Warm hole in Pacific Arctic sea ice cover forced mid-latitude Northern Hemisphere cooling during winter 2017-18.

ABSTRACT: In North America and Asia, extreme cold weather characterized the winter of 2017-18. At the same time, the Pacific, the Bering Sea, and the Atlantic Arctic regions experienced anomalously low sea ice extent in the early winter. The jet stream dividing cold Arctic air from warm air deviated from normal zonal patterns northward into the ice-free areas north of the Bering Strait. Large southward jet stream pathways formed over Asia and America, allowing cold air to spread into Asia and the southern areas of North America. We hypothesise that the late autumn Bering Strait sea-ice anomaly and Pacific atmospheric rivers were partially responsible for the cold winter. We used data analyses and numerical experiments to test this hypothesis. We propose a positive feedback mechanism between the sea

SUBMITTER: Tachibana Y 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6447575 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature