Rapidly shrinking Arctic sea ice could be behind the recent
unusually cold and snowy winters in the Northern Hemisphere, a new model
suggests.
From 2007 to 2011, large parts of the U.S., northwestern Europe, and northern and central China experienced early or abnormally heavy snowfall.
Some scientists have speculated that such harsh winters might be a result of disappearing Arctic sea ice, which reached a record low in 2007 due to global warming, according to the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center.
To
test that theory, scientists entered data about Arctic sea ice and
sea-surface temperatures into a climate model created by the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research.
The results pinpointed two mechanisms for how a decline in sea ice could lead to more snowfall.
