The “weather bomb” that hit Iceland, the United Kingdom, and Ireland just before the new year could have “its most unusual effects” in the Arctic.
“This ‘freak’ storm, powered along by an initial pulse of heat from the Gulf Stream below and powerful winds from the Jet Stream above, developed overnight into a weather bomb—a meteorological term referring to a storm whose central pressure drops by at least 24 millibars in 24 hours,” The Weather Network reported December 30. At the east Iceland weather station of Höfn í Hornafirði, a 65-millibar pressure drop over 18 hours produced peak wind speeds of 104 kilometres per hour, increasing to 112 km/h in the central part of the island.
In the UK, “the Met Office Twitter account shared an impressive satellite view of what they’ve named Storm Frank, along with various recorded wind peaks, from 120 km/h across the Isles of Scilly, off the southwest tip of Britain, up to 136 km/h in South Uist off the west coast of northern Scotland. On the Saffir-Simpson wind scale, these winds are the equivalent of a Category 1 Hurricane.”
In the North Sea, offshore oil workers were evacuated and a disaster was narrowly averted after an unmanned barge broke loose and drifted past an active oilfield. “The barge, which is 110 metres long by 45 metres wide and is owned by Norway’s Eide Marine Services, had been under tow in the Dutch sector south of Norwegian waters when it broke loose in a storm on Wednesday,” CBC reports. The barge, which is more than three storeys tall, “drifted past BP Norway’s Valhall oilfield at a distance of about 1.8 kilometres, avoiding what could have been a disastrous collision with an oil platform.”
Yet TWN expects the weather system’s most serious impacts to take shape farther north.
“Based on computer model projections, this storm is set to draw significant heat northward from the tropical Atlantic. Dragged along with the storm as it tracks past Iceland and the UK, this influx of heat is highly unusual for the Arctic in December,” Sutherland writes. “Temperatures at the North Pole are expected to soar from around -30 to -35°C on Tuesday, to near the freezing mark on Wednesday.” Depending on how the “heat wave” develops, “temperatures around 15-20°C above normal could circulate around the Arctic Circle into the first week of January, and there’s a risk of them lingering even longer.”
With Arctic sea ice formation already lagging behind normal rates, “an extended heat spell could mean trouble for the anticipated Arctic sea ice maximum extent in early 2016,” he adds.
