Edward Plumb: Okay, well, I'm gonna go ahead and get started, and so good afternoon, and welcome to the April edition of the Alaska Climate Outlook Briefing. This event is being held in the International Arctic Research Center here on the University of Alaska Fairbanks Troth Yeddha Campus. The Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Preparedness, we're also known as ACCAP, Is hosting this event. ACCAP is part of the Regional Integrated Sciences and Assessments, which is funded by the NOAA Climate Program Office. ACCAP has been working here in Alaska for over 17 years to improve the ability of Alaskans to adapt to a changing climate. So, before we get started, I got a few logistics, Everyone has been muted, and your video has been turned off while Rick is presenting. We will have a question and answer session, during the last 10 minutes or so, and at that time, I will allow you to unmute yourself or turn on your video if you want to ask a question directly to Rick. But, feel free to drop questions into the chat while Rick is presenting. I will try to address any questions that I can answer, and if I can't answer it, or we don't get to them, I will bring them up during the Q&A at the end. After Rick is done with his presentation. The presentation is being recorded, and it will be on our website early next week, and I'll also send an email out with that link and information. New this week, or this month. You will be prompted at the end of the presentation, like, when you log out, for a very brief survey. It's just 3 questions. If you're using Zoom in a browser, please hit end session rather than just closing the tab on the browser in order to be prompted for the survey. And we just... we really appreciate if you take the time just to fill it out. We're just trying to get a little bit of feedback on these webinars that we do here at ACCAP. So with that, my name is Ed Plumb, and I am the Weather and Floods Hazard Specialist here at ACCAP. It is my pleasure, once again, to introduce today's speaker, Rick Thoman. Rick is the Alaska Climate Specialist here at ACCAP, and has many, many years of experience producing reliable Alaska climate information and graphics describing Alaska's changing environment. His work spans the bridge between climate modeling, Alaska communities, and the media. And thank you, Rick, for joining us today, and Rick is joining us from the Bering Strait region. He is out in Nome right now, so... Maybe you can give us a little Tell us what the weather's like out there in Nome, too, Rick. And, it's all yours, Rick. Richard Thoman: All right, well, thanks everyone for, taking time out of your, Friday lunch hour here in Alaska. And, Looks like we're gonna have a technical difficulty here, Ed. Doesn't look like I am gonna be able to, share my screen. Edward Plumb: Okay, let me, let me grab the slides here. Just a second... And I'll share my screen. I guess we did not test that out before we started, huh? Richard Thoman: So, let's see if I can... Edward Plumb: Are you trying again? I'll... Richard Thoman: No, no, it's a... it's a permissions issue, and I would have to log back... log out, log back in and stuff. Edward Plumb: Okay. I should be able to... Do it here... And then, let me... Present mode here... Richard Thoman: Can you see my screen now? I tried something. Edward Plumb: Oh, no, but I just shared mine. Oh, no, we are on yours, yep. Yeah, I see yours, Rick. It's... Richard Thoman: So you can see my title slide. Edward Plumb: Yeah, I think you must have hit it the same time I did. Okay. But you were a step ahead of me, you got in before I did. Okay. Richard Thoman: Okay, I'm... Edward Plumb: Go ahead, Rick. Richard Thoman: Okay, well, thanks everyone for joining, and apologies for the technological, delay there. So yeah, as Ed said, I am coming to you today from UAF's Northwest Campus in Nome, where it's a very nice day, some clouds, but mild temperatures and a few flurries, quite a lovely day in the Bering Strait region. And, over the more than 10 years that we've been doing these every month. I have, I have done these from hotel rooms, I have done these from, other campuses. I don't think I've ever done one on an airplane, but I have done at least one, from a, from a quiet place in airports. So, We're no stranger to doing whatever it takes to bring you these outlooks every month, like I said, for more than 10 years now, so pretty amazing. Alright, so let's go ahead and jump right in. So, here is our plan. As usual, we'll start out with just a brief review of what we're trying to do with seasonal climate forecasting, very different than the weather forecast that you get on your phone. We'll take a look at what's happened recently with weather and climate. Take a look at... review the, kind of, the climate review, what's happened, how the forecast worked out. And then, take a look at some of the tools that we have at our disposal for developing the upcoming month and seasonal forecasts, and then finish up with the National Weather Service's Climate Prediction Center's outlooks that were just released, yesterday. All right, so, Climate Prediction Center, College Park, Maryland. It's a primary, NOAA Weather Service facility responsible for forecasts, from about, 2 weeks into the future on out to about a year in the future. Weather Service offices, River Forecast Centers... Most of their work is in the first week or so. CPC, picks it up after that. So, here's what we're trying to do with climate outlooks. When most climate outlooks are done in relationship to some long-term normal, the current international standard is 1991 to 2020 as the 30-year baseline period. Most climate outlooks are categorical forecasts. So, for things like temperature and precipitation, we do 3 categories, so that would be near normal, and then significantly above, and significantly below normal. Again, very different from the weather forecast on your phone, where you get one number for a high temperature a week from now. Our categories, we're going to give you the chances of all of... for each category that we're doing. If we're doing three, you'll get the chances of each category, all three occurring. For temperatures, that's centered on the average. Precipitation is centered on the baseline period median, so in this case, 1991 to 2020. That can be significantly different from the, normal, which is based by, just from Kind of, historical, precedent on the means, or the average. In dry climates or in dry times of year those two can be quite different. Now, we do have what, if you're interested in what these normal, ranges look like for temperature and precipitation. We have quite a few, available, on our graphics page, and you can get to those right from the, that QR code there. So, putting the... all of these, little bullets together, you get the little graphic there on the right-hand side. So, for Kodiak. We want to make an outlook for the upcoming May, June, July, early summer season. Here's what we're gonna do. the... I've just taken the 1991 to 2020 temperatures and just ranked ordered them from coolest to warmest, and then we're gonna divide it up into 3 equal categories, because we're going to do 3, category forecasts. So, the coolest 10 are in that blue box. The warmest 10 are in the red box, and the 10 in the middle, that's the gray box. And so, for an outlook for May through July 2026, we're going to give you the chances that what actually happens, what's the chances that it's gonna fall into that blue box, chances it's gonna fall into the gray box, chances it's gonna fall into the red box. That's what we're trying to do, with climate outlooks. So, very different than weather forecasts. Alright, so that's what we're gonna do here. I'd like to start off with looking around what's happened since our last climate outlook briefing, which was right around The spring equinox. So, everyone in Alaska is well aware of really cold March. Cold settled in over most of the state, during the last days of February and continued, right through. The month of March. You can see there, there is a long list of places, that had their, coldest, March of record. That is not all of them. But places with long, long periods of observation, Eagle, you know, there's, there's, observations since 1902, there's some gaps, but this was pretty clearly the coldest, March, you know, in the last 125 years. Denali Park, Fairbanks, Anchorage, since it's been at the current airport site... King Salmon in southwest Alaska, and I think I ran out of space here, but Haines in northernmost southeast, also coldest March of record. So, really a wide distribution of that cold, and you can see on the little graphic there. It's a graphic I produce every month. I use as much of the station data as I can, and you can see, really dominated By those much below normal temperatures. Notice there's places there that for the month as a whole, for the 31 days, averaging more than 20 degrees below normal. That is really remarkable. You can see not everywhere, quite, was warmer than normal. The north slope was mostly above normal. And also, right in the Bering Strait, Wales was right at normal, and is actually a little above normal on St. Lawrence Island. But really, overall, a dramatic month, and that included 7 days at Fairbanks Airport. the low in the 40s below, and that is the most in any March record of... in our climate history. That cold was not the only thing that was happening, though. A real highlight was the snow in northern southeast, again, centered in the Juneau area. This is very similar to what happened in December with very cold air locked in over mainland Alaska. Portions of southeast got a lot of snow. So, Juneau Airport, 76.5 inches of snow. That's a new record for March. The highest, highest reported snowfall in the, in the state, not that we have that many observations, was from the Snettisham power plant, southeast of Juneau. Also want to point out, a lot of places south of Juneau that often don't get very much snow. Places like Sitka, places like Craig, places like Ketchikan, most of those places, had substantial snow in March. In all of those places, the most snow in a month, in 10 or more years. So, really quite remarkable. And at Juneau Airport, pushing the seasonal total up to 209 inches of snow. Through, through yesterday, a new all-time record for Juneau Airport. Also want to point out that Fairbanks Airport, did have its coldest four-month, December through March average temperature of record, really quite remarkable, at the, Fairbanks, the UAF Agriculture Experiment Farm, which is one of the longest operating climate sites at the same place in the state, this was the second coldest March, but you have to go back to 2000... 2000... to 1917 to 1918 to find a colder December through March. And, no surprise, river ice in the interior is really thick this year in many places. And the Tanana River at Nenana, a 52-inch snow depth on April 3rd, and that is the highest, the thickest ice measured there, since the spring of 2013. And, we will have our annual Alaska River Breakup webinar coming up next week, in conjunction with the Alaska Pacific River Forecast Center, so you'll want to tune in for that. All right, so now let's take a little broader view of, what happened around the state and how the outlooks performed. So, from the... from our colleague, Dr. Brian Brettschneider with the National Weather Service. In Anchorage here, we have, using our... the ERA 5 climate reanalysis model, the view of the categories that actually happened for March on the left and January through March on the right. The bluish colors indicate that significantly below normal category, the white space is near normal, and the kind of reddish colors are areas that, for March and for January through March, were significantly above that 1991 to 2020 baseline. So... Obviously, for March, cold dominating. The darkest blue colors indicates in this climate reanalysis model that it was the coldest March of record. You can see quite a large fraction of the southeast interior, as well as arcing down into Bristol Bay and even out on the Alaska Peninsula, and the vast majority of mainland Alaska south of the Brooks Range falling into that the much below normal category there, so really quite remarkable. For the, 3-month season, not quite as dramatic, although if you look, there actually are... there is some areas that did have record cold there, but again, most of the state Except for along the edges there, parts of the north slope, through the Bering Strait, and then edging into southern southeast, colder than... colder than normal, that's significantly below normal category. Precipitation, same idea, 3 categories. The blues and greens here are the much above normal category. The yellows and oranges, the much below normal category, and the white space in that near normal category. March on the left, January through March on the right. So, March, you can see, dominated across mainland Alaska by significantly below normal precipitation. That extended all the way out across the Alaska Peninsula and into the Aleutians, where, in the climate analysis model, some places there with the, lowest March precipitation since 1950. On the right-hand side, though, putting it all together, you notice there's much less of that significantly below normal category. Primarily south-central and southwestward through Bristol Bay and the Alaska Peninsula, whereas most areas in the interior that, were quite dry in March are not... do not fall into that much below normal category for the 3-month season. And part of the reason for that is that February was excessively That very high precipitation. Some places had enough precipitation in February alone that it would have been above normal for the 3 months, even if January and March were completely dry, which it wasn't. The other thing is, of course, March over much of interior in northern Alaska is, on average, already a very dry month. So, yes, it's below normal, even into the much below normal category, but it's still, in absolute terms, even normal is quite low. There are some exceptions there, as you can see there, especially on the north slope and in parts of southeast. Alright, let's turn to, the... to what happened. Now we're going to look at individual station, data and compare that to how the models I'm sorry, how the Climate Prediction Center forecast, worked out. So, this is the March 2026 temperature outlook. This was the outlook released by the Climate Prediction Center. in February, mid-February. And you can see that quite a large portion of the state, they had favoring the significantly below normal categories, and that worked out extremely, extremely well. Oops. Sorry about that. Oh, it says I'm still going. Luckily, Alright, so I think you can still see that, so. Edward Plumb: Yes. Richard Thoman: Where... I got lost there, sorry. Cpc had a large area forecasting significantly below normal, and that worked out very well. For the area that CPC made the tilt to favor significantly below normal, it worked out everywhere. So, can't get better than 100% correct. So, a great forecast from CPC here. And I will point out when this forecast was made in mid-February, this was a very aggressive, cool forecast. Most of the... most of the guidance did not support this large an area. of significantly below normal. So, CPC, really, they beat the, the tool's guidance for this outlook, so great job there. Hmm. Edward Plumb: Is it not transitioning for you, Rick? Richard Thoman: It's just beeping for me when I hit the arrows. Can you... can you see my screen now? Edward Plumb: No, it just disappeared. Richard Thoman: Yeah, I'd hit stop, share, and now I'm sharing again. Edward Plumb: Okay. What we see is, It says you started sharing, but double-click to enter full-screen mode. It's just a black screen, Rick. Richard Thoman: Click on. could be a problem that, that, nope, that's not it. No, it's right there. Edward Plumb: And Rick, I can go ahead and share the presentation, too, see if that works. Richard Thoman: I'm... I guess I'm gonna have to plead cluelessness here. You would think after a hundred of these, of course, not all on Zoom, but they have been for years now, that we would have this entirely worked out, but... I keep getting a message, you're... you're sharing a screen on another desktop, which I don't know... I've only got one desktop here. So I don't know what that is about, so if you could load that up, Ed, we will be good. Edward Plumb: Yeah, I tried to, Rick, it's still showing, It's showing that you're sharing your screen, but it's black. And it says, double-click to enter full screen mode. Richard Thoman: Okay, stop sharing. Edward Plumb: Okay, let me try again here. Okay, do you see mine? Richard Thoman: Yeah, I do. Edward Plumb: Okay, let me, oops. Let me... Hold on... Getting in slideshow mode. Is that okay? Richard Thoman: We see you. Edward Plumb: Oh, you see me, okay. Richard Thoman: the picture. Edward Plumb: Well, we're just, like... What is amateur hour here? Trying to get the screen shared. Hang on, let me try again. Richard Thoman: Okay, so now we see your screen again. Edward Plumb: Okay... Richard Thoman: So maybe... Maybe... slideshow? Edward Plumb: hit slideshow. Richard Thoman: Yay! Edward Plumb: Okay, great. Richard Thoman: Alright. Edward Plumb: Sorry about that, everyone. Richard Thoman: Alright, so... where were we? We were looking at March, so March temperature forecast, great job from CPC. Precipitation forecast, also quite good. Much less aerial coverage than the temperature forecast, but still a fairly substantial area where significantly below normal was favored. And as I mentioned, since much of mainland Alaska is quite dry, typically in March, it takes a lot to be significantly below normal precipitation, and it did work out. So, quite a good forecast, here. For the dry, now, of course, the dry covered a larger area than was forecasted, but, overall, worked, worked quite well there. Notice the, correctly, CPC correctly did not include most of southeast Alaska in the dry tilt, which has worked out great, because, except for Yakutat, places were either in the near Or even significantly... the near normal or significantly above normal category. Next, January through March, so the, late winter season here. There, so here, again, we see a lot... most of the state, except for, portions of Central and Southern Southeast, and on the north slope, and out on St. Lawrence Island, wound up in the significantly below normal category. That area that is not shaded across, the Seward Peninsula, western Alaska, that was... that is a, That is a, shapefile, mistake on CPC's part. That was an area that actually favored significant... that favored the near-normal category, which CPC rarely does. Unfortunately, in this case, it didn't work out. But overall, the forecast worked, reasonably well. At least for the cool tilt in the southeast mainland. The warm tilt across the North Slope, did not work out, at, really anywhere. So, near normal, but not above. So, all in all, still, still a skillful forecast 57% correct. Remember, in a three-category, scheme, if you, one-third is the no skill, that's just the throwing darts, skill, so, still a skillful forecast with that EC, the skill score, 35. Next. And for the... and for the January through March precipitation, forecast, favored significantly above normal across western Alaska. And significantly below normal for southeast Alaska and the southeast most mainland, including portions of Kodiak Island and the Kenai Peninsula. All in all, this did not work out very well at all. Did have some hits there across western Alaska. Again, a lot of that on the strength of, very wet February. Southeast, not into the below normal category. Except at Yakutat, and then Homer came in as well. But, all in all, this was the one... one of the four, the only one of the four that had, negative skill, so less good than random guess. But all in all, pretty good package from CPC. Next. Alright, so, now, turning to what current conditions. Sea ice extent around the Arctic on the left-hand side is just the daily extent. The red circle is just where we're at now. And you can see here that, sea ice extent is running, well below the long-term average, and that, kind of the, the sky blue line there, that is this year, and we are currently at the second lowest. Arctic-wide extent of record as of Wednesday. On the right-hand side is the spatial distribution of that ice. The big thing here is on the Russian side of the Bering Sea and in the Sea of Okhotsk. Really very, very low ice. Sea of Okhotsk, by far the lowest ice extent winter of the season, and that's continuing now. Also, on the Atlantic side, so kind of north of Scandinavia there, as it has been all winter, the ice extent is behind to the north. Of that, kind of the orange line, which is the 1981 to 2020 median. In the eastern Bering Sea, we do have extensive ice, as we've had since early March and the onset of the cold weather. That is the only part of the Arctic where sea ice extent has been above normal in the last month. Next. Now, normally I show the three-dimensional view of the sea ice, so the sea ice thickness and the departures from normal, from the biomass group in the University of Washington. Unfortunately, that product is, for at least the time being, no longer available. NOAA, with very short notice, stopped production of one of the inputs. To this product. And so, it will take the biomass group a while to retool, to use a different atmospheric reanalysis. So, we do... I don't have the three-dimensional, view of the sea ice thickness at this point for you. Next. Now, closer to home, here's the National Weather Service Sea Ice program analysis. On the left-hand side is the concentration analysis from Wednesday, and on the right-hand side, same date last year, and you can see fairly extensive ice there still in the southeast Bering Sea. However, overall, it is starting to look a lot more like spring. You can see there's areas of reduced concentration Or even open water, way north of the ice edge, including around St. Lawrence Island, off the Yukon Delta, and some lower concentration ice, showing up. in the Chukchi Sea, north of Point Hope there. All of that is pretty typical. What maybe is not typical is that area of open water to the west of St. Lawrence Island in the Gulf of Anadyr. That area has had persistently low ice all winter, and you can see that lower concentration ice extending to the north of St. Lawrence Island there. And that is part of that same weather pattern that has produced very low ice on the Russian side of the Bering Sea, and then extending west to the Sea of Okhotsk. Next. So here is the... this is the total, Bering Sea ice extent, as we show. The blue line is this year, the green line is last year, the black... thick black line is the smoothed... 1991 to 2020 median. You can see the big ramp up there in the last days of February, then pretty high ice concentration through most of March, and now it's dropping rapidly. Again, so as of Wednesday, it's actually very close to the long-term median, but again, this is for the entire Bering Sea. We have this very very dramatic split between the eastern Bering Sea ice extent and the western Bering Sea ice extent. I expect that this is going to continue to fall rapidly, with increased storminess coming up here in the eastern Bering Sea, and also that ice that's really far south, in Bristol Bay and then down along the Alaska Peninsula is very thin ice. And so that will be readily chewed up by wave action and some milder temperatures, but especially the wave action will reduce that ice extent pretty quickly. Next. Alright, turning to sea surface temperatures... for the week ending April 11th, and I've just circled the North Pacific for your eye there, and you can see that very warm waters, the yellow and red colors, extending from Japan all the way to the North American coast. almost the only, well, I think it is the only below normal sea surface temperatures in the extra-tropical Pacific, so north of the tropics, is in the Bering Sea and a little bit there in the Gulf of Alaska. Otherwise, nearly all of the Pacific Ocean Quite, quite warm. The box there is the Nino 3.4 region, our bellwether area. For monitoring El Nino La Nina. We're coming out of a La Nina, and that is reflected there for, this most recent week with sea surface temperatures, in that bellwether area, almost exactly, normal, just a few, areas there, half degree below normal, but looking, about as normal as it can be. Little inset there is just the zoom in, to, Alaska, and you can see, the extent, the below normal temperatures really mapping quite closely there to the sea ice extent. Next. Can you hear me? Edward Plumb: I hear you, Rick. I... do you see the screen still? Richard Thoman: I see your picture. Edward Plumb: See my picture? Okay, it looks like I had an issue on my end this time. Let me, let me reshare the screen here. Richard Thoman: Okay, so that makes me feel better, maybe it's not just me. Edward Plumb: It's... Richard Thoman: Maybe it's Zoom. Edward Plumb: Yeah, that's true. Richard Thoman: Dory, we'll stick with it. Edward Plumb: Alright, we'll stick with that story. Let me, reshare. Sorry, everyone. Okay... Just a Friday. Thanks, Carol. Richard Thoman: Well, at least it's not a manic Monday. Edward Plumb: And do you see the screen there? Yep. Great slide. I think you were speaking to this slide, is that correct? Richard Thoman: We want to go up. Edward Plumb: Oh, no, here, this one. Oops, now everybody can see my notes, too. Alright, here we go. How's that? Richard Thoman: Alright. Okay, let's hope we can... we'll continue on here. So... Of course, what we really care about... why do we care about ocean temperatures, you know, a thousand miles to the south and southeast of Hawaii? Because we care, because how that affects the... those big, equatorial thunderstorms that, in turn, affect the jet stream farther north. And so this is the analysis. Of, on the left-hand side, our, our proxy for, seeing where those thunderstorms have been favored in the last, few weeks here. So we have. Over the last 3 months, the blue areas indicate where there's been more thunderstorms. The, kind of the, orangish-reddish are where there's fewer of those big tropical thunderstorms. And on the right-hand side, we see the connection to... basically, this is the trade wind difference from normal, and the box there is our Nino 3.4 region. This is for the month ending March 16th. So within our trade wind area there, we see generally near normal trade winds over the last month. I will draw your attention to the west of that box, over towards the Solomon Islands. You can see that we have much stronger than, normal. westerly winds, along and near the equator, and that is the, that is the kicker for the developing, El Nino. That is going to drive, sea surface temperatures up quite a bit. Across the Equatorial Pacific in the coming, months. Next. So, we'll start off on our tools tour here, if Zoom lets us, with an expert evaluation of El Nino, La Nina, take a look at a couple of statistical models. And then look at the dynamic models So statistical models using information from the past to try to get an idea of, of what the future may bring. Dynamic models don't know anything about the past. They know all about the physics, and a starting point, but they don't know anything about the deep history. Okay, next. All right, the El Nino La Nina forecast from the experts in our bellwether region, that's called the Nino 3.4 region for historical reasons, but it's just that area south and southeast of Hawaii, along and near the equator. So, it's a good climate forecast. The experts, are gonna give us the chances of three categories here, so we have, El Nino, La Nina, and neutral, and they're gonna give us the probabilities of all 3 categories, and that's what we... that's what they do here. The way I like to look at this. We... is how... what the forecast had last month, and then what the experts had this month, so you can see how that's changed. And, it's... the experts were quite confident in, La Nina... or El Nino developing last month, and now they are even more, confident. Now, we, at the moment, are in ENSO neutral, so neither La Nina or El Nino, but that will be changing, and I expect that we might get one more month of an El Nino watch before we go to an El Nino advisory. But very high probabilities in the forecaster's estimation. of El Nino developing. And the other thing I will point out here is that, through, on the right-hand side there, the forecast goes through November, December, January, the early winter season, and the probabilities remain extremely, extremely high. That doesn't happen with every every El Nino or La Nina event. Sometimes they can be quick hitters, but the experts do not see that this time around. Next. Alright, statistical guidance. And then our... that's the... we have the long-term normals, and then we have the short-term normals as our statistical guidance. Coming up here, in the later... future editions of the Outlook, we'll add in, how... how El Nino has played out, for around Alaska. So, 50-year, half-century trends. In temperatures on the left and precipitation on the right. Unlike April and March, we see virtually all of Alaska is warming or has warmed over the last 50 years during May. Some of the changes are not super large, as snow cover becomes less important, and we're well into the high sun time of year, but everywhere is warming. Precipitation is kind of interesting. We see... Generally, on the North Slope, increased precipitation over... in May over the last 50 years. That, of course, is the case in most months. South of the Brooks Range, more of a mixed bag, but a whole lot of white space, indicating really no significant trend. But there are some bullseye there, particularly in the Copper River Basin, where there is a... there has been a significant trend to above normal, but spatially, you see that's pretty tightly confined. To... to the, Copper River Basin there. We don't see any of those, bull's eyes of less precipitation over the last 50 years in Alaska, although that does pop out there in northeast British Columbia and northwest Alberta. Next slide. Alright, how about the short-term trends? So, sometimes called the optimum climate normals, what we do here is we look, how have the last 15 years compared to that 30-year baseline period, the 1991 to 2020 period. And all I do here is if the last 15 years have fallen into that significantly above or below normal category, I color it. Otherwise, it's white space. So, May temperatures, all 13 Alaska climate divisions, the average temperature over the last 15 years has fallen into that near normal category. On the upper... Upper, right-hand side, the May through July temperatures we see along the western Gulf of Alaska coast. The last 15 years have averaged in that significantly above normal category, but that's the only region. Precipitation on the bottom row, May for the southeast interior and Cook Inlet, climate divisions, significantly above normal, otherwise. Whites, so, white space, so, average precipitation falling into the near normal category. Most color on this slide, though, in the May through July precipitation, you'll notice around the horn there, so kind of coastal Alaska from the north slope, west coast, all the way down to northern southeast, with a trend to... the last 15 years have been significantly wetter than that 30-year baseline period, but the opposite case in the Aleutians and Pribilofs last 15 years have been in the drier-than-normal category. Next. Yeah, go ahead, Ed. Edward Plumb: Did that go, Rick? Richard Thoman: No, we're still looking... there we go. So, our dynamic models, here's what we have to work with this month. Climate Prediction Center's Experimental Sea Ice Forecast. We'll take a look at some guidance from our colleagues at the World Climate Service and the North American Multi-Model Ensemble. Our usual suite of things we look at from the dynamic model, sea surface temperatures, the sea ice forecast, and temperature and precipitation. Next. Okay, so, May through July, sea surface temperatures from the North American Multi-Model Ensemble. On the left-hand side is the forecast, about 100 different model runs going into this. And you can see this is the average of each model system compared to its own internal climatology, so a little bit of bias correction there. And you put average all of those together, and you get this map that's got a whole, whole lot of red on it, so significantly above normal temperatures. in almost the entire Pacific Ocean. The big exception there is we see that bright blue there over the southeast Bering Sea, and the model's picking up on the high ice extent that we have now, and which, at least for a while, will translate into cooler water. But very warm water there extending from east of Japan pretty much all the way over to the North American coast, and along the equator, you can see that developing El Nino with very hot water along the equator being forecast. How good are these forecasts? That's the graphic on the right-hand side. For ocean temperatures, we want to see the skill here into those purple colors. We do see that along the west coast of North America, arcing back through the Gulf of Alaska into the Bering Sea. Notice, though, the Northwest Pacific, so east of Japan there, in general, the models have much less skill for the early summer temperatures for forecasts made in April than many other portions of the Pacific Basin Next. Experimental sea ice forecast, so from the Climate Prediction Center, so this is the average of 20 different model runs using data through late March. So this, this is actually... if you were with us last month, there was some... some kind of... we were... shaking our heads about how did the model come up with, for instance, keeping ice north of St. Matthew Island into June, before we see the first open water. That, that has gone away, and overall, this is looking pretty much like we expect. We see that ice diminishing, so first open water returning to Bristol Bay, early next month. late May into most of the northern Bering Sea there, except for areas around St. Lawrence Island. Obviously, there's an issue there in the Gulf of Anadyr, where the model has not picked up on that persistently open water. As we progress north of the Bering Strait, then. we see, ice, or first open water here, generally, about what we would expect at this time of the year. I will point out, we often have ice in this day and age, lasting into early August. You'd say between, Point Barrow, and, the Prudhoe Bay area, somewhere in there, this, this, go-around, the model is not forecasting the ice to last, that long, along the Beaufort Seacoast this year. Next. All right, now turning to the multi-model ensemble forecast for May. Again, about 100 different models here, and these are the... my favorite product out of this, the calibrated probabilistic forecast, so these are the models. This is showing the chances of the three categories that we're trying to forecast. So, the way I like to look at these, how has that forecast evolved through time? So, we have temperatures on the top, and the forecast for May that was made in February is on the left the May forecast made in March is in the middle, and the most recent is on the right. So, just scanning your eye across that top row there, really the big change for the May temperature outlook is the development of that Strong tilt to below normal, basically over the southeast Bering Sea, but of course, impacting land areas, particularly the Alaska Peninsula, maybe the Bristol Bay coast there. Otherwise, model's pretty consistent in favoring significantly above normal for the month across most of Alaska. Precipitation on the bottom row, really not much coverage of any tilt, and there's no consistency, in the, in the outlook at all. That's, of course, pretty usual for Alaska precipitation. Models really struggle. Next. Now, from our colleagues at the World Climate Service, so, unlike the North American Multimodel Ensemble, which has I believe we have currently 5 different ensemble systems going into that. The World Climate Service uses two, the primary U.S. climate forecast system and the European forecast system. One thing that they do different is they give higher weight to the model that has a better skill. for the time period in question. So, unlike the North American model, where every model counts the same, World Climate Service allows the model that has been historically better to count for more. So, with that background, May temperatures. On the left, precipitation on the right. Really not much different. Again, you see that blue bullseye there over Bristol Bay. Extending, in this case, not much of a tilt. extending, or not above normal favor to St. Lawrence... to St. Lawrence. St. Matt... Kodiak Island, eastward, but most of mainland Alaska favoring significantly above normal. Precipitation, again, not a lot of signal, although interesting to see that moderately sizable area there along the north slope coast, slightly favoring significantly below normal precipitation. May is climatologically a pretty dry month on the slope. So we'll see how that works out. Next. All right, and now, turning to the May through July early summer season, same, same configuration, temperatures on top, precipitation on the bottom, oldest forecast on the right, and most recent on the left. And again, so for temperatures on the top row, really very little change, except for that cold in the Bristol Bay area, but, models, the North American Multimodel Ensemble all put together, favoring significantly above normal across virtually all of Alaska. And just like in May, not much of a precipitation signal. If we want to squint really hard, we can say that over the last 3 months, the NMME in aggregate is favoring significantly above normal precipitations. across the, say, northwest, western north slope. Otherwise not much consistency. Next. And the World Climate Service, for, for May through July, temperatures mostly warm, except for, Bristol Bay, Alaska Peninsula area. A warm tilt, precipitation, really no signal there at all for Alaska. Next. And the last piece of our forecast puzzle that we'll show here is what the experts thought last month. So this was the May through July outlook for March. Temperatures on the left, precipitation on the right, and the little boxes show you the chances of each category based on, based on the forecast there. So again, the color shading indicates the most likely category, but we assign, probabilities to all three, categories. So, So you can see those, there. So, a warm tilt across southern Alaska, arcing up towards, the southern Seward Peninsula. For temperatures, precipitation generally above normal tilt. across the, eastern Gulf Coast on up through the west coast, Bristol Bay Area, equal chances of all three categories for, most of, most of the eastern, say, quarter or third of the state, as well as southeast. And the answer, as revealed by CPC just yesterday morning, is... Okay, so May forecast. Warm tilt across southeast Alaska, as well as the eastern and central interior, most of the north slope. Now we do... CPC did go ahead and introduce that below normal area, and that is based on the high sea ice extent and what will then be below normal sea surface temperatures when that melts out for at least. So for May, CPC went with that. So that's a change from the guidance from last month. Precipitation for May, most of the state, equal chances of all three categories. Remember, that does not mean near normal is most likely. All the, all the categories have equal likelihood. Below normal, though, very slightly favored in southeast. May through July, outlooks, again, released yesterday. All of Alaska is favored for... is significantly above normal as the most likely category, with, twice as likely to be significantly above as below normal across a wide swath from the Seward Peninsula. southeastward to Kodiak Island, all the way across the interior and central and south... and northern southeast as well. But everywhere, at least slightly favoring significantly above normal. Precipitation... Equal chances across much of the central and eastern interior and north slope, Brooks Range, above normal across the west, had at least a little bit of guidance to support that, at least in western North Slope. Below normal tilt there, being indicated for southeast Alaska. And for the midsummer season, now we see most of the state, except for the Brooks Range and North Slope, favoring significantly above normal temperatures for the June through August period. precipitation on the right-hand side, larger area than we saw for May through July, favoring significantly above normal. West coast. South Central, as well as into, the interior. Equal chances across the northeast interior, most of the slope, and for southeast. And that is what I have for you today. Apologies for all the technical difficulties. We do have a large, large, webinar, quite a large number coming up here for you in the next couple of months, and Ed tells me, actually, this is not all of them, this is just what would fit. A couple of note, next week, our annual, Spring River Breakup Outlook with the Alaska Pacific RFC, is coming up, and then we have our annual, green-up forecast, webinar, will be next Thursday as well. And I will be back with you, next month on the 22nd, and let's hope that... I'm sure we will get all the technical difficulties figured out by Tuesday. Thanks very much. Edward Plumb: Thank you, Rick. Let me go ahead and, There was a couple questions in the chat, Rick, from Daryl. And... Daryl asked, is Super Typhoon Sinlaku, the one currently, like, north of Guam, an anomaly this year? And I told him I understood that that was, like, one of the strongest storms this early in April, but I don't know if you have any other comments on that. I think Daryl was looking at if there's a connection with El Nino, or be a product of El Nino. Richard Thoman: So, there is no El Nino right now. We're in... we are in, ENSO neutral, so neither El Nino, La Nina, so in that sense, no. The Western Pacific, doesn't really have much of a... of a lull in the typhoon season. They can get typhoons any month of the year. As Ed said, this one is mostly notable for its intensity. rather than the time of year, we'll refer back to that global sea surface temperature map, and where this typhoon is, is crossing above normal sea surface temperatures, which characterize nearly all of the Pacific Ocean north of the equator at the moment. Edward Plumb: Okay, thank you, Rick. I... sorry about that, I'm allowing people to unmute themselves, so... If anyone has any questions they'd like to ask Rick directly, you are able to unmute yourself and turn on your video if you'd like. Okay, not hearing any questions. I don't see anything else in the chat today. Oh, wait, there was one, sorry. Charlie Palmer asked, do precipitation chances factor in increases and decreases in thunderstorm potential? Richard Thoman: Only... only in the sense that they would be... they would be, picked up by the... the large-scale climate models, which, of course, don't... aren't really designed, to resolve, thunderstorms explicitly. So, I think the answer to your question, Charlie, is only in the most broad sense. Edward Plumb: Okay, thanks, Rick. Well, with that, if there's no more questions, like I said, you will be prompted for a very short survey. when you sign out of Zoom, and if you are in the web... version of Zoom. If you could hit, like, exit Zoom rather than just close the tab, it'll prompt you with the questions. At that, thanks so much, we hope to see some of you next week at the... you saw the briefings, the one about the, what spring breakup's gonna bring this year, and also, when are the Leafs gonna come out in the interior? And at that, everyone have a great rest of your Friday and weekend. Richard Thoman: Thanks, everyone.