Graduate student Andy Rhines will lead a discussion of a recent Geophysical Research Letters paper by Barnes et al. (2014), entitled, 'Exploring recent trends in Northern Hemisphere Blocking.'

"Barnes et al (2014) examine trends in the frequency of Northern Hemisphere atmospheric blocking events using several different metrics. Their primary result is that significant blocking trends in the observations are few and far between, with the different metrics generally disagreeing regionally. Although this result is somewhat less provocative than typical ClimaTea fare, it makes some important points in the context of the ongoing debate over links between arctic amplification and weather extremes. Accordingly, I hope that part of the discussion can focus on communication of the science in addition to the many interesting research questions raised by this and other recent papers."