Not only has climate change been responsible for frequent bouts of record-breaking summer heat in China since 2000, but it could also be the cause of the unprecedented winter cold that has plagued northern parts of the country in several recent years.

Xueyuan Kuang and her team at Nanjing University in China analysed the distribution of record-breaking high and low temperatures observed between 1951 and 2010 at nearly 1,900 weather stations across China. Records for summer highs were set more frequently between 2000 and 2010 than in the previous two decades. Record winter lows seemed to cluster in northern China in the 2000s, whereas in the 1990s they were spread across most of the country.

This clustering seems to be a result of air-pressure anomalies and shifting jet streams over Eurasia in autumn and winter since the late 1990s. These changes can cause cold Siberian air to flow into and persist over northern China, the team found.

J. Geophys. Res. http://doi.org/q5k (2014)