BEIJING SUFFERS LOWEST OCTOBER TEMPERATURE IN HALF A CENTURY AS CITY FREEZES 20-DAYS EARLIER THAN NORMAL
A fierce cold wave has plunged temperatures across China to unprecedented levels for the month of October, increasing the heating demand on an already stretched energy sector.
According to the municipal meteorological authority, a low of -0.2C (31.6F) was registered at 6:44 AM Sunday morning in China’s capital, Beijing — the lowest October temperature logged by a city observatory since 1969, reports xinhua news agency.
Moreover, Beijing’s first freeze of the season came a full 20-days earlier than the average (of November 8). As a result, local meteorologist have expressed concerns that central and eastern China’s early chill could be a harbinger of a brutal winter to come. Such an event would heap added pressure on depleted coal and gas reserves, and compound the global energy crisis.
Sunday’s cold wave hit fast and hard, driving temperatures down some 10C in a matter of hours–particularly in the provinces of Hebei, Shandong, Henan, Anhui and Jiangsu where residents jokingly likened the rapid cool-down to the “quick-freeze mode” of a fridge.
The municipal heating systems have commenced ahead of schedule in cities across Northeast China. Mohe, located on the northeastern tip of China’s territory, started its eight-month heating season on September 17–two days earlier than last year which itself was considered a brutally cold winter for the region.
Rare October snows have accompanied the rare October lows: On Saturday, during the National Day holiday, flakes were reported on mountain peaks across the north. Snow also settled on Mount Baiyun, near Luoyang, over the weekend–a locale that doesn’t usually welcome its first snow until late November or early December.
The Changing Jet Stream
Looking ahead, the cold wave is expected ease, but only slightly — the mercury is set to hold some 4-6 C colder than average for many, according to the national meteorological observatory, with temperatures along the middle- and lower-reaches of the Yangtze River are forecast to hold 7-8 C colder.
This is backed-up by the latest GFS runs (shown below), which see further unusual cold and early-season snow hitting large parts of Asia:
GFS Total Snowfall (cm) Oct 18 – Nov 3 [tropicaltidbits.com].
A Beijing-based expert told the Global Times that the continent’s cold wave was being caused by “the westerly”, a wind which brings cold and dry air from Siberia to China. This pattern occurs every season, but it arrived much earlier this year amid “atmospheric circulation anomalies” — in other words, the jet streams went ‘out-of-whack’ and drove Arctic air anomalously-far south for the time of year (a phenomenon associated to low solar activity, such as the historically low output we’re experiencing now):
As you’d expect, China’s early-season freeze has driven up heating and power demand — a huge challenge for the country, and indeed the world, which was already scrambling to restock coal and gas reserves before winter-proper descends:
RARE SPRING BLIZZARDS BATTER ARGENTINA
Heavy snow has walloped Ushuaia and other areas of Tierra del Fuego over the weekend, with the Antarctica air mass responsible forecast to stretch as far north as Brazil by Tuesday.
Severe blizzards have battered large swathes of southern Argentina since Saturday, October 16 — the flakes have proved persistent, too, still falling at the time of writing (Monday, October 18).
As reported by metsul.com, the rare mid-October snow has “whitened the Argentine province of Tierra del Fuego.”
According to data from the Ushuaia airport, heavy snow was falling through Saturday and Sunday, with the mercury holding around the freezing mark — meteorologist Nacho Lopez Amorim, from the National Weather Service, described the snowfall for the second half of October as “impressive”.
Looking ahead, the mass of icy air will advance northwards up the eastern coast of Argentina this week, where it is expected to enter southern Brazil Tuesday and Wednesday — as a result, low temperature watches and warnings have been extended across Brazil’s Rio Grande do Sul into the weekend.
As seen around the Arctic in the northern hemisphere (most notably in Asia, Europe and the Western U.S.), Antarctica’s powerful jets, responsible for holding the continent’s polar air in place, have weakened — this, in turn, has allowed an outflow of frigid air to engulf not only South America, but also South Africa, Australia and New Zealand.
“This explains the high frequency of cold fronts (in recent weeks),” concludes the metsul.com article.
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