Eurasian cooling in response to Arctic sea-ice loss is not proved by maximum covariance analysis
The extent to which the ongoing decline in Arctic sea ice affects mid-latitude climate has received great attention and polarised opinions. The basic issue is whether the inter-annual variability in Arctic sea ice is the cause of, or the response to, variability in mid-latitude atmospheric circulati...
| Published in: | Nature Climate Change |
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| Main Authors: | , , |
| Format: | Article in Journal/Newspaper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Nature Publishing Group
2021
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://centaur.reading.ac.uk/95136/ https://centaur.reading.ac.uk/95136/1/ZappCeppiShepherd_NCC_Accepted_with_SI.pdf |
| Summary: | The extent to which the ongoing decline in Arctic sea ice affects mid-latitude climate has received great attention and polarised opinions. The basic issue is whether the inter-annual variability in Arctic sea ice is the cause of, or the response to, variability in mid-latitude atmospheric circulation. Mori et al. (M19) claims to have reconciled previous conflicting studies by showing that a consistent mid-latitude climate response to inter-annual sea-ice anomalies can be identified between the ERA-Interim reanalysis, taken as observations, and an ensemble of atmosphere-only (AMIP) climate model simulations. Here we demonstrate that such a conclusion cannot be drawn, due to issues with the interpretation of the maximum covariance analysis performed. After applying the M19 approach to the output from a simple statistical model, we conclude that a predominant atmospheric forcing of the sea-ice variability, rather than the converse, is a more plausible explanation of the results presented in M19. |
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