Abstract
The areal extent, concentration and thickness of sea ice in the Arctic Ocean and adjacent seas have strongly decreased during the recent decades, but cold, snow-rich winters have been common over mid-latitude land areas since 2005. A review is presented on studies addressing the local and remote effects of the sea ice decline on weather and climate. It is evident that the reduction in sea ice cover has increased the heat flux from the ocean to atmosphere in autumn and early winter. This has locally increased air temperature, moisture, and cloud cover and reduced the static stability in the lower troposphere. Several studies based on observations, atmospheric reanalyses, and model experiments suggest that the sea ice decline, together with increased snow cover in Eurasia, favours circulation patterns resembling the negative phase of the North Atlantic Oscillation and Arctic Oscillation. The suggested large-scale pressure patterns include a high over Eurasia, which favours cold winters in Europe and northeastern Eurasia. A high over the western and a low over the eastern North America have also been suggested, favouring advection of Arctic air masses to North America. Mid-latitude winter weather is, however, affected by several other factors, which generate a large inter-annual variability and often mask the effects of sea ice decline. In addition, the small sample of years with a large sea ice loss makes it difficult to distinguish the effects directly attributable to sea ice conditions. Several studies suggest that, with advancing global warming, cold winters in mid-latitude continents will no longer be common during the second half of the twenty-first century. Recent studies have also suggested causal links between the sea ice decline and summer precipitation in Europe, the Mediterranean, and East Asia.
Highlights
The climate change in the Arctic has been at least twice as fast as the global average (Blunden and Arndt 2012)
The role of Arctic sea ice on the global atmospheric circulation has been reviewed by Budikova (2009), but numerous important studies have been published since that; analyses of the recent cold, snow-rich winters have generated a lot of new knowledge
3 Local Effects of Sea Ice Decline we address the local effects of sea ice decline over the Arctic Ocean and its marginal seas, whereas remote effects felt in sub-Arctic and mid-latitudes are reviewed in Sect
Summary
The climate change in the Arctic has been at least twice as fast as the global average (Blunden and Arndt 2012). One of the most dramatic indicators of the Arctic warming has been the decline in the sea ice cover This has been manifested as a decrease in the ice extent, ice thickness, and the length of the ice season. To be reviewed here, have addressed the potential causal links between the Arctic sea ice decline and these cold winters in midlatitudes. The role of Arctic sea ice on the global atmospheric circulation has been reviewed by Budikova (2009), but numerous important studies have been published since that; analyses of the recent cold, snow-rich winters have generated a lot of new knowledge. To put the results into a broader perspective, I address the links between the sea ice extent, Eurasian snow cover, and winter climate
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