Cold winter extremes in northern continents linked to Arctic sea ice loss
By Qiuhong Tang, Xuejun Zhang, Xiaohua Yang, J. Francis. 2013
387 citations recorded by the source corpus.
The satellite record since 1979 shows downward trends in Arctic sea ice extent in all months, which are smallest in winter and largest in September. Previous studies have linked changes in winter atmospheric circulation, anomalously cold extremes and large snowfalls in mid-latitudes to rapid decline of Arctic sea ice in the preceding autumn. Using observational analyses, we show that the winter atmospheric circulation change and cold extremes are also associated with winter sea ice reduction through an apparently distinct mechanism from those related to autumn sea ice loss. Associated with winter sea ice reduction, a high-pressure anomaly prevails over the subarctic, which in part results from fewer cyclones owing to a weakened gradient in sea surface temperature and lower baroclinicity over sparse sea ice. The results suggest that the winter atmospheric circulation at high northern latitudes associated with Arctic sea ice loss, especially in the winter, favors the occurrence of cold winter extremes at middle latitudes of the northern continents.
Subfields: Atmospheric Science, Global and Planetary Change
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/848d2ccfb1c17fae703a53d8cda229df889c3d6a
How researchers see this paper
The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.
In Atmospheric Science
In Global and Planetary Change
Citations in the corpus
- Influence of Arctic sea ice on European summer precipitation (2013, background): “Reduced autumn and/or winter sea ice in the Barents Sea has been shown to strengthen the Siberian High and drive cold winters over Eurasia (Honda et al 2009, Petoukhov and Semenov 2010, Inoue et al 2012, Zhang et al 2012, Lim et al 2012, Tang et al 2013).”
- Forcing of the wintertime atmospheric circulation by the multidecadal fluctuations of the North Atlantic ocean (2014, background): “…1 c© 2014 IOP Publishing Ltd studies suggest that the Arctic amplification has favored the occurrence of the cold extreme events that have been observed over continental regions of the Northern hemisphere (NH) midlatitudes in recent winters (Tang et al 2013, Francis and Vavrus 2012).”
- Influence of the Gulf Stream on the Barents Sea ice retreat and Eurasian coldness during early winter (2014, result): “Tang et al (2013) showed the same results, and pointed out that the anomalous temperature and sea level pressure (SLP) patterns are sometimes very different from those of the Arctic oscillation.”