photo by Paulo Brando
Vicious cycles—known as positive feedback loops—are amplifying global warming and causing high northern latitudes to warm four times faster than the globe as a whole. This rapid Arctic warming has decisively altered the speed and shape of the jet stream and with it, the behavior of weather patterns around the Northern Hemisphere.
graphic by Julianne Waite, Greg Fiske
In previous work, the research team established a link between episodes of Arctic warm anomalies and severe winter weather at locations in eastern North America using observational weather station data. Now, we are expanding this same methodology to examine both historical data and modeled future projections for all northern hemisphere areas, in both winter and summer.
This research will greatly expand our understanding of how amplified Arctic warming is statistically associated with extreme summer and winter weather conditions, and inform ongoing studies exploring these linkages.
This research is supported by the National Science Foundation.
