The year 1918 has seen a number of extreme meteorological conditions world wide , e.g. an El Nino event, and presumably the worst drought in India of the 20th Century. Less known is the sudden start of a warming in the Arctic in winter 1918/19, which had been one of our major research topic over many years. Based on this work we investigate the special situation in the Northern Atlantic (NA) prior and in the year 1918, and whether there had been features significant enough to play a role in the region or globally. Meteorological data from the Arctic Ocean region, Greenland, Iceland, North Europe, and Russia are analyzed in order to establish uncommon deviations from means, with regard to location and timing, which is a paramount precondition to discuss the source that presumably had made the year 1918 special.

As Prof. B.N. Goswami (1) recently assumed that additional freshwater melting from Greenland's ice sheet could weaken the monsoon to the extent of threatening perpetual drought, we will look at the sea ice conditions in the NA during that time period. The paper will finally refer to the mentioned sudden Arctic warming since winter 1918/19, which started and was sustained by a local source, namely the West Spitsbergen Current.

This makes it most unlikely that meteorological events in distant regions had had a significant effect on the situation in the NA, but suggesting to look the other way around. Did the NA influenced events, e.g. in India and the Central Pacific, during 1918? 3rd Graphic : Sea Surface Temperatures between Scotland and Faroe Island.



3rd Graphic : Sea Surface Temperatures between Scotland and Faroe Island.

(1) Centre for Atmospheric Sciences, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore 560 012

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*) The paper was presented at the National Conference on “Climate Change and Future Security“, January 08 & 09, 2010 LOYOLA INSTITUTE OF FRONTIER ENERGY, Loyola College, Chennai/India