrees below zero vs. a couple days above.

However, climate change has warmed us up, so the relative lack of subzero days in recent years is almost certainly related to a warming climate. 

That's not to say we'll never again have a winter with tons of subzero days. If you get a persistent weather pattern that brings repeated blasts of Arctic air from Canada, we'll still have a lot of frigid days and nights. 

This winter is off to a so-so start in the zero degree derby.  A warm weather pattern in December prevented any really cold air here in Vermont. The pattern flipped at the start of January.  Burlington has already had two days with temperatures of zero or below.  We should get another two tonight and probably Tuesday night. 

It looks like we might have another one or two subzero nights this coming weekend. And remember, it can get below zero all the way into mid or even late March.