Sharjah24 – Reuters: Accelerating Arctic warming as a part of global warming is likely responsible for severe winter weather like powerful snowfalls and abnormal cold spells in the northern hemisphere, according to a new study.
The study, in the journal Science, explains the influence of climate change on the Arctic increases the likelihood of winds above the North Pole being stretched, which in turn makes extreme cold weather events in the U.S. and elsewhere more likely.
The freezing temperatures that hit Texas in February, killing dozens and causing four million homes and businesses to lose power, became the prompt for the study, according to its lead author, who spoke to The Guardian.
In The Conversation he explains that Arctic warming is causing changes in its climate, such as melting sea ice and increasing snowfall in Siberia. That in turn means levels of energy and moisture moving between the surface of the Earth and its atmosphere are changing.
Those changes ‘kick’ the atmosphere, resulting in upward moving waves rippling into the stratosphere, where they stretch and weaken the band of fast winds that circles above the Arctic, known as the Arctic polar vortex.
In addition, as the polar vortex shifts around, its effect on winds and temperatures means that the atmospheric waves which affected it are in turn affected by it, and are reflected back down to the surface, where they can influence weather patterns.
Summing up the seeming contradiction of warming causing colder weather, the study’s author explained simply: ‘When the polar vortex is nice and circular, that’s a sign all the cold air is bottled up over the Arctic. When it stretches like this, a piece of it goes into Asia and a piece of it goes towards eastern North America.
And that was what happened with the Texas cold wave.
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