November 2013 Monthly Weather Summary

Date: December 12, 2013
Contact: Deb Kurtz, [phone]

Dry conditions and clear skies prevailed in Kenai Fjords for most of November. As indicated by the 30-year normal (1981-2010), November typically ranks as the fifth wettest month of the year but it currently holds the position of the third driest month for this year. Measurable precipitation was recorded at the Seward airport on nine days of the month with 79% of total precipitation occurring on three days, November 10^th, 21^st, and 24^th (0.97, 0.68 and

As recorded at the Seward airport, total precipitation for the month was 2.85 inches (39% of normal), 4.46 inches below the 30-year average (1981-2010) for the month. The monthly average temperature for November was 31.5 degrees F; 0.6 degrees F above the 30-year average.

Also of note:

• The National Weather Service Climate Prediction Center's three month weather outlook (December-January-February) favors normal temperatures and normal precipitation for the Kenai Fjords area.
• Learn more about climate outlooks (such as the one above) and what makes them different from weather forecasts at NOAA's Climate Watch Magazine.
• A new study led by the University of Alaska Fairbanks and the Russian Academy of Sciences' Far Eastern Branch reveal that part of the Arctic Ocean is releasing more than twice the amount of methane than what scientists previously thought.
• Columbia University researchers find that temperatures in the middle depths of the Pacific Ocean have increased 15 times faster in the last 60 years than they did during the warming cycles of the previous 10,000 years.
• Researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder published evidence indicating that temperatures in the Eastern Canadian Arctic are the warmest they've been in at least 44,000 years and, possibly, as long as 120,000 years.
• NOAA introduced a new tool called NOAA View that offers easy access to 60 climate datasets dating back to the 1880s as well as future climate model simulations in the format of user-friendly interactive maps.
• The World Meteorological Organization reports that atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations reached a new record-high in 2012.
• The Ecological Society of America's journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment published a special issue on climate change with numerous reports on climate change impacts to biodiversity and ecosystems available online.
• Researchers at the University of East Anglia report that climate change has altered the nesting patterns of birds resulting in earlier migrations.
• NOAA climate services portal serves as a single point-of-entry for NOAA's extensive climate information, data, products, services, and the climate science magazine ClimateWatch.