In my column at The Daily Blog today, I ruminate on the links between the historic and damaging floods in central Europe and the rapid warming of the Arctic. What will it take to make the world’s leaders wake up to the rapid changes that are happening now? Comments at TDB, please…
Tag: Europe
Cold wind to Valhalla: Arctic ice loss brings spring snow to UK and Europe
It’s been a cold and snowy end to winter in Britain and much of Europe. The worst March snowfall for 30 years (according to The Telegraph) caused significant disruption to much of the UK, and lead to heavy loss of sheep and lambs in Wales. The UK Met Office reports that March is likely to have been the coldest since 1962, with temperatures running 3ºC below average. The weather pattern that brought the cold outbreak from the east looks set to continue, with only a hint of a return to more normal westerlies and temperatures by the middle of April.
Over the last few years I’ve made more than a few references to the emerging relationship between warming in the Arctic and the loss of sea ice to changes in the patterns of Northern Hemisphere weather. Take a look at this map, plotted at NOAA’s ESRL site using NCEP/NCAR reanalysis data (click on the image to see the original plot):
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