Arctic sea-ice decline has made severe Eurasian winters twice as likely
Nature Geoscience
2014년10월27일

The decline in Arctic sea ice over the past few decades has doubled the chance of severe winters in Eurasia, suggests a study published online in Nature Geoscience. This trend towards a higher frequency of severe winters is unlikely to continue into the future, however, because climate warming is expected to outweigh the sea-ice effect towards the end of the twenty-first century.
Masato Mori and colleagues performed 200 slightly different computer simulations of the global atmospheric circulation using a model based on two distinct settings for Arctic sea-ice concentrations. These settings were derived from observations in years with high and low ice cover, respectively. They found that the observed sea-ice decline in the Arctic Barents and Kara seas since 2004 has made persistent atmospheric circulation patterns that are termed blocking situations, more than twice as likely. These blocking situations favour the transport of cold air to Eurasia, and hence severe winters in the region. Analysing existing climate model projections of twenty-first century climate they found that this phenomenon is likely to be temporary, although uncertainties remain about the future evolution of Arctic and mid-latitude climates.
doi: 10.1038/ngeo2277
리서치 하이라이트
-
3월4일
Environment: Reservoirs account for more than half of water storage variabilityNature
-
3월2일
Evolution: Neanderthals may have heard just like usNature Ecology & Evolution
-
3월2일
Geoscience: Earth’s atmosphere may return to low-levels of oxygen in one billion yearsNature Geoscience
-
2월26일
Environment: Shifting from small to medium plastic bottles could reduce PET wasteScientific Reports
-
2월24일
Environment: European forests more vulnerable to multiple threats as climate warmsNature Communications
-
2월11일
Environment: Global CFC-11 emissions in declineNature