In a strange and unfortunate series of events, some scientists now believe that as the Arctic continues to melt, winters in the middle latitudes may get colder.
Stephen Vavrus is a senior scientist at the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin who, according to the Las Angeles Times, announced in a news conference that warmer weather up north may actually be weakening jet stream currents, which in turn causes extreme weather systems to linger in the northern mid-latitudes.
So not only are the winters projected to get colder, but the summers hotter.
The reason for this, Vavrus explains, is that as the Arctic waters absorb more heat energy from the sun, the atmosphere above the water grows warmer as well. As a result, the westerly jet stream appears to be slowing.
"When that happens during winter, there's less warm air that gets transported over land," he said. "That essentially helps to refrigerate the land during the wintertime and we get snow and more cold and more extreme cold as well."
Currently, the rate of sea ice loss has exceeded all models and some are predicting a nearly ice-free summer by 2020, reports the Los Angeles Times.
David Titley is the chief operations officer at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and a retired Navy rear admiral; he also spoke at the conference. In short, Titley believes that the world is in "the process right now of going to a new state in the Arctic."
The news conference was orgnaized and held by Climate Nexus, a environmental group of individuals from a variety of professional backgrounds aimed at, according to their site, "changing the climate and energy conversation in the U.S."