19. Arctic-Midlatitude Linkage#

Arctic-Midlatitude Linkage has been hotly discussed and debated in the past years. Here’s an an article on “CarbonBrief”.

Brief history of Arctic mid-latitude linkage study#

  • 1914: Swedish meteorologist Hugo Hildebrand Hildebrandsson

  • 1924: Russian oceanographer Wlaimir Juljewitsch Wiese

  • 1973: R. L. Newson published a Nature paper, which used GCM to study Arctic sea-ice impacts on the atmosphere.

  • 2010: J. A. Screen published a Nature paper, which showed that Arctic sea ice plays a central role in Arctic Amplification.

  • 2012: J. A. Francis and S. T. Vavrus published a GRL paper, which linked Arctic warming to extreme events in midlatitudes.

  • 2013: Elizabeth A. Barnes’s GRL paper (argued the Arctic-midlatitude linkage).

  • 2014: J. M. Wallace’s Science paper.

  • 2014: J. Cohen’s review paper on Nature Geoscience (stratosphere).

  • 2020: J. Cohen’s review paper on Nature Climate Change (divergent consensus)

Arctic sea ice loss and increasing extreme events in the Northern Hemisphere#

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Fig. 52 Snowstorms in U.S. cities. Source: AER.#

Warm Arctic-cold Eurasia (WACE) pattern#

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Fig. 53 Map of global temperatures for 31 January 2019, shown as anomalies from a 1979-2000 baseline. Source: Climate Change Institute, University of Maine.#

Arctic warming and mid-latitude Rossby waves#

Francis and Vavrus (2012) GRL paper was among the first to propose that Arctic warming could affect mid-latitude extreme via altering large-scale atmospheric waves. However, the comtemporary studies showed weak, or opposite results.

Proposed mechanisms#

  • Waiver jet stream

    • north-south temperature gradient + Rossby wave (Francis & Vavrus 2012).

    • storm tracks + NAO/AO (Cohen & Barow 2005; Deser et al. 2007; Honda et al. 2009).

    • warm Arctic-cold continents (WACC) pattern (Cohen et al. 2014).

    • Youtube video.

  • Polar vorrtex

    • SSW breakdown (Kim et al. 2014; Kretchmer et al. 2018).

    • Youtube video

  • Wave resonance

    • in summer season only (Petoukhov et al. 2013)

    • the theory of quasi-resonant amplification (QRA, Coumou et al. 2014; Mann et al. 2017)

    • Youtube video

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Fig. 54 Schematic of influences on northern hemisphere mid-latitude weather. Source: Cohen et al. (2014)#

Observational and GCM inconsistency#

  • Jet stream

  • NAO

  • Arctic Amplification and Severe Weather Events

  • Sources of Disagreement in Model Experiments

  • Large internal atmospheric variability -> low signal-to-noise ratio

  • Causality

Debates on the Arctic-midlatitude linkage#

PAMIP – Polar Amplification Model Intercomparison Project#

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Fig. 55 a Emergent constraint based on the ensemble regression (ER) between eddy momentum feedback and the zonal wind response index (ZWRI). Black line shows the regression with hatching showing the 95% confidence interval. Horizontal green line shows the constrained ensemble mean response, with the shading showing its 95% confidence interval (Methods). Vertical black line and grey shading shows the mean and range of eddy feedback from the reanalyses. Ellipses show the 95% uncertainties obtained by bootstrapping with replacement the ensemble members. b As a but for the stratospheric polar vortex (SPV) response. A one-sided test is used to calculate p values since we expect the response to increase as eddy feedback strengthens. All data are for DJF. Source: Smith et al. (2022).#

Sources and papers#