Shrinking Arctic sea ice leads to heavier snows in western Siberia. This is some of the first evidence for how low sea-ice levels in the Arctic autumn affect precipitation in neighbouring regions the following winter.
A team led by Martin Wegmann at the University of Bern, Switzerland, looked at snow measurements from 820 locations across Russia, and modelled how moisture flows between the ocean and the atmosphere. They found that the Barents and Kara seas, north of the Ural Mountains, released more moisture into the air when the seas were not covered with ice. That moisture then ends up as snow in northern Russia.
If sea ice continues to dwindle as expected, Eurasia and other continents may need to brace for heavy winter snowfalls.
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Less sea ice, more Siberian snow. Nature 521, 397 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/521397a
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/521397a
