Linking Arctic variability and change with extreme winter weather in the United States
Cold weather disruptions
Despite the rapid warming that is the cardinal signature of global climate change, especially in the Arctic, where temperatures are rising much more than elsewhere in the world, the United States and other regions of the Northern Hemisphere have experienced a conspicuous and increasingly frequent number of episodes of extremely cold winter weather over the past four decades. Cohen et al. combined observations and models to demonstrate that Arctic change is likely an important cause of a chain of processes involving what they call a stratospheric polar vortex disruption, which ultimately results in periods of extreme cold in northern midlatitudes (see the Perspective by Coumou). —HJS
Abstract
The Arctic is warming at a rate twice the global average and severe winter weather is reported to be increasing across many heavily populated mid-latitude regions, but there is no agreement on whether a physical link exists between the two phenomena. We use observational analysis to show that a lesser-known stratospheric polar vortex (SPV) disruption that involves wave reflection and stretching of the SPV is linked with extreme cold across parts of Asia and North America, including the recent February 2021 Texas cold wave, and has been increasing over the satellite era. We then use numerical modeling experiments forced with trends in autumn snow cover and Arctic sea ice to establish a physical link between Arctic change and SPV stretching and related surface impacts.
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Copyright © 2021 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works.
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History
Received: 8 April 2021
Accepted: 3 August 2021
Published online: 1 September 2021
Acknowledgments
We thank three anonymous reviewers whose efforts resulted in a substantially improved manuscript. J.C. thanks M. Kretschmer and S. Kazuyuki, whose creativity as graduate students made this study possible. Funding: J.C. is supported by the National Science Foundation grant PLR-1901352. L.A. and M.B. received supported from NSF AGS-1657921 and NOAA NA20OAR4310424. C.I.G. and I.W. acknowledge the support of a European Research Council starting grant under the European Union Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement no. 677756). Author contributions: Conceptualization: J.C. Methodology: J.C., M.B., L.A., C.I.G. Investigation: J.C., M.B., L.A., C.I.G., I.W. Figures: J.C., L.A., C.I.G. Supervision: J.C. Writing – original draft: J.C. Writing – review and editing: J.C., M.B., L.A., C.I.G., I.W. Competing interests: None for all the authors. Data and materials availability: Observational analysis was performed with MERRA2: available at https://gmao.gsfc.nasa.gov/reanalysis/MERRA-2/. NOAA Snow cover extent is available at http://climate.rutgers.edu/snowcover/index.php and Arctic sea ice concentration is available at www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadisst/. The version of MiMA used in this study can be downloaded from https://github.com/ianpwhite/MiMA/releases/tag/MiMA-ThermalForcing-v1.0beta and Zenodo (44). The version of MiMA used in this study follows that used in Garfinkel et al. (45) albeit with the albedo and ocean heat-flux modifications as listed in the materials and methods. MiMA v2.0 can be downloaded from https://github.com/mjucker/MiMA.
Authors
Funding Information
National Science Foundation: PLR-1901352
National Science Foundation: NSF AGS-1657921
H2020 European Research Council: 677756
NOAA Research: NOAA NA20OAR4310424
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