Europe and Asia are due for some harsh winters in the future thanks to Arctic ice melt, new research says.
Declining sea ice in the Arctic, Barents, and Kara seas since 2004 has been messing with the pole's wind patterns, which is sending bitter cold Arctic air more frequently over parts of the Northern Hemisphere. So even though we live in a warming world, the risk of severe winters has more than doubled for Europe and Asia.
"This counterintuitive effect of the global warming that led to the sea ice decline in the first place makes some people think that global warming has stopped. It has not," Colin Summerhayes of the Scott Polar Research Institute said, according to research published in the journal Nature Geoscience.
Researchers, led by Masato Mori of the University of Tokyo, performed some 200 computer simulations using data from years with high and low sea-ice cover. They found that years in which sea ice melted the most in the Arctic resulted in colder winters in Eurasia.
This can be attributed to what scientists call "blocking" situations, in which freezing Arctic air is pulled southward and gets stuck in a particular pattern for days or even weeks, resulting in severe weather that can last for long periods of time. Reduced sea ice exacerbates this phenomenon - making it more than twice as likely - and explains Eurasia's heightened risk for bitter winter months.
However, people living in this region can feel some comfort knowing that this weather won't last forever.
"This trend towards a higher frequency of severe winters is unlikely to continue into the future, however, because climate warming is expected to outweigh the sea-ice effect towards the end of the twenty-first century," the researchers wrote.
More brutal winters are not the only extreme weather that global warming is doling out. The US East Coast can expect daily tidal floods by 2045, megadroughts are likely in store for the Southwest, lasting over 30 years, and the intensity of tornadoes ravaging the United States will continue to heighten as global climate patterns change.
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