Melting Arctic Link to Cold, Snowy UK Winters
The progressive shrinking of Arctic sea ice is bringing colder, snowier winters to the UK and other areas of Europe, North America and China, a study shows.
As global temperatures have risen, the area of Arctic Ocean covered by ice in summer and autumn has been falling.
Writing in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a US/China-based team show this affects the jet stream and brings cold, snowy weather.
Whether conditions will get colder still as ice melts further is unclear.
There was a marked deterioration in ice cover between the summers of 2006 and 2007, which still holds the record for the lowest extent on record; and it has not recovered since.
The current winter is roughly tracking the graph of 2007, according to the US National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC).
The new study is not the first to propose a causal relationship between low Arctic ice in autumn and Europe’s winter weather.
But it has gone further than others in assessing the strength of the link.
Through observations and computer modelling, the team headed by Jiping Liu from Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, US, and the Insitute of Atmospheric Physics in Beijing has also elucidated the mechanisms involved.
“For the past four winters, for much of the northern US, east Asia and Europe, we had this persistent above-normal snow cover,” Dr Liu told BBC News.
“We don’t see a predictive relationship with any of the other factors that have been proposed, such as El Nino; but for sea ice, we do see a predictive relationship.”