this year’s record sea-ice melt might foreshadow a harsh winter in parts of Europe and North America

[meteorologist]

http://www.nature.com/news/ice-loss-shifts-arctic-cycles-1.11387

[blizzard1024]

I am still a little skeptical of this. The study begins in 1989 and ends in 2011. In 1989 sea ice was

a lot higher and the NAO was in a positive phase. 2011 the NAO was negative

and the late summer sea ice much diminished. But the NAO has been gradually coming

down before the sea ice really started shrinking.

The conceptual idea makes sense.I think the sample size is too small. Boy wouldn't this be

cool if it were true!! It looks like these recent late summer Arctic sea ice minimums are going

to be very low over the next several years. It is going to take a cool down in the NH to slow

down and reverse this. If it is a natural cycle I would say maybe a negative winter NAO/AO

could be the breaking mechanism...to slow down and reverse the sea ice decline. I hope so.

[GaWx]

How counterintuitive! As much as I'd like it to be true, I'm not so sure I buy it. Wouldn't that mean that the converse would be true, that NA and Europe would be net warmer during an ice age? How has it been there during ice ages? I thought it was colder. I thought winters were colder in the E US during the latter part of the Little Ice Age.

Unrelated to the ice melt, I actually have already been feeling and posting that the upcoming winter would have a better than normal chance to be quite cold in the E US due to the anticipation of a weak El Nino peak this fall/winter, even moreso due to it following La Nina. If we also get an -AO (and -NAO), watch out! This is all based on past analogs.

[Amped]

There is always a harsh winter in some part of North America. Even last year Alaska and the PacNW got clobbered. This article effectively says that there will be a winter somewhere this winter. Although I cannot disagree with them, they are wasting my time.

[blizzard1024]

Actually, a natural cyclic process could explain this. Again more research is needed.

Here is how I see it: when the NAO is strongly positive for years it leads to a stronger North Atlantic warm

current into the Arctic Basin. In this way, eventually, ice gets thinner and thinner eventually begins

to melt seasonally leading to a dominance of first year ice and much less thicker multi-year ice.

Hence, sea ice minimums are pronounced after years of predominately positive NAOs which

were in the 1980s into the 90s. Eventually due to the lack of sea ice late summer/early fall, the

atmosphere remains warmer over a larger part of the Arctic which influences the geopotential

heights. You basically get a weaker vortex that tends to break up into several dominate upper

level lows south of the Arctic Ocean.,,, a negative NAO/AO pattern. This leads to more easterlies

in the North Atlantic region hence a colder europe. This slow downs the north atlantic warm

conveyor current into the Arctic basin...which allows the ice to recover over the course of years.

Also during the last great ice age...not the little ice age...there is evidence that

winters were warmer south of the great mid latitude ice sheets. The ice sheets being a mile high

were an effective barrier to the arctic air surges. I bet the NAO was much more positive

back then with a much larger gradient across the middle latitudes. Of course the

vortex was much larger and probably encompassed the entire ice sheet. There is

paleological evidence that Florida was actually warmer year round back then

based on a species of turtle that today cannot live in Florida today because of the

winter minimums. See attached average January 500 mb height and temperature field modeled

by the OSU Byrd Polar Research Group. NAO is tremendously positive but the whole vortex

engulfs much of Europe.

As for the little ice age and even the negative NAO years of the 1960s and much

of the 1970s...there was no satellite data to determine exactly how much sea ice

was left at the end of summer. So we don't know what the ice conditions were.

[blizzard1024]

There is always a harsh winter in some part of North America. Even last year Alaska and the PacNW got clobbered. This article effectively says that there will be a winter somewhere this winter. Although I cannot disagree with them, they are wasting my time.

This is not true. Look at the winter of 2001-2002 which was also very mild in North America vs. 2011-12. There is a big difference

between the winters. Winter 2001-2002 had hardly any cold air anomalies vs. 2011-2012 which was harsh in

western Alaska, central Asia and Europe.

It is not always below normal during the NH winter...look at the time series of average NH winter temperature. The winter average

continues to drop from 2009. There are years where the NH mid/high-latitude continents are fairly mild. So the blanket

statement that someone will always have a harsh winter is false assuming "harsh" means below normal.