Jong-Seong Kug, Jee-Hoon Jeong, Yeon-Soo Jang, Baek-Min Kim, Chris K. Folland, Seung-Ki Min, Seok-Woo Son

Nature Geoscience

Published date August 31, 2015

Two distinct influences of Arctic warming on cold winters over North America and East Asia

  • Identifies two distinct influences of Arctic warming which may lead to cold winters over East Asia or North America, based on observational analyses and extensive climate model results
  • Finds that severe winters across East Asia are associated with anomalous warmth in the Barents–Kara Sea region, whereas severe winters over North America are related to anomalous warmth in the East Siberian–Chukchi Sea region
  • Each regional warming over the Arctic Ocean is accompanied by the local development of an anomalous anticyclone and the downstream development of a mid-latitude trough
  • The resulting northerly flow of cold air provides favorable conditions for severe winters in East Asia or North America
  • These links between Arctic and mid-latitude weather are also robustly found in idealized climate model experiments and CMIP5 multi-model simulations