Promoting Science and Critical Thinking
A new study published within Nature Communications on 13th March shows that there appears to be a robust relationship between a warming Arctic and more severe winter weather further south. Warm Arctic episodes linked with increased frequency of extreme winter weather in the United States Weather is variable and that is driven by both forced … Read more
The National Snow and Ice Data Centre have issued their early March update for Arctic sea ice news. The content is not exactly a surprise. Below I’ve laid out some of the details. Highlights Temperatures over the Arctic have been unseasonably high and have been approaching melting point – in February – a time when … Read more
There is a new study that examines 86 years worth of events that are tracked to mark the start of spring in the higher latitudes. The term used to describe the study of seasonal changes is Phenology. This is the study of periodic plant and animal life cycle events and so tracking those has previously … Read more
Words such as “Agast” or “stunned” don’t perhaps fully capture it, yet nevertheless we are in the midst of something quite unusual in the Arctic. Via Zack Labe, a researcher at the University of California at Irvine, and others, we have a series of tweets and graphs that illustrate just how weird things are in … Read more
There has been a sudden and very dramatic loss of sea ice in the Bering sea. Within an 8 day period one third of the sea ice has gone. It’s not spring, we are in the middle of February. So what exactly has happened? Basically this … Weather (e.g., wind) has a significant role in … Read more
For the past 12 years now NOAA has been published an annual Arctic Report card and the 2017 issue is now available on-line. The report card exists because something quite extraordinary has been happening in the Arctic and 2017 has not seen any pause in that. Highlights Arctic shows no sign of returning to reliably … Read more