Extreme Weather Linked to Vanishing Cryosphere

[wili]

http://www.climatecentral.org/news/new-study-adds-to-arctic-warming-extreme-weather-debate-16811

Study Adds to Arctic Warming, Extreme Weather Debate

The study, published Sunday in the journal Nature Climate Change, is the first to find correlations between rapid Arctic warming and extreme summer weather events, since previous research had focused on the links between Arctic warming and fall and winter weather patterns.

http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate2065.html

Extreme summer weather in northern mid-latitudes linked to a vanishing cryosphere

 Qiuhong Tang,   
Xuejun Zhang   
& Jennifer A. Francis

The past decade has seen an exceptional number of unprecedented summer extreme weather events in northern mid-latitudes, along with record declines in both summer Arctic sea ice and snow cover on high-latitude land. The underlying mechanisms that link the shrinking cryosphere with summer extreme weather, however, remain unclear.

Here, we combine satellite observations of early summer snow cover and summer sea-ice extent with atmospheric reanalysis data to demonstrate associations between summer weather patterns in mid-latitudes and losses of snow and sea ice.

Results suggest that the atmospheric circulation responds differently to changes in the ice and snow extents, with a stronger response to sea-ice loss, even though its reduction is half as large as that for the snow cover.

Atmospheric changes associated with the combined snow/ice reductions reveal widespread upper-level height increases, weaker upper-level zonal winds at high latitudes, a more amplified upper-level pattern, and a general northward shift in the jet stream.

More frequent extreme summer heat events over mid-latitude continents are linked with reduced sea ice and snow through these circulation changes.

(My emphases and formatting.)

Much to ponder here, both from the abstract (and accompanying graphs) and from the excellent CC article (first link).

[Neven]

Thanks for that link to CC, wili. I will re-post this tomorrow on the ASIB.

[wili]

You are more than welcome. Thank you for all your mostly thankless work here.

[ChrisReynolds]

Anyone got a copy to save me £22? I'd like to read how Francis bounces back!

[jdallen]

Excellent links, wili.  Thank you.

[ChrisReynolds]

Received a copy from Steven, thanks.

If anyone wants one - chris886222@btinternet.com

[Gray-Wolf]

I looked for a thread to put this in and this is all I could find? I'd have thought many of us were very interested in the links between ice loss ( esp. across the USA and NW Europe???)?

Anyhoos:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/qj.2502/pdf

A bit more weight to Ms Francis and co.?

[Jim Hunt]

I'd have thought many of us were very interested in the links between ice loss ( esp. across the USA and NW Europe???)?[/url]

A bit more weight to Ms Francis and co.?

Thanks for the heads up. I'm very interested in the topic, but seem to have missed this thread first time around.

Here's my personal take on some of James Screen's work:

http://econnexus.org/does-the-arctic-sea-ice-influence-weather-in-the-south-west/

and here's a "selfie" of James and I at the Transformational Climate Science conference:



   

[Jim Hunt]

This more recent paper seems like it deserves a mention in here also:

"Atmospheric response in summer linked to recent Arctic sea ice loss"

Since 2007 a large decline in Arctic sea ice has been observed. The large-scale atmospheric
circulationresponsetothisdeclineisinvestigatedinERA-InterimreanalysesandHadGEM3
climate model experiments. In winter, post-2007 observed circulation anomalies over the
Arctic, North Atlantic and Eurasia are small compared to interannual variability. In
summer, the post-2007 observed circulation is dominated by an anticyclonic anomaly
over Greenland which has a large signal-to-noise ratio. Climate model experiments driven
by observed SST and sea ice anomalies are able to capture the summertime pattern of
observed circulation anomalies, although the magnitude is a third of that observed. The
experiments suggest high SSTs and reduced sea ice in the Labrador Sea lead to positive
temperature anomalies in the lower troposphere which weaken the westerlies over North
America through thermal wind balance. The experiments also capture cyclonic anomalies
over Northwest Europe, which are consistent with downstream Rossby wave propagation

[ktonine]

Francis and Vavrus' latest paper on the subject is in Environmental Research Letters, Evidence for a wavier jet stream in response to rapid Arctic warming, and is open access.

[Gray-Wolf]

http://www.the-cryosphere.net/9/53/2015/tc-9-53-2015.pdf

Seems the occurrence of the Beaufort high/Greenland high is likely linked to low ice levels and that low ice levels mean more Beaufort/Greenland highs........ not good.