El Nino Suppresses Aantarctic Warming

Here we present new isotope records derived from snow samples from the McMurdo Dry Valleys, Antarctica and re-analysis data of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ERA-40) to explain the connection between the warming of the Pacific sector of the Southern Ocean [Jacka and Budd, 1998; Jacobs et al., 2002] and the current cooling of the terrestrial Ross Sea region [Doran et al., 2002a]. Our analysis confirms previous findings that the warming is linked to the El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) [Kwok and Comiso, 2002a, 2002b; Carleton, 2003; Ribera and Mann, 2003; Turner, 2004], and provides new evidence that the terrestrial cooling is caused by a simultaneous ENSO driven change in atmospheric circulation, sourced in the Amundsen Sea and West Antarctica.

The Use of Ships' Protests for Reconstruction of Synoptic-Scale Weather and Tropical Storm Identification in the Late Eighteenth Century

Ships’ protests have been used for centuries as legal documents to record and detail damages and indemnify Captains from fault. We use them in this article, along with data extracted through forensic synoptic analysis (McNally, 1994, 2004) to identify a tropical or subtropical system in the North Atlantic Ocean in 1785. They are shown to be viable sources of meteorological information. By comparing a damaging storm in New England in 1996, which included an offshore tropical system, with one reconstructed in 1785, we demonstrate that the tropical system identified in a ship’s protest played a significant role in the 1785 storm. With both forensic reconstruction and anecdotal evidence, we are able to assess that these storms are remarkably identical. The recurrence rate calculated in previous studies of the 1996 storm is 400–500 years. We suggest that reconstruction of additional years in the 1700s would provide the basis for a reanalysis of recurrence rates, with implications for future insurance and reinsurance rates. The application of the methodology to this new data source can also be used for extension of the hurricane database in the North Atlantic basin, and elsewhere, much further back into history than is currently available.