Actual Significant Stratospheric Warming Occurring at 1mb-30mb

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2mb

5mb

10mb

30mb

There is some actual significant stratospheric warming occurring right now. You can see just how high the 1mb, 2mb, 5mb levels have risen, with the 1mb, 2mb levels getting quite close to the 'maximum' level of the past few decades.
What does this mean? A pattern change, of course! When you get significant warming like this (not like the other little 'bumps' of warming- this is the real deal), there's a confident assessment that the pattern will be changing. We just need to have this warming propagate down to the lower levels of the stratosphere, where some more influence matters.
We will have more information on this as it develops!