Bob Blog 23 Jan

Bob Blog 23 Jan
Bob McDavitt's ideas for sailing around the South Pacific.
Disclaimer: Weather is a mix of pattern and chaos; these ideas are from the
patterned world.
Compiled Sunday 23 January 2022

Some interesting weather clips on you tube this week:

Snow in the Sahara: www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgJAgSFw2w4
Waves in Sc clouds: www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-BePB8CvVE
And www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAQjw1O5A30

THE WARMING OCEANS
In last Friday's Sea surface temperature anomaly SSTA map is shown the cool
zone over eastern equatorial pacific which manifests LA NINA.

I have noticed over the last decade or so that SSTA maps have been showing
larger areas that are warmer-than-normal than are cooler-than-normal. I
understand that the oceans have been warming up because of climate change.
On sunny and windless days in anticyclones the surface of the sea can absorb
heat directly from incoming sunshine. It also should lose heat to outer
space at night, but now there seems to be a imbalance in this. The amount of
carbon dioxide in the air has been increasing and this seems to allow the
oceans to store more heat.

By definition it takes one calorie to warm a gram of water (at 25C) by one
degree, or the thermal capacity of water is 1000 cal/Kg/K, or 4183J/Kg/K. So
water "holds warmth" over 4 times better than air (which has a thermal
capacity 1004J/Kg/K).

I've recently come across a paper in Advances in Atmospheric Sciences, Jan
2022 entitled: Another Record: Ocean Warming Conditions through 2021 despite
La Nina Conditions. Creative commons license
creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

It contains a diagram which tracks the amount of heat stored in the oceans
since 1960 compared with a baseline using the 1981-2010 epoch. :
This diagram shows that ocean heat content was static until the late 1980s
and since then has been rising at a rate of between 8 and 9 Zettajoules per
year ZJ/yr. A Zetta is 1 followed by 21 zeros. The 2021 annual ocean heat
content is a new record and higher than the previous year by around 15 ZJ.
So the ocean now contains around 240 ZJ more than the 1981-2010 average. To
put this into perspective, the current oil consumption on this planet is
0.2ZJ per year, and electricity generation is 0.1ZJ/year.

See tinyurl.com/Trenberthoceanwarming

TROPICS
There are zones of potential formation around Northwest and North Australia
and the Philippines and dotted over the South Pacific.

WEATHER ZONES
SPCZ=South Pacific Convergence zone.
The SPCZ remains active from Solomons to Vanuatu/Samoa to Southern Cooks.

HIGHS and LOWS
Subtropical Low L1 south of New Caledonia is expected to do a loop on Monday
and then travel slowly east and fade.
It should trigger a secondary Low L2 west of Taranaki by Tuesday night that
is expected to travel SE over central NZ bringing some much needed rain.
Meanwhile tropical low L3 south of Southern Cooks is expected to move off to
the Southeast from mid-week after bringing wind and rain last few days to
Southern Cooks.
Low L4 is expected to deepen over Vanuatu by Friday and may visit New
Caledonia by the weekend, and this may bring strong NE winds to Northland
area next week. Avoid.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
If you would like more detail for your voyage, then check metbob.com to see
what I offer.
Or Facebook at /www.facebook.com/metbobnz/
Weathergram with graphics is at metbob.wordpress.com (subscribe/unsubscribe
at bottom).
Weathergram archive (with translator) is at weathergram.blogspot.co.nz.
Contact is bob@metbob.com or txt 64277762212
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>