Warm Arctic episodes linked with increased frequency of extreme winter weather in the United States
Recent boreal winters have exhibited a large-scale seesaw temperature pattern characterized by an unusually warm Arctic and cold continents. Whether there is any physical link between Arctic variability and Northern Hemisphere (NH) extreme weather is an active area of research. Using a recently deve...
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ftpubmed:oai:pubmedcentral.nih.gov:5849726 2023-05-15T14:33:56+02:00 Warm Arctic episodes linked with increased frequency of extreme winter weather in the United States Cohen, Judah Pfeiffer, Karl Francis, Jennifer A. 2018-03-13 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5849726/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29535297 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-02992-9 en eng Nature Publishing Group UK http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5849726/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29535297 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-02992-9 © The Author(s) 2018 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. CC-BY Article Text 2018 ftpubmed https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-02992-9 2018-03-18T01:22:13Z Recent boreal winters have exhibited a large-scale seesaw temperature pattern characterized by an unusually warm Arctic and cold continents. Whether there is any physical link between Arctic variability and Northern Hemisphere (NH) extreme weather is an active area of research. Using a recently developed index of severe winter weather, we show that the occurrence of severe winter weather in the United States is significantly related to anomalies in pan-Arctic geopotential heights and temperatures. As the Arctic transitions from a relatively cold state to a warmer one, the frequency of severe winter weather in mid-latitudes increases through the transition. However, this relationship is strongest in the eastern US and mixed to even opposite along the western US. We also show that during mid-winter to late-winter of recent decades, when the Arctic warming trend is greatest and extends into the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere, severe winter weather—including both cold spells and heavy snows—became more frequent in the eastern United States. Text Arctic PubMed Central (PMC) Arctic Nature Communications 9 1 |
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Article Cohen, Judah Pfeiffer, Karl Francis, Jennifer A. Warm Arctic episodes linked with increased frequency of extreme winter weather in the United States |
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Recent boreal winters have exhibited a large-scale seesaw temperature pattern characterized by an unusually warm Arctic and cold continents. Whether there is any physical link between Arctic variability and Northern Hemisphere (NH) extreme weather is an active area of research. Using a recently developed index of severe winter weather, we show that the occurrence of severe winter weather in the United States is significantly related to anomalies in pan-Arctic geopotential heights and temperatures. As the Arctic transitions from a relatively cold state to a warmer one, the frequency of severe winter weather in mid-latitudes increases through the transition. However, this relationship is strongest in the eastern US and mixed to even opposite along the western US. We also show that during mid-winter to late-winter of recent decades, when the Arctic warming trend is greatest and extends into the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere, severe winter weather—including both cold spells and heavy snows—became more frequent in the eastern United States. |
format |
Text |
author |
Cohen, Judah Pfeiffer, Karl Francis, Jennifer A. |
author_facet |
Cohen, Judah Pfeiffer, Karl Francis, Jennifer A. |
author_sort |
Cohen, Judah |
title |
Warm Arctic episodes linked with increased frequency of extreme winter weather in the United States |
title_short |
Warm Arctic episodes linked with increased frequency of extreme winter weather in the United States |
title_full |
Warm Arctic episodes linked with increased frequency of extreme winter weather in the United States |
title_fullStr |
Warm Arctic episodes linked with increased frequency of extreme winter weather in the United States |
title_full_unstemmed |
Warm Arctic episodes linked with increased frequency of extreme winter weather in the United States |
title_sort |
warm arctic episodes linked with increased frequency of extreme winter weather in the united states |
publisher |
Nature Publishing Group UK |
publishDate |
2018 |
url |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5849726/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29535297 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-02992-9 |
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Arctic |
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Arctic |
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Arctic |
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Arctic |
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http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5849726/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29535297 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-02992-9 |
op_rights |
© The Author(s) 2018 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
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CC-BY |
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https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-02992-9 |
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Nature Communications |
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9 |
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