Abstract
Amplified Arctic warming is expected to have a significant long-term influence on the midlatitude atmospheric circulation by the latter half of the 21st century. Potential influences of recent and near future Arctic changes on shorter timescales are much less clear, despite having received much recent attention in the literature. In this letter, climate models from the recent CMIP5 experiment are analysed for evidence of an influence of Arctic temperatures on midlatitude blocking and cold European winters in particular. The focus is on the variability of these features in detrended data and, in contrast to other studies, limited evidence of an influence is found. The occurrence of cold European winters is found to be largely independent of the temperature variability in the key Barents–Kara Sea region. Positive correlations of the Barents–Kara temperatures with Eurasian blocking are found in some models, but significant correlations are limited.
Highlights
In projections of anthropogenic climate change the surface warming signal is considerably amplified in the Arctic region
Sea ice variability is strongly influenced by atmospheric circulation (Deser et al 2000, Rigor et al 2002), and recent summer weather patterns have been instrumental in driving sea ice loss (Overland et al 2012)
We follow the approach of YC in defining a cold winter month (CWM) to occur when the surface air temperature averaged over the central European region (10–30E, 45–55N) falls below the climatological mean of the present day period
Summary
In projections of anthropogenic climate change the surface warming signal is considerably amplified in the Arctic region. Several studies have suggested a more regional response, with increased Eurasian winter blocking and surface cold extremes as a result of sea ice loss in the Barents–Kara Sea region (Honda et al 2009, Petoukhov and Semenov 2010, Liu et al 2012, Tang et al 2013) These studies have provided both observational and modelling evidence for an influence of sea ice on the atmospheric circulation, including observed anticorrelations between Arctic and continental winter temperatures (Cohen et al 2013). It is difficult to determine causality in the observational record alone, and it is not clear to what extent different climate models agree on this hypothesised influence These studies generally used a relatively basic definition of atmospheric blocking as a local positive geopotential height anomaly, and it is not clear how well this distinguishes Eurasian blocking from the canonical NAO response described above. We use blocking diagnostics over periods of 44 years from each of the historical (1956–1999) and RCP8.5 (2056–2099) scenarios
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