Shrinking Arctic sea ice may provoke weather extremes

Ars Technica : According to two recent studies, extreme weather events in Asia and Europe have been linked to diminishing Arctic sea ice and snow cover. When Qiuhong Tang of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and his colleagues combined satellite observations with atmospheric reanalysis data, they found that the loss of summer sea ice affects the polar jet stream, causing it to slow down and meander more both north and south. Those changes can lead to more extreme weather events. In another study , James Screen of the University of Exeter in the UK used climate modeling to look at the position of the jet stream over Europe during the past century. He observed that northern Europe receives more rain when the jet stream veers south and less when it veers north. The researchers in both studies emphasize, however, that because of the number of variables involved, much more analysis is needed to completely understand the role of Arctic sea ice and snow cover in global weather patterns.