Edward Plumb: Okay, good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the July edition of the Alaska Climate Outlook Briefing. Today's event is being held in the International Arctic Research Center here on the University of Alaska, Troth Yeddha’ campus. The Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Preparedness, we're also known as ACCAP is hosting this event, and ACCAP is part of the regional integrated sciences and assessments program which is funded by the NOAA climate program office. ACCAP has been working here in Alaska for almost 20 years to improve the ability of Alaskans to adapt to a changing climate. And as usual, a few logistics before we get started. Everyone has been muted and your video has been turned off. We will have 10 minutes or so at the end of the webinar, and at that point, I'll allow you to unmute yourself or turn on your video if you have any questions you'd like to ask Rick. But feel free to drop questions in the chat. Myself or Rick will try to answer them as he's going along, and any questions we don't get to in the chat. I will make sure I bring up during the Q&A session. So, the presentation, this webinar is being recorded, and I will send out an email later today With the recording link. And I know many of you come to these each month, but you will be prompted for a brief survey at the end of the webinar, and if you're using Zoom in a browser, please hit end session rather than closing the browser tab in order to be prompted for the survey. So there's about 4 questions. And if you haven't filled out the survey, we really appreciate. If you take a few moments just to answer a few questions about the webinar. So, at that, we'll go ahead and get started, and it's my pleasure, once again to be hosting this webinar, and my name is Ed Plumb, and I'm the weather and flood hazard specialist here at ACCAP. And today we have Rick Toman, and Rick is the Alaska climate specialist here with ACCAP and has 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 Rick, thanks again for putting this together, and I'm going to hand it off to you. Rick Thoman: All right. Well, thank you very much, Ed, and thanks everyone online for joining, taking time out of your mid-July Friday for our monthly Outlook webinar. So let's jump right in. So, here's our agenda, same as usual, just very brief overview of what we're trying to do with seasonal climate forecasting. Then take a look at recent happenings in and around Alaska. Then we'll take a look at Past forecasts, how those panned out. Take a look at the current state of the climate system, then we'll look at some of the tools that go into making up the monthly and seasonal outlooks, and then we'll finish up with the outlooks from the Climate Prediction Center that were released just yesterday morning. Next. Alright, so, Climate Prediction Center is the primary NOAA Weather Service facility, College Park, Maryland, that does forecasting from the, about one week in the future on out to about a year into the future. The weather forecast offices and the RFCs mostly work within kind of that first week. time frame, and then CPC picks it up after that. Next. Okay, so, climate forecasts, very different than the weather forecasts that you get on your phone. When we do climate forecasts, typically we are doing outlooks in relationship to some kind of long-term normal or average. Current 30-year international standard is 1991 to 2020. That's what that long-term normal that we're going to be using to reference our outlooks. Typically, we do categorical forecasts when we do climate outlooks, very different than the discrete forecasts for weather forecasts, so a high of 72 versus above normal temperatures. Whether we do two categories, three, or even more, we're going to give you the chances of all the categories. That's the probabilistic part. For temperatures, centered on the average precipitation, actually centered on the 30-year median. That can be different than the, normal, which by convention is the average. That can be significantly different in, dry climates or in areas where particular parts of the year are very low. Not so much of an issue at this time of year for Alaska. Now, if you're interested in what these normal temperatures and precipitation ranges look like for quite a few places around the state, we have graphics for that, and that's available on our climate graphics web pages there, and you can get right to it there from that QR code. Now, when we put all of these pieces together, you get the graphic there on the right. So. we want to make a forecast for Sitka precipitation, the total forecast for the month of August coming up. Here is what we're gonna do. I've taken the actual, the observed Sitka precipitation each August in our 30-year baseline period, 1991 to 2020, and I've just rank-ordered them. So, the lowest observed precipitation in that 30 years over on the far left-hand side, and the highest precipitation in those 30 years there, is on the far right-hand side, the driest is on the far left. And so we do three categories for precipitation. We just divide them up into three equal blocks. They are equal in the sense, if you count up the dots, you will find there are 10 years fall into the below normal, the near normal, and the above normal category. And when we make an outlook for this coming August. precipitation for Sitka, we're going to give you the chances that the actual precipitation that falls in August 2026 will fall. What's the chance it's going to fall in that, in the orange box, so the significantly below normal? What's the chance it's going to fall in the gray box, the near normal? And what's the chance that's gonna fall in the green box there, the significantly above normal category? That's what we're trying to do with most climate outlooks. All right, so recent happenings. Most of Alaska has actually had a pretty cool weather since our summer solstice briefing. From the climate perspective, most, most dramatically, Cold Bay on the lower Alaska Peninsula on July 6th had a overnight low temperature of 32 degrees, and that is the first time In Cold Bay's climate history, which starts in the 1940s, first time that they have had a July freeze. Now, another big, big feature for this, this summer has been wildfire in Alaska. We have actually had a lot of lightning. Lightning is above normal. So far this summer, it started late, but the second half of June and the first half of July had well above normal lightning, not record, but well above normal. But, A lot of fires have started, but they have not burned much acreage, and in fact, as of yesterday, just over 40,000 acres had burned in Alaska, and that is the third lowest To this point in the season, since we have daily estimates of area burn since 1993, so last 34 years, we're at the third lowest. With those thunderstorms, of course, been some, a lot of hail reports around it, and this, maybe most dramatically, this, photo, from the Denali Highway at, Alpine Creek Lodge on July 5th, Weather Services called this funnel an absence of it actually touched down. Folks there were, thought that it had touched down, but it was far away. So, either a tornado or a funnel cloud, they, these, of course, do happen. We'll just stress that, Alaska tornadoes, funnel clouds are only distant cousins of the Midwest monsters. They form in quite different environments. There have been a small number of confirmed tornadoes in Alaska in the last 50 years. Next. All right, so climate review. What happened and how did the forecast perform? Alright, so, based on our climate reanalysis model. We have these graphics here from our colleague, Dr. Brian Brettschneider, National Weather Service in Anchorage, and so I like these graphics a lot. The color scheme here is the three categories that we're trying to forecast. The reddish colors are areas that were in that significantly above normal category, the white space is near normal, and the blues are significantly below normal. These are for temperatures, June on the left-hand side, and April, May, June on the right. So, starting with the June forecast, as you can see over the north slope in Brooks Range, generally in the significantly below normal categories. Portions of the inland north slope there in the much below normal, so lowest 10% of our 30-year baseline period. Did have some significantly above normal areas there in southwest Alaska, particularly the Bethel area. A lot of places in the white space there, the near normal, had significant temperature variability during the month of June, but overall it averaged out. For the, for the three-month, late spring season, April through June, again, you can see below normal on the north slope, as well as much of south central and southwest Alaska. A lot of white space though across much, but not all of the interior. Not very much significantly above normal area showing there, although portions of the Seward Peninsula and Northwest Arctic did come in in the significantly above normal category as did portions of southern southeast Alaska. Same, same idea for precipitation. June on the left, April, May, June on the right. In this case, the green and blues indicate significantly above normal precipitation. The yellows and oranges significantly below. White space, that near normal category. As always, precipitation much more variable, even over short distances, relative to the long-term average. You can see for June, portions of the northern interior, south slopes of the Brooks Range, central and eastern areas, very wet in some places, the highest precipitation since 1950 in the ERA-5 reanalysis here, also very wet in portions of the Yukon. On the other hand, most of western Alaska from Bristol Bay all the way up to the western North Slope in that significantly below normal category. A very mixed bag in South Central, as is often the case. Southeast, more on the dry side than not. For the 3-month season, though, you can see a much larger area with significantly above Normal precipitation, most of the interior, although not so much in the Tanana Valley. Significantly below normal though, central and western north slope down through the Bering Strait region and much of southeast, either in that near normal or even significantly below normal. Category, especially in southern southeast there. Alright, so, how did the CPC forecast do? So, in this case, we will start here with the, the outlook for June temperatures. This was the outlook that was made by the Climate Prediction Center in mid-May. And the underlying color field is what the CPC forecast at that time, and the shapes there indicate from the available long-term climate sites which category that the observations wound up falling in. So, you can see the forecast, that underlying orangish color there, that indicates areas where significantly above normal temperatures. That was the favored category. the, the area without any color, so kind of south central up towards the Yukon Delta, CPC did not, did not change the odds, and there's an area there with these bluish colors where CPC favored the significantly below normal category. So, as you can see here, overall, this did not work out very well. Only a couple of places in Southeast managed to fall into the significantly above normal category. No place where significantly above normal was favored in mainland Alaska did that verify. A little better with that cool tilt area in southwest Alaska, with several sites falling into the significantly below normal category. So, put them all together for the areas that had a tilt in the odds. 15% of the station observations were in the forecast category. Remember, three-category forecast. If you random guess, you'll get a third right, so, This was not a very skillful forecast for CPC for June temperatures. Precipitation did a little bit better here, although, unlike temperatures, you can see relatively little area of the state had any tilt in the odds, tilted to favor dry from about Yakutat southeast and then favored the significantly above normal category across northwest and western Alaska. There's hardly any precipitation observations available from long-term climate sites up there, but both Kotzebue and Nome did not fall into the significantly above normal category. In fact, both were significantly below normal for the month. Forecast in southeast though did pretty well. The available observations in the below normal category except for Yakutat there. Given that there's only a few observations of this and the aerial coverage was small, of the sites that had data, 57% in the right category. So that's a skillful forecast for sure. And really, precipitation is so tough to forecast. We'll take anything above the skill score of 0, which is just the random guess, value. Now for the late spring season here. excuse me, we had two areas forecast. This is the forecast that was made in mid-March by the Climate Prediction Center. We had an area there in the central and eastern Interior on up to about the Brooks Range, where significantly below normal was favored, and an area across southwest Alaska into western Alaska, where significantly above normal is favored. And you can see, the below normal tilt in the interior, that worked out at a few places, but most places wound up in the near normal category. No place in the area that favored a warm tilt worked out there in western Alaska, 25% of the available observations were in the correct category where the odds were tilted. So again, a less than random guess score there. Now, June, April through June precipitation a little bit larger area than the, just the June precipitation, a fairly wide swath there from Kodiak Island on up through the western Interior and northwest Arctic Borough, where significantly above normal precipitation was favored. That did work out, kind of the inland areas, as well as Kodiak Island did not work out at the few observations along the coast, but still, it's above, it's above, zero. So, where CPC tilted the odds, did better than random guess, so we'll take it. All right, now let's take a look at what's happening with sea ice around the Arctic to start. On the left-hand side, you have the daily sea ice extent for the Arctic as a whole. I've just circled where we're at now. Kind of hard to tell right now, but the kind of the sky blue line is this year. We're basically on top of where we were at last year, and significantly lower ice extent than we had on July 15th in 2024. Overall. As of Wednesday, Arctic wide sea ice extent 7th lowest of record for in the National Snow and Ice Data Center analysis. On the right hand side we have the spatial view of extent. And as we have been talking about, seemingly for several years now, in the summertime, we have way below the 1981 to 2010 median on the Atlantic side. That, 30-year median is kind of the orange line there. However, on the Pacific side of the Arctic, sea ice extent is actually above normal. That is particularly true as of, as of Wednesday, sea ice extent in the Chukchi Sea, so north of the Bering Strait, northwest of Alaska coast, was the highest for for the 15th of July, since 1994. There was almost no open water in the Beaufort Sea until about a week ago. Things are finally starting to melt out beyond the Mackenzie River Delta in northwest Canada. Along the Alaska coast, there is, there is just some open water starting to show up now, mostly at the, at the mouths of the big rivers, draining into there. But, very slow, melt season. north of the Bering Strait for the Alaska side. Other area I would point out here. is, off of the Russian coast there. Again, on the Atlantic side, in the Barents and Kara Seas, ice extend very low. We also have an unusual area of open water there in kind of east of the New Siberian Islands, west of Rango Island there. That's mostly the western East Siberian Sea. And that's a pretty large area of open water for this early in the season for that part of the Arctic. Sea ice thickness, so here we have the modeled sea ice thickness from the Danish Meteorological Institute. for as of Wednesday. And the little insert there is the Arctic sea ice volume. Now, if you've been with us in past webinars this year, sea ice volume has been running very low or even at record low level in the DMI modeling scheme here now. It's pretty much caught up. If you compare the thickness there, on the left-hand side is Wednesday, and then on the right-hand side, same date last year, there are some interesting differences. You'll notice there's more of those green and even yellow colors. close to the northern Alaska and northwest Canada coasts, say, off the Mackenzie Delta. That is definitely a change from last year. Also, if you, if you kind of don't, if you just kind of blur your vision, you can see that the ice near, say, the North Pole is a bit thicker in this modeling scheme than last year. On the other hand. over parts of the Russian coast, ice is definitely thinner this year than we had last year at this time. So, putting that all together, the thickness is now very close to what we've had the last 3 years, actually, now. Closer to home, here's the National Weather Service Sea Ice Program Sea Ice Concentration Analysis, again, Wednesday on the left-hand side, same date last year on the right. At first blush, there doesn't really look like there's a lot of difference between the two. A couple of things I'll point out. In the Chukchi Sea, just to the north of the Bering Sea, you'll notice there is some higher or high concentration ice, almost right down to Northeast Cape, so the kind of the northern, northwest edge there of the Bering Strait. This is, we didn't have that last year, but what we have now with that ice threatening to work down the west side of the Bering Strait, we saw that both in 2023 and 2024, with the East Siberian coastal current moving that ice south. So that's kind of interesting. In the Beaufort Sea, in the area that the Alaska Sea Ice Program does the analysis, you can see maybe if you squint, there was a little bit more open water just east of the Alaska border last year than there is this year, where very high ice concentrations persist. And here's what the Chukchi time series looks like. So every black line is every year from 1979 onward. The green, thick green line is last year's daily ice extent. The blue line is this year, and the thick black line is just the 1991 to 2020 median. You can see we're way above median and we are way above where we were at this time last year. Again, a lot of that ice on the north, kind of the northeastern most portion there of the Chukotsk Peninsula, driving some of that overall sea ice extent in the Chukchi. There's been a there's been let me do the math real quick, 6 years that have been higher than this. All of them were before 2006. Now turning to sea surface temperatures. This is the weekly plot. from NOAA here for the week ending on July 11th. I've just circled the North Pacific for your eye. There on the left-hand side, the little box on the right, that's just the zoom in to Alaska, so you don't have to squint so hard. You can see across the North Pacific. We do have some differences here from previous months, mostly in the sense not quite as monolithically hot. As it's been, we still have that area of very warm water, relative to normal, extending from northern Japan across the North Pacific, but not making it all the way to the North American coast. Gulf of Alaska, southern Bering Sea, mostly near or below normal. The northern Bering Sea, and you can see the western Bering there, northwest Bering above normal. Although the area that's above normal there is not terribly large. In the middle of the left-hand graphic, that box, that's our Nino 3.4 bellwether region. And you can see that we have above normal sea surface temperatures along the equator from just to the west of the Dateline all the way to the South American coast, including throughout the Nino 3.4 region there. All right. So we were just looking at the 2 dimensional. So the surface the surface temperature departure from normal. Now, let's take a look in that third dimension, so at depth. So, on the right-hand side is for June. This is the modeled Heat content, departure from normal for the upper 300 meters of the ocean, so a very large, area, or volume of water here. You can see that very warm water along the equator, a lot of heat in the upper ocean there. You can also see Extending east from Japan, a lot of heat in the upper 300 meters of the north central Pacific. Now we have that heat for the month extending nearly to North America, Gulf of Alaska, though, generally near or a little bit less total heat in that in that upper ocean. And that's not much change from what we had last month. On the right-hand side is our depth versus longitude plot of temperatures along the equator, or very close to the equator for the 5 days ending on July 12th. And you can see here, so on the left-hand side of this graphic is way west of the Dateline, Solomon Islands area, all the way, and on the far right would be close to the South American coast. The very warm water extending very deep, more than 100 meters deep, even 150 meters deep from about the Dateline eastward. West of the Dateline still have some reservoir of above normal, but that appears to be weakening here. In recent weeks, but the very warm water in the Central and Eastern Pacific, really quite dramatic. You can see there, down around 65 meters there west of the, west of the, South American coast. That is, water that is, the bullseye there, 9 degrees Celsius above average, really quite dramatic. So, what we really care about, as far as El Nino goes, is not that the ocean temperatures are warm a thousand miles south and southeast of Hawaii, but rather, how does that influence the tropical atmosphere, which then in turn, can affect the jet stream which can then in turn affect our weather. So here's how the here's how the current state of the tropical Pacific atmosphere. On the left hand side we have our proxy for those big tropical thunderstorms, the blue and purple areas are where we have more of those tropical thunderstorms, the orange and yellows where we have less. And you can see we have enhanced thunderstorms near the equator there from west of the dateline, much of the way across the equatorial Pacific, not quite to the South American coast, but a pretty good bit of that and very suppressed thunderstorm activity back to Indonesia, Malaysia area, back into the Indian Ocean. On the right-hand side is the, basically, you can think of this as the trade wind departures from average. We have so when we have those arrows that are pointing from west to east, that indicates weaker trade winds than average. And you can see in the Nino 3.4 region, that's that box there, trade winds a bit weaker than average, really quite dramatic though, westerly wind in the far west there. Whether it's turned the winds all the way around to actually being from the west, or just very weak trade winds, we don't know from this plot, but that is really quite substantial. The bottom line here is the tropical atmosphere is looking increasingly like El Nino. All right. So let's go ahead and take a look at some of the tools that we have. We'll start out with our El Nino evaluations from the experts. Then take a look at some, just a handful of statistical models where we use the past. to get an idea for future conditions, and then the dynamic seasonal climate models. They don't know anything about the past, they only know a starting condition and the physics as encoded in the models. All right, starting with the outlook from the Climate Prediction Center and experts at Columbia University. Every month they put their head together and one of the things they come up with is using the tools at their disposal. They give us a nice climate forecast. what are the chances of each of the three possible categories of ENSO, El Nino Southern Oscillation, so that's El Nino, or La Nina, or neither. So it's a three-category forecast, and they're going to give us the chances of all of them. Now, it turns out that the current forecasts are extremely boring. You can see, in the expert's opinion, near certainty that we will be in El Nino, right through the, the early spring, 2027 season. Last month's outlook is on the right and on the left, and this month's on the, on the right there, and you can see, there's very little, very little change at all. Extremely high confidence that we will have El Nino only when we get into the end of winter and next spring. Even a slight hint there of the possibility of the El Nino ending and returning to neutral conditions. Now, one of the relatively new things that they've started issuing is the chances of the strength of the El Nino or La Nina event. Again, the June forecast was on the left-hand side and the current on the right. And so, of course, if you're on this call, you're probably aware of the talk of a very strong or a super El Nino. And the forecast you can see this month have really increased the chances of that substantially as we go through the fall. With now a nearly a 50% chance, by the time we get to August, September, October, so the early autumn season, almost a 50% chance we'll be in that very strong category. That's a big increase from the forecast last month. And, we've got now, you can see September, October, November through the mid-winter, December through February season. The experts going for a better than 50-50 chance that we will have these very strong El Nino conditions, then fading as we go through the winter, but still very likely to be in El Nino conditions. So really, quite a dramatic forecast. Alright, statistical guidance, can we use the past to predict the future? Alright, so, starting off with August. Here's the temperature trend on the left, precipitation trend on the right, over the past 50 years. So August is really interesting in that undoubtedly what your eye sees first there is that rather large blue area indicating a downward trend in temperatures in August on the north slope there. That is not a figment of the ERA 5 reanalysis. There were a number of exceptionally warm Augusts in the late 1970s on the Slope. We have station observations to support that. So, we haven't had a repeat of those kind of temperatures, so a little bit of a downward trend there, should say it doesn't reach that statistical significance level. Otherwise, over the state, though, generally warming over the last 50 years in August. Most pronounced, perhaps, there in southeast Alaska and the Gulf of Alaska coast. Changes inland in the Interior are generally not too dramatic. Right along the North Slope coast, though, the loss of sea ice in August is showing up with a sharp gradient there towards warmer conditions. And that's the same thing that's going on there in Kotzebue Sound. Precipitation is also quite interesting. Often these precipitation trend maps don't show a lot, but that is not the case in August. You can see the vast majority of the state showing a trend towards wetter August in the last 50 years. And some of these, some of the changes, the values here are percent changes. They're actually quite large there. The only portion of the state really not showing much in the way of trend would be southwest Alaska. And the trends are weaker in northwest Alaska. But really, a pretty, pretty large area with substantial changes in August average precipitation since the mid-1970s. Okay, that's the half-century view. Okay, how about the short view? So what's happened in the last 15 years, sometimes called the optimum climate normals? And what I do for this, this slide is, here we're looking at the 13 Alaska climate divisions. And all I ask is, over the last 15 years, so 2011 to 2025, has the average temperature or average precipitation during August and the August, September, October season, has it fallen into the significantly above or significantly below normal categories based on our current 30 years, 1991 to 2020. So, when we do that for temperatures only, the Aleutian Climate Division shows that the last 15 years have fallen into that significantly above normal category. But now on the upper right hand side, the early autumn season, August through October, much more widespread over the last 15 years, the average temperature falling into that significantly above normal category, central interior, Bristol Bay, as well as the Gulf of Alaska coastal divisions in the southeast interior. Precipitation. On the bottom row, August, again, last 15 years have been quite wet from the west coast all the way across to the eastern Interior for the August through October precipitation. On the bottom right now, again, wetter north slope and Interior now, including the, the Cook Inlet region, but notice both southern, southeast, and the, Aleutians climate divisions last 15 years, average precipitation has fallen into the significantly below normal category. And we want to ask, we've got this, we've got this El Nino, underway now, and if all, all, every indication is it's going to continue to strengthen, so, how has the early autumn, August through October season turned out when we've had El Nino conditions? Since 1970, so there's 13 years that meet that criteria. And, temperatures are on the left, and precipitation on the right. And all I've done here is for each of those 13, I've asked what category? Near normal, significantly above, or significantly below? did that early autumn fall into and using the appropriate 30-year climatology as our baseline. So for instance, the 2002 and 2004 seasons, those were El Nino autumns. And so I compared what happened in those two years to the normals that would have been in effect at that time. In this case, the 1971 to 2000. So that's a bit of a way to adjust for change over time. When we put all that together, what we find, you can see temperatures on the right, a large part of Alaska has favored significantly above normal temperatures during El Nino. Not everywhere, in particular, Cook Inlet into the eastern Interior, there's large areas there where none, where neither above or below normal, have predominated in the 13 El Nino autumns. On the right-hand side, except for the North Slope, there's not much signal there for precipitation. So, meaning that El Nino and early autumn precipitation don't show much in the way of correlation. We probably can't use that for a forecast tool. Alright, now the dynamic climate models, again, don't know anything about the past, they just have starting conditions. This case will be typically around the 1st of July, and then they know the physics as encoded in the models. We'll take a look at several different things being forecast by these dynamic climate models there from several different sources. Next. Alright, starting off with sea surface temperatures August through October. On the left-hand side is the forecast from the North American Multi-Model Ensemble, about 100 different models from 6 different systems going into this. And you can see here across the North Pacific, that tongue of very warm water forecast to continue from Northern Japan, across most of the Pacific, almost to the North American coast. But near Alaska, Gulf of Alaska, at least the southern Bering Sea, generally near or even a little bit below normal there in, the southeast Bering. Along the equator, you can see the very, very classic, El Nino signal. The only thing surprising about this is this is only August through October. This would be more like a, October to December canonical El Nino signal really dramatically strong there. On the right-hand side is the scale of these forecasts. How good are these forecasts? How good are ocean Temperature forecast made in early July for the upcoming August through October season. For ocean temperatures, we want to see these skill scores in the purple. We get that near Alaska, including the Bering Sea. As well as near the equator, at least from the dateline eastward. Notice though, the models have relatively low skill there, kind of in the north central Pacific, kind of right in the middle of that warm tongue there extending eastward. Models historically have struggled with the sea surface temperature forecast in that region in the early autumn season. Now, how about sea ice? So, sea ice is slowly retreating from Alaska. One of the, one of the, experimental products that the Climate Prediction Center runs is a seasonal sea ice outlook. for the northern hemisphere. And one of the products that comes out for that is when are we gonna have the first open water in the spring or summer, and then correspondingly the first not open water in the fall or winter. So, and this is experimental and that's good because that means that the Climate Prediction Center developers of this product can make changes to, to hopefully enhance the forecast without having to go through a long bureaucratic process. So, the fact that it's experimental is not a bad thing. So, here's where we stand now. we, we have, we might have, I think, well, I don't think, I know that the darkest red there, showing the models that was run in late June, is probably, this was too aggressive on the timing of the first open water there in the western Chukchi Sea, also in portions of the Canadian waters there, Amundsen Gulf in the southeast. Beaufort Sea there, probably a bit too early clearing it out. Near Alaska on the, on the Beaufort Sea coast, we do see an expansion there of, first open water in, in early August there, for, is extended, in a much greater area. It's gonna be, we gotta have a lot of things happen in the next two weeks, if that kind of pinkish area first open water in late July is going to extend from the Alaska-Canada border all the way to about Prudhoe Bay. That's going to take some work to happen. There's still time, but we'll see. Another change this month, as you can see now, kind of that darker areas there, right at the top, center of the graphic there, where the, this model is now forecasting that the ice never, opens up there. Which would be fairly far south for no open water there, to the west of Banks Island at about 74 north. That would be pretty impressive. But given what's happening, that could well work out. Alright. So North American multi-model ensemble, as I mentioned, about 100 different model runs in this 6 different systems. What we're looking at here is temperatures on the top, precipitation on the bottom. And what we have here are the categorical forecasts. Each model run is compared to its own system's climatology, not the real world. So that's a little bit of bias correction there. And then the calibrated part is then to compare the output from that to what actually happened. So, the way I like to do this is, see how these forecasts have evolved through time. Stability or lack thereof is an important, consideration in the forecaster toolkit. So, forecasts for August made in May are on the left, forecast for August made in June are in the middle, and the most recent made in early July are on the right-hand side. So just scanning your eye across the top road, you can see there some changes in the temperature outlook. Especially between June and July, if you look in the Gulf of Alaska, big change with a large area there where near normal is actually favored. We don't often see that. Sometimes that does pop up over the ocean, especially, and we have one of those occurrences. Much less area, though, with a tilt to favor significantly above normal than we had in at least June and even July. Precipitation on the bottom. Not a lot of consistency here. I will point out that in June and July, somewhere, either southeast Alaska or a little bit farther south on the British Columbia coast, models do favor significantly below normal category precipitation. So somewhere in that general part of the world, there's at least two months worth of consistency. We didn't really see much of that back in the May forecast for August. So temperatures may be trending away from a warm tilt, maybe a little bit of support for dry in southeast Alaska. Now from our colleagues at the World Climate Service, they also process these global seasonal climate outlooks and they do something a little bit different. So this is a product, it's just using two different forecast systems, the US climate forecast system and the European system. But, unlike the North American model, where every model, every run counts the same, the World Climate Service folks, they weight the forecast, so the model that's done better gets higher weight over the other model. And when they do that, some significant difference here in the outlook from the NMME output. You can see most of Alaska favoring significantly above normal. The major exceptions being, in addition to Southern Bering Sea and over the Gulf, intersecting there the Alaska Peninsula with actually favoring significant, favoring near normal. Again, that's an unusual forecast. Also notice that strip of near or even below normal being favored across basically along about 70 to 72 north where that ice is hanging in. So in this model scheme, that's actually being picked up. Precipitation, really nothing to hang our hat on here. We do see that area of below normal tilt, but south of southeast in this model scheme, more the British Columbia coast down to western Washington and Oregon. Now, for the early autumn season, again, same scheme, temperatures on top, precipitation on the bottom. Temperatures here now, you can see we have better consistency in the, the August through October outlooks. From May, June, and July, most of Alaska favoring significantly above normal. Precipitation on the bottom, maybe there's a little bit better consistency for a dry tilt across at least southern southeast, although most of that is across the British Columbia coast. really not much, consistency in favoring, anything else, across mainland Alaska. So some weak, weak, blobs there of, of weak tilt to above normal, but they don't stay in the same place month to month. Next. And the World Climate Service version, again, Temperatures on the left, again, a strong tilt to favor significantly above normal across most of Alaska, indeed most of the area on this map. We still see the influence of that ice in the Beaufort and Northern Chukchi Seas there, and near normal across most of the central and southeastern Bering Sea there. Precipitation there is nothing to hang our hat on. Last piece of the puzzle, what did the experts think? Last month, for August through October, all of the state, except for the central and western Aleutians, tilted to favor significantly above normal. Strongest tilt, south central Alaska and the Gulf of Alaska coast, including all of southeast. Precipitation last month, fairly large area favoring significantly above normal as the most likely category. There's a small area there in southern southeast where a slight tilt to favor significantly below normal, and then in between, a fairly large area where all three categories deemed equally likely by the experts. And the most current answers released just yesterday morning are, Ta-da! August! So we have most of the state favoring significantly above normal for August. Strongest tilt there, central and southern, southeast, with a better than 50-50 chance of being in that significantly above normal category in the expert's opinion. The only area not tilted again. the Central and Western Aleutians, as well as the North Slope. That is definitely a nod to the high ice concentrations that we have ongoing there. Precipitation, a little bit different than the guidance had. Again, we see a very large area favoring significantly above normal. In western Alaska there, twice as likely in the expert's opinion to be significantly above normal as below normal. Remember, these are probabilistic forecasts. We're giving you the chances of all three categories. Central and southern southeast Alaska slightly favoring significantly below normal for the month. Next. Now, turning to the early autumn season here, August through October. Much, but not all, of the state favoring significantly above normal. As we had in August, the highest chances, better than 50% chance in the significantly above normal category, southeast Alaska, as well as southeastern most part of the mainland, including the Kenai Peninsula, Prince William Sound, but not quite all of northern south central. Equal chances, though, now, larger across most of the North Slope, as well as northwest Alaska, at least portions there of the YK Delta and the Aleutians, and at least lower Alaska Peninsula. Precipitation, now a larger area, although not a strong tilt, favoring significantly below normal precipitation across most of southeast now. Still have a large area with favoring significantly above normal precipitation, but notice that is a very weak Tilt, and again, continued equal chances of all three categories, Aleutians and Pribilofs. And finally, looking ahead to the mid-autumn season, September to November, and now, CPC, this is not much change from last month. You can see all of the state now, including the North Slope, favoring significantly above normal temperatures. Only the Central and Western Aleutians have equal chances, and again, highest chances for above normal, Southeast Alaska, as well as now a larger area in Southcentral on up into the Alaska Range and including portions of Kodiak area as well. Precipitation, a large area with a weak tilt to favor significantly above normal. Small area now for the mid-autumn season there is favored for significantly below normal precipitation, it's basically Ketchikan and higher areas, and that's about it. Otherwise, near, equal chances, all three categories equally likely, for most of Southeast, as well as the Southeast mainland. And that is what I have for you this month. Here is a list of our upcoming webinars. We've got a whole slew of them for you, so hopefully you'll be able to join, join in for some of these. I will, I'll promo, the, one that I'll be on, the August 25th, tracking drought in Alaska. Been working here with the folks at, SNAP, Scenarios Network for Alaska and Arctic Planning, to develop some tools, and we'll be debuting those for you, and we'll be soliciting your opinion on that. So I'll hand it back to Ed. Edward Plumb: Great. Thank you, Rick. I have, switch the controls here. So if you have a question for Rick, you can unmute yourself and ask your question. You can also turn on your video. There was a comment, and it looks like there's a question from Gay Sheffield. Rick, if you want to look at her question, she did comment on about some icebreaker activity and a bunch of industrial ships moving up through the Bering up into the Chuck Gc. And up along the Arctic Russian coast. Rick Thoman: Cool. Edward Plumb: I don't know, can you see her question there in. Rick Thoman: Again, so Gay asks, "With a strong fall, El Nino predicted. Many Western Alaskans are wondering if this increases the chance for a return of an ex-typhoon or more frequent fall storms. So, here's what we know. El Ninos historically favor more typhoons in the Western Pacific. If we have more typhoons in the Western Pacific, that means we have more chances that all the other ingredients needed to bring a typhoon from the Northwest Pacific into Alaska, we've got more chances for that to happen. Given that ex-typhoons moving into Alaska waters anywhere east of Atka are rare, we don't know how that that specifically would affect that. But just because it's quite likely there will be more typhoons, we've got more bites at that apple. As far as El Nino and non-typhoon storminess or overall storminess, there is really not much correlation. Some El Nino autumns have been quite stormy, others have not been. So I would say at this point, our best guess is El Nino by itself is not a good predictor of autumn storminess in the Bering Sea. Gay Sheffield: Thank you, Rick. And that's great. I mean. We're all wondering. And then for that icebreaker, the icebreaker is actually coming across the top and the ships are balling up. You can kind of see where that Chukchi ice is sort of stopping them. And then they're sending over some of the most, well, the most powerful new icebreakers. So they don't want any. It must be pretty good ice. Thank you. Rick Thoman: Thank you. Edward Plumb: Thanks, Gay. appreciate the questions. Any other, anybody else have any questions or comments for Rick? Looks like, yeah, go ahead, Uma. Uma Bhatt: Rick, maybe you said it and I missed it. Is this the warmest it's ever been in the Equatorial Pacific in July? Like if you look at the index, because that compositing you did, I presume you did it based on July. It's an El Nino. Rick Thoman: So the composites were, did we have El Nino, so the relative oceanic Nino index in for August, September, October, was that over a half? So it's not lagged, it's the in season. Was the, was the, the criteria there. Uma Bhatt: Did you look at July by any chance? I was just curious. Rick Thoman: They're all, they're almost all the same, all the same years are there. Uma Bhatt: Okay, thank you. Edward Plumb: Thank you, Uma. Any other questions for Rick before the top of the hour here? Okay, we're hearing silence, Rick. Rick Thoman: Great, great. Edward Plumb: Thank you, and, yeah, thanks for everyone for, joining us today. I know, A Friday afternoon in the middle of the summer. We're happy that we have some attendance, so, Rick Thoman: Okay. Edward Plumb: Everyone have a great weekend, and I'm sure we will see many of you next month. And, as Rick showed, the upcoming webinars, we do have quite a few interesting things coming up, so feel free to hop on the website and And. Sign up for those, and, We'll catch you later. Rick Thoman: Thanks, everyone. Edward Plumb: Bye, everyone.