From Georgia Tech, the science press release that gave us the best-warming-headline-evah thanks to media spin, likely started by BBC’s Richard Black. It is worth noting that this study cites data from such a short time from 2009-2011. Surely if any skeptical paper used such a short time period for a climatic conclusion, the paper would be laughed at and derided as the the worst kind of cherry picking. But, there’s a difference here, this paper is about synoptic scale events, in seasonal time periods, so while on one hand Arctic sea ice decline is said to be a climatic scale event (which I and others believe is driven by Asian industrialization soot and wind patterns rather than temperature), synoptic effects leading to snowier winters in the northern hemisphere is a seasonal scale event. Still, as the maxim we are constantly reminded of goes, correlation does not necessarily equal causation. The circumpolar vortex is a complex thing, like a pulsating amoeba, the lobes of high and lows can be pushed around by regional effects, so the idea isn’t totally implausible. But, I’m reserving judgment on the synoptic effects of sea ice loss on NH winter weather patterns until I see more examples. – Anthony
Arctic Sea Ice Decline May be Driving Snowy Winters Seen in Recent Years
A new study led by the Georgia Institute of Technology provides further evidence of a relationship between melting ice in the Arctic regions and widespread cold outbreaks in the Northern Hemisphere. The study’s findings could be used to improve seasonal forecasting of snow and temperature anomalies across northern continents.
Since the level of Arctic sea ice set a new record low in 2007, significantly above-normal winter snow cover has been seen in large parts of the northern United States, northwestern and central Europe, and northern and central China. During the winters of 2009-2010 and 2010-2011, the Northern Hemisphere measured its second and third largest snow cover levels on record.
“Our study demonstrates that the decrease in Arctic sea ice area is linked to changes in the winter Northern Hemisphere atmospheric circulation,” said Judith Curry, chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Tech. “The circulation changes result in more frequent episodes of atmospheric blocking patterns, which lead to increased cold surges and snow over large parts of the northern continents.”
The study was published on Feb. 27, 2012 in the online early edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The research was supported by NASA and the National Science Foundation.
In this study, scientists from Georgia Tech, the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Columbia University expanded on previous research by combining observational data and model simulations to explore the link between unusually large snowfall amounts in the Northern Hemisphere in recent winters and diminishing Arctic sea ice.
The researchers analyzed observational data collected between 1979 and 2010 and found that a decrease in autumn Arctic sea ice of 1 million square kilometers — the size of the surface area of Egypt — corresponded to significantly above-normal winter snow cover in large parts of the northern United States, northwestern and central Europe, and northern and central China.
The analysis revealed two major factors that could be contributing to the unusually large snowfall in recent winters — changes in atmospheric circulation and changes in atmospheric water vapor content — which are both linked to diminishing Arctic sea ice. Strong warming in the Arctic through the late summer and autumn appears to be enhancing the melting of sea ice.
“We think the recent snowy winters could be caused by the retreating Arctic ice altering atmospheric circulation patterns by weakening westerly winds, increasing the amplitude of the jet stream and increasing the amount of moisture in the atmosphere,” explained Jiping Liu, a senior research scientist in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Tech. “These pattern changes enhance blocking patterns that favor more frequent movement of cold air masses to middle and lower latitudes, leading to increased heavy snowfall in Europe and the Northeast and Midwest regions of the United States.”
Diminishing Arctic sea ice can cause changes in atmospheric circulation that lead to a circulation pattern that is different than the “negative phase” of the Arctic Oscillation.
In addition to analyzing observational data, the researchers also assessed the impact of the diminishing Arctic sea ice on atmospheric circulation by comparing the results of model simulations run with different sea ice distribution. They ran one experiment that assumed seasonally varying Arctic sea ice and utilized sea ice concentration data collected between 1979 and 2010. Another simulation incorporated prescribed sea ice loss in autumn and winter based on satellite-derived Arctic sea ice concentrations.
The simulations showed that diminishing Arctic sea ice induced a significant surface warming in the Arctic Ocean and Greenland/northeastern Canada, and cooling over northern North America, Europe, Siberia and eastern Asia. The models also showed above-normal winter snowfall in large parts of the northern United States, central Europe, and northern and central China.
The consistent relationships seen in the model simulations and observational data illustrate that the rapid loss of sea ice in summer and delayed recovery of sea ice in autumn modulates snow cover, winter temperature and the frequency of cold air outbreaks in northern mid-latitudes.
Huijun Wang and Mirong Song of the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Atmospheric Physics and Radley Horton from the Columbia University Center for Climate Systems Research also contributed to this work.
This project was supported by the NASA Energy and Water Cycle Study and the National Science Foundation (NSF) (Award No. ANT-0838920). The content is solely the responsibility of the principal investigators and does not necessarily represent the official views of NASA or the NSF.
Research News & Publications Office
Georgia Institute of Technology
75 Fifth Street, N.W., Suite 314
Atlanta, Georgia 30308 USA
Pope suggests that the sensitive reactions of the climate to Arctic Ice coverage is a negative feedback system (a “governor”?) responsible for the unusual duration of the rather benign interglacial we are experiencing, and suggests that it is likely to keep us in that narrow band for the foreseeable future.
Philip Bradley
Your idea was thought of after the fact. The ‘travesty’ lost warming is inspiring all kinds of new “global warming” hypothesēs that were not part of the original global warming hypothesis. In other words, your ‘science’ is awful.
Cooling is the new warming, as they say.
I thought the minimum point for sea ice occurred in 2007 and since then, by definition, it hasn’t declined. This would seem to immediately invalidate their theory about the period 2009 to 2011.
Ahh – now this was Black’s cause of jetstream shift and colder winters back in October last year……strange innit?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15199065
This winter in the UK has been mild, apart from a couple of cold weeks with a -18C record low. Black’s writeup makes no mention of the record cold and snow in central/eastern Europe.
At least they didn’t blame the reduced Arctic ice for the cold and wet Australian Summer. Give them time.
Amino Acids in Meteorites says:
February 28, 2012 at 11:15 pm
Philip Bradley
Your idea was thought of after the fact.
I don’t know why when I propose plausible physical mechanisms for observations, I get labelled as a ‘Warmist’.
I actually think that perhaps half of the warming since the 1970s is is due to reduced aerosols with some contribution from GCRs.
The logic of these colder winters fails when you read the statement
‘ The researchers also found that the extra evaporation from the Arctic Ocean makes the air more humid, with some of the additional water content falling out as snow.’
and then look at the UK rainfall records for the recent cold periods, they show low rainfall, a few inches of snow melts to relativily nothing in rainfall terms.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/2010/december.html
It was exceptionally cold across the UK, with mean temperatures some 5 °C below the 1971-2000 average, and the coldest December in over 100 years.
December was, however, generally drier and sunnier than normal. Less than a third of the average rainfall was recorded over most of Wales, western England and western Scotland.
An example of the logic of what had been a good university:
When the refrigerator light goes out – the refrigerator is colder. Therefore the refrigerator light should be disabled to keep the refrigerator colder.
Refrigerator door?? what’s the door got to do with it?
When the arctic ice extent is low – it is probable that the winds of the polar vortex and stratospheric warming events made it so. When the winds are of the type that leads to low ice extent and when there is a sudden stratospheric warming then there is more snow in Northern temperate latitudes.
Its the old common causation trap yet again.
I mean, even if you buy into the theory and accept there is an effect, the “ice loss” is an area around the circumference …. and not that much … we are talking about the difference between 2004,5,6 and then 2007,8,9 etc. Can this small difference really be having the driver effect on winter climate in the NH ???
All that is needed is one stretch of data when low ice did not result in more snow. Judith makes the same mistake that sun worshippers do. They will not seek out, in all seriousness, even one incident when their pet correlation falls apart and the hypothesis fails, and if they do, they generally shy away from putting that finding in their conclusion. Judith, I am disappointed that you would stretch your case so thin a gnat would break through the gossamer fabric.
One of the reasons so much attention is paid to Arctic sea ice is the albedo effect. Ice reflects a lot more radiation than the sea. There is therefore a positive feedback effect – less ice, more heat absorbed, less ice …An interesting side effect of this study, if it is correct, suggests that the loss of reflectance of sea ice is compensated by increased snow cover. After all sea water and the boreal forests, where most snow lies, have a similar albedo. I’ve done a few calculations which show that this effect is however quite limited and that after allowing for sun angle effective area of snow and ice has continued to decline.
http://www.climatedata.info/Discussions/Discussions/opinions.php
suyts says:
February 28, 2012 at 10:59 am
Interesting…. this explains why there’s no amplified response in the last 10 years or so…..
http://suyts.wordpress.com/2012/02/28/polar-amplification-earths-response-to-sea-ice-albedo-feedback/
A few things to note about that study of sea ice albedo in Hudson’s Bay. And, by the way, thank you for posting that topic at your site.
Hudson Bay is a large, roughly circular, enclosed bay whose center is at 60 north latitude. That far “south” its center is at the same latitude as the extreme southern tip of Greenland, well below the Arctic Circle. (Expressed differently, it is as far south as the Arctic Ocean’s mid-September minimum ice extent as Miami is from the frozen rivers and lakes of upstate New York.)
Hudson Bay is completely ice freeze at minimum sea ice extent in today’s world. It doesn’t matter what the change in albedo of water and ice is at that latitude in that bay at that time of year! All of it has melted each summer, and all will re-freeze the next winter.
This does not mean the data is wrong, nor the observations incorrect. It does mean that they are irrelevant to today’s Arctic sea ice extents.
Further, At 60 north latitude, the sun’s angle of incidence is much higher at all times f the year than it is at the edge of the Arctic minimum sea ice extent. The 20 degrees in solar ray angle between Hudson Bay’s 55-65 (average 60) latitude and the Arctic’s 80-90 (average 85) latitude means a lot when water’s albedo is being used to calculate absorption of energy.
At 30 degrees incidence angle, less than 10 percent of inbound light is reflected. (The remaining 90% is absorbed. Air mass losses of the inbound radiant energy at 60 north are (roughly) only 20% greater than at the equator.
At 5 degrees incidence angle, less than 5% of the direct radiant heat energy is absorbed, and the remaining 95% is reflected back off of smooth water. Air mass losses of the inbound direct solar rays are between 3 and 11 times what they are at the equator.
Remember too that radiative heat loss remains the same at both latitudes since the ocean (or ice) radiates heat directly “up” from either surface directly to space. Air mass = 1.0 just like at the equator.
Philip Bradley
It makes one stand out when they say man is the cause of any change in climate. One should consider first that changes in climate are natural. Why? Because there is scientific evidence that the changes in climate that have happened in the last 32 years are from natural changes, natural cycles, mainly PDO and solar activity. These natural changes have always happened.
It is peculiar that one would immediately talk about the activities of man being the cause of changes in climate especially since there still is not evidence that man’s activities have the power to do so. Those who immediately bring up man’s activities changing climate do so without scientific proof. They are just using hypothesis. And all of these hypothesis still do not have data backing them. In fact there are peer reviewed works showing these hypothesis have errors.
So the question is why would one NOT assume you are a global warmist? You have the classic earmarks of one.
I know there has been a lot going on latlely, but why no sea ice updates anymore? And the sea ice page has been left to rot, with most graphs either not working at all or refuse to load. Sea ice got me interested in the whole “warming” thing and I miss the “nail biting” updates!
No sea ice updates lately?
Well, it “has” been just a “little bit” busy lately. 8<)
More seriously, with the loss of the scanning satellite last year (October?), the daily updates to the most common extents graph were lost. With that loss, it is a bit more difficult to "generate excitement" and tension over Arctic sea ice minimums – the only thing that the CAGW community is hyper about since that is the only they can claim is actually declining.
But, to be fair, Arctic sea ice extents are now (mid-late February) nearing the sinusoiad top of their annual peak. That peak is constrained strongly by the small size of the Arctic Ocean: There simply is little additional room doe sea ice to increase since the whole ocean is already frozen out to Greenland, Canada's northern arc of islands, the Northwest Territory and Nunavut arctic shore, Alaska and Siberia. Sure, sea ice can slowly increase down the east coast of Greenland and small regions around Iceland, but that's not very exciting to watch creep up the charts. The Baltic is nearly all covered – it is difficult to greatly increase sea ice area right now. Max extent will be mid-March to early April.
CAGW extremists are not interest in and don't care about max sea ice extents. They can't use that number for propaganda (just as they can't use the Antarctic's sea ice increases for propaganda). So, it is not a case of "Who cares?" but rather "Few care."
Michael T in Craster , UK says:
February 29, 2012 at 1:42 am
Ahh – now this was Black’s cause of jetstream shift and colder winters back in October last year……strange innit?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15199065
This post-hoc scrabbling for explanations is something the AGW community is going to have to get used to. We are sure to see a lot more such creativity in the months/years ahead.
@MAVukcevic (February 28, 2012 at 11:17 am)
ACC
Paul Vaughan says:
…….
Far fetched for the Antarctic Circumpolar Current?
Another paper that looked at the statistical links between more open water in September and increased snowfall in winter is: Ghatak, D., A. Frei, G. Gong, J. Stroeve, and D. Robinson, 2010. On the emergence of an Arctic amplification signal in terrestrial Arctic snow extent, J. Geophys. Res., 115, D24105, doi:10.1029/2010JD014007. We also recently published a paper looking at the links between sea ice loss and NH precipitation in autumn: Stroeve, J.C., M.C. Serreze and D.N. Kindig, (2011). Attribution of recent changes in autumn cyclone associated precipitation in the Arctic, Tellus, DOI: 10.1111/j.1600-0870.2011.00515.x.
In the latter study we stated that it’s premature to conclude attribution of recent autumn precipitation increases to reduced ice cover, in part because the observational record of anomalously low sea ice conditions is relatively short. However, many modeling studies do find a link between increased autumn/winter snow cover over Siberia as the Arctic Ocean becomes more ice-free in future climate scenarios (see papers by Clara Deser at NCAR for example).
It’s important to remember that in the last few years, areas of the Beaufort and Chukchi seas that used to be ice-covered by October or November now stay open until early winter. On the Atlantic side of the Arctic, parts of the Barents Sea that formerly had high sea ice concentrations by December are now open throughout the winter. Lack of an insulating sea ice cover in these areas is promoting large energy fluxes from the ocean to the atmosphere during autumn and winter (this is recognized as one of the primary drivers of Arctic amplification – Screen and Simmonds, 2010; Serreze and Barry, 2011).
There is growing evidence that this surface-based warming, through reducing static stability of the lower troposphere, allowing for high water vapor content and altering horizontal temperature gradients can effect weather conditions both within and beyond the Arctic Ocean [e.g. Budikova, 2009; Francis et al., 2009; Liu et al., 2012; Overland and Wang, 2010; Porter et al., 2012]. The new Curry et al paper is yet another paper showing how sea ice loss can affect weather and precipitation patterns.
Julienne Stroeve says:
March 1, 2012 at 7:57 am
Thank you for your interest, your reply here, and your research.
My question then: At latitudes from 80 north to the pole, during the actual interval of minimum sea ice extents near the autumn equinox, if the net heat loss from any square meter of the Arctic Ocean is greater when the sea ice is missing (when it is melted) than when it is present, then how can the Arctic be assumed to enter any period of “runaway global warming” when (or of) the all of the ice melts?
Evaporative losses and radiative losses from the open Arctic ocean are greater than heat gain from the sun’s radiation into open water due to the great reflectivity of direct radiation from the sun at September’s low incidence angles. Diffuse radiation will be absorbed by the open ocean, but those same clouds causing the diffuse radiation will reflect much of that inbound radiation first.
Earlier in the year, and at lower latitudes of the earth, yes, absolutely yes – the sun’ rays do heat open water more than ice-covered water due to water’s low albedo. But, so what?
That (potential) case of increased radiation absorption in open water does NOT happen in the specific locations where the arctic sea ice actually is right now. And, where the assumed positive feedback could happen, there is no additional ice to melt.
Therefore, it (any positive feedback from any potential additional sea ice meltdown) cannot happen in today’s world. It is like extremists worrying about vast quantities of fresh cold water being released into the Atlantic Ocean and shutting down or reversing the ocean’s currents. Yes, IF there were mile-thick glaciers covering Chicago and central Canada, then their meltwater could suddenly flow into the Atlantic. But there are no glaciers covering Chicago right now (though some may argue covering Chicago with a mile of ice might be a good idea) and so there can be no potential fresh water meltdown affecting the Atlantic Ocean during any potential continued global warming.
Julienne Stroeve
When there was a larger ice cover in the Arctic in the 1970’s there were big winters. That would be the opposite of your assertion. The 70’s are famous for big winters—causing “The Coming Ice Age” scare. This hypothesis needs to be more carefully examined, especially since the infamous alarmist name “Surreze” is in them.
But he’s your boss, isn’t he.