Large scale atmospheric warming in the winter and the Arctic sea ice retreat

The ongoing shrinkage of the Arctic sea ice cover is apparently linked to the global temperature rise, to the pronounced warming in the Arctic and weather anomalies in the middle latitudes. Unlike previous studies, by evaluating independent components of global atmospheric energy anomalies in winters from 1980 to 2015, the study finds the link between the sea ice melting in the Arctic and the minimum combination of only three well known atmospheric oscillation patterns approximating observed spatial variations of near-surface temperature trends in the winter. The three patterns are North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), Scandinavian Blocking (SB) and El Nino - Southern Oscillation (ENSO). The first two are directly related to the ongoing sea ice cover shrinkage in the Barents Sea and hemispheric increase of near-surface temperature. By independent dynamical processes they connect the sea ice melting and related atmospheric perturbations in the Arctic either with the negative phase of the NAO oscillation or the negative trend of atmospheric temperatures over the Tropical Pacific. The study further shows that the ongoing sea ice melting often implies the formation of large scale circulation patterns bringing the recent trend of colder winters in densely populated areas like Europe and North America.

DOBRICIC Srdan;  VIGNATI Elisabetta;  RUSSO Simone; 

2016-04-13

AMER METEOROLOGICAL SOC

JRC97511

0894-8755,   

http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/10.1175/JCLI-D-15-0417.1,    https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC97511,   

10.1175/JCLI-D-15-0417.1,