Climate: Arctic melt could intensify extreme weather in Europe - Spiegel Online

The melting Arctic, after researchers information not only lead to icy winter days, in Europe, but also to droughts and floods in the summer. A relationship between the diminishing ice in the northern polar region and cold spells in the winter had already pulled some climatologists. Now, a team from China and the United States reported in the journal “Nature Climate Change”: The reduction in snow and ice cover, the air circulation alters in the atmosphere, so that last longer in summer weather conditions, what extreme events in Europe, Asia and North America could cause or intensify.

Since about 1980, researchers are finding that the ice of the Arctic shrinks tend. In each decade, the expansion of the ice sheet at its annual minimum in September is therefore decreased by about eight percent. The Arctic area is still covered with snow at higher elevations in the spring, has been steadily decreasing over the past decades – by almost 18 percent per decade between 1979 and 2011. At the same time there was in the past, many extreme weather events in the mid-latitudes, such as the heat wave in Russia and the USA in the years 2010 and 2012 or the devastating rains and floods in the UK in 2007 and 2012.

Decreasing winds, strong wind shifted band

Whether the two observations are related to each other – and if so, how – is controversial among experts. Qiuhong Tang of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Beijing) and his associates argue now that a change in atmospheric circulation is the connecting element. They have analyzed satellite imagery and atmospheric data for their study.

Thus let due to the snow and Eisverlusts the winds in the upper atmosphere north of 60 degrees north latitude by. Furthermore, a strong wind band was shifting further north, the researchers write. Thus, the meteorological conditions would more stable, which in turn were to increase the likelihood of extreme weather events in the summer.

In an accompanying article in “Nature Climate Change” expresses cautious James Overland of the U.S. Maritime Administration. Researchers who have used other methods of analysis are, come to different conclusions. Those who do not yet believe that the thesis has been proved, would not change his mind because of the current study, says Overland.

A few years ago, researchers had reported that the melting Arktiseis extreme cold spells in winter in Europe and northern Asia’m likely. The open, dark sea heating the lower atmosphere. This leads to a flow of air that brings cold winter winds to Europe in computer simulations, said the scientists from the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI) in Bremerhaven and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (spades).

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