Melting Arctic link to cold, snowy UK winters (BBC)

[eppur_se_muova]

By Richard Black
Environment correspondent, BBC News

The progressive shrinking of Arctic sea ice is bringing colder, snowier winters to the UK and other areas of Europe, North America and China, a study shows.

As global temperatures have risen, the area of Arctic Ocean covered by ice in summer and autumn has been falling.

Writing in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a US/China-based team show this affects the jet stream and brings cold, snowy weather.

Whether conditions will get colder still as ice melts further is unclear.

There was a marked deterioration in ice cover between the summers of 2006 and 2007, which still holds the record for the lowest extent on record; and it has not recovered since.
***
more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17143269




Well, all that moisture has to go somewhere. Remember this the next time you hear that "what global warming?" joke that inevitably accompanies each new -- and now more voluminous -- snowfall.

[onlyadream]

1. The UK will be like Alaska

I saw a scientist say this about five years ago and it looks like its coming true. He said that Alaska and the UK are on the same latitude lines, but the warm conveyor belt of the ocean kept the UK warmer.

[dipsydoodle]

3. Alaska is latitude 64 which is north of Stockholm.

London is 51.

[onlyadream]

4. Well, so much for the expert

Thats what he said... I never checked, so my bad.

[dipsydoodle]

2. See also

Last edited Tue Feb 28, 2012, 05:48 AM - Edit history (1)

Recent cold winters that brought chaos to the UK and other places in northern Europe may have their roots in the Sun's varying ultraviolet emissions.

The latest satellite data shows the UV output is far more changeable than scientists had previously thought.

A UK scientific team now shows in Nature Geoscience journal how these changes lead to warmer winters in some places and colder winters in others.

>

The Sun has recently been in a quiet phase of its regular 11-year cycle, which co-incided with three years in which the UK, along with other places in northern Europe and parts of the US, experienced cold conditions unusual in the recent record.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15199065

edited now I'm on a computer : not a tab.