Abstract
Observations1,2,3 and model simulations3,4 show enhanced warming in the Arctic under increasing greenhouse gases, a phenomenon known as the Arctic amplification (AA)5, that is likely caused by sea-ice loss1,3. AA reduces meridional temperature gradients linked to circulation, thus mid-latitude weather and climate changes have been attributed to AA, often on the basis of regression analysis and atmospheric simulations6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19. However, other modelling studies20,21,22 show only a weak link. This inconsistency may result from deficiencies in separating the effects of AA from those of natural variability or background warming. Here, using coupled model simulations with and without AA, we show that cold-season precipitation, snowfall and circulation changes over northern mid-latitudes come mostly from background warming. AA and sea-ice loss increase precipitation and snowfall above ~60° N and reduce meridional temperature gradients above ~45° N in the lower–mid troposphere. However, minimal impact on the mean climate is seen below ~60° N, with weak reduction in zonal wind over 50°–70° N and 150–700 hPa, mainly over the North Atlantic and northern central Asia. These results suggest that the climatic impacts of AA are probably small outside the high latitudes, thus caution is needed in attributing mid-latitude changes to AA and sea-ice loss on the basis of statistical analyses that cannot distinguish the impact of AA from other correlated changes.
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution
Access options
Access Nature and 54 other Nature Portfolio journals
Get Nature+, our best-value online-access subscription
$29.99 / 30 days
cancel any time
Subscribe to this journal
Receive 12 print issues and online access
$209.00 per year
only $17.42 per issue
Buy this article
- Purchase on SpringerLink
- Instant access to full article PDF
Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout
Similar content being viewed by others
Data availability
The model data used in this study are available from the authors upon request.
References
Screen, J. A. & Simmonds, I. The central role of diminishing sea-ice in recent Arctic temperature amplification. Nature 464, 1334–1337 (2010).
Cohen, J. et al. Recent Arctic amplification and extreme mid-latitude weather. Nat. Geosci. 7, 627–637 (2014).
Dai, A., Luo, D., Song, M. & Liu, J. Arctic amplification is caused by sea-ice loss under increasing CO2. Nat. Commun. 10, 121 (2019).
Barnes, E. A. & Polvani, L. M. CMIP5 projections of Arctic amplification, of the North American/North Atlantic circulation, and of their relationship. J. Clim. 28, 5254–5271 (2015).
Serreze, M. C. & Barry, R. G. Processes and impacts of Arctic amplification: a research synthesis. Glob. Planet. Change 77, 85–96 (2011).
Liu, J., Curry, J. A., Wang, H., Song, M. & Horton, R. M. Impact of declining Arctic sea ice on winter snowfall. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 109, 4074–4079 (2012).
Overland, J., Wood, K. R. & Wang, M. Warm Arctic—cold continents: climate impacts of the newly open Arctic Sea. Polar Res. 30, 15787 (2011).
Screen, J. A. & Simmonds, I. Exploring links between Arctic amplification and mid-latitude weather. Geophys. Res. Lett. 40, 959–964 (2013).
Walsh, J. E. Intensified warming of the Arctic: causes and impacts on middle latitudes. Glob. Planet. Change 117, 52–63 (2014).
Mori, M., Watanabe, M., Shiogama, H., Inoue, J. & Kimoto, M. Robust Arctic sea-ice influence on the frequent Eurasian cold winters in past decades. Nat. Geosci. 7, 869–873 (2014).
Mori, M., Kosaka, Y., Watanabe, M., Nakamura, H. & Kimoto, M. A reconciled estimate of the influence of Arctic sea-ice loss on recent Eurasian cooling. Nat. Clim. Change 9, 123–129 (2019).
Francis, J. A. & Vavrus, S. J. Evidence for a wavier jet stream in response to rapid Arctic warming. Environ. Res. Lett. 10, 014005 (2015).
Kug, S.-W. et al. Two distinct influences of Arctic warming on cold winters over North America and East Asia. Nat. Geosci. 8, 759–762 (2015).
Kretschmer, M. D., Coumou, J. F. D. & Runge, J. Using causal effect networks to analyze different Arctic drivers of midlatitude winter circulation. J. Clim. 29, 4069–4081 (2016).
Meleshko, V. et al. Arctic amplification: does it impact the polar jet stream? Tellus A 68, 32330 (2016).
Francis, J. A. Why are Arctic linkages to extreme weather still up in the air? Bull. Am. Meteorol. Soc. 98, 2551–2557 (2017).
Francis, J. A., Vavrus, S. J. & Cohen, J. Amplified Arctic warming and mid-latitude weather: new perspectives on emerging connections. WIREs Clim. Change 8, e474 (2017).
Yao, Y., Luo, D., Dai, A. & Simmonds, I. Increased quasi-stationarity and persistence of Ural blocking and Eurasian extreme cold events in response to Arctic warming. Part I: insights from observational analyses. J. Clim. 30, 3549–3568 (2017).
Luo, D., Chen, X., Dai, A. & Simmonds, I. Changes in atmospheric blocking circulations linked with winter Arctic sea-ice loss: a new perspective. J. Clim. 31, 7661–7678 (2018).
Chen, H. W., Zhang, F. & Alley, R. B. The robustness of midlatitude weather pattern changes due to Arctic sea ice loss. J. Clim. 29, 7831–7849 (2016).
McCusker, K. E., Fyfe, J. C. & Sigmond, M. Twenty-fve winters of unexpected Eurasian cooling unlikely due to arctic sea ice loss. Nat. Geosci. 9, 838–842 (2016).
Sun, L., Perlwitz, J. & Hoerling, M. What caused the recent “warm Arctic, cold continents” trend pattern in winter temperatures? Geophys. Res. Lett. 43, 5345–5352 (2016).
Deser, C., Tomas, R. A., Alexander, M. & Lawrence, D. The seasonal atmospheric response to projected Arctic sea ice loss in the late twenty-first century. J. Clim. 23, 333–351 (2010).
Sun, L., Deser, C. & Tomas, R. A. Mechanisms of stratospheric and tropospheric circulation response to projected Arctic sea ice loss. J. Clim. 28, 7824–7845 (2015).
Screen, J. A. Simulated atmospheric response to regional and pan-Arctic sea ice loss. J. Clim. 30, 3945–3962 (2017).
Deser, C., Tomas, R. A. & Sun, L. The role of ocean–atmosphere coupling in the zonal-mean atmospheric response to Arctic sea ice loss. J. Clim. 28, 2168–2186 (2015).
Deser, C., Sun, L., Tomas, R. A. & Screen, J. Does ocean coupling matter for the northern extratropical response to projected Arctic sea ice loss? Geophys. Res. Lett. 43, 2149–2157 (2016).
Blackport, R. & Kushner, P. J. Isolating the atmospheric circulation response to Arctic sea ice loss in the coupled climate system. J. Clim. 30, 2163–2185 (2017).
McCusker, K. E. et al. Remarkable separability of circulation response to Arctic sea ice loss and greenhouse gas forcing. Geophys. Res. Lett. 44, 7955–7964 (2017).
Oudar, T. et al. Respective roles of direct GHG radiative forcing and induced Arctic sea ice loss on the Northern Hemisphere atmospheric circulation. Clim. Dynam. 49, 3693–3713 (2017).
Smith, D. M. et al. Atmospheric response to Arctic and Antarctic sea ice: the importance of ocean–atmosphere coupling and the background state. J. Clim. 30, 4547–4565 (2017).
Screen, J. A. et al. Consistency and discrepancy in the atmospheric response to Arctic sea-ice loss across climate models. Nat. Geosci. 11, 155–163 (2018).
Sun, L., Alexander, M. & Deser, C. Evolution of the global coupled climate response to Arctic sea ice loss during 1990–2090 and tts contribution to climate change. J. Clim. 31, 7823–7843 (2018).
Dai, A. & Bloecker, C. E. Impacts of internal variability on temperature and precipitation trends in large ensemble simulations by two climate models. Clim. Dynam. 52, 289–306 (2019).
Cohen, J. et al. Divergent consensuses on Arctic amplification influence on midlatitude severe winter weather. Nat. Clim. Change 10, 20–29 (2020).
Overland, J. E. et al. Nonlinear response of mid-latitude weather to the changing Arctic. Nat. Clim. Change 6, 992–999 (2016).
Chylek, P., Folland, C. K., Lesins, G., Dubey, M. K. & Wang, M. Arctic air temperature change amplification and the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation. Geophys. Res. Lett. 36, L14801 (2009).
Spielhagen, R. F. et al. Enhanced modern heat transfer to the Arctic by warm Atlantic water. Science 331, 450–453 (2011).
Hua, W., Dai, A., Zhou, L., Qin, M. & Chen, H. An externally-forced decadal rainfall seesaw pattern over the Sahel and southeast Amazon. Geophys. Res. Lett. 46, 923–932 (2019).
Luo, D. et al. Winter Eurasian cooling linked with the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation. Environ. Res. Lett. 12, 125002 (2017).
Hurrell, J. W. et al. The Community Earth System Model: a framework for collaborative research. Bull. Am. Meteorol. Soc. 94, 1339–1360 (2013).
Jahn, A. et al. Late-twentieth-century simulation of Arctic sea ice and ocean properties in the CCSM4. J. Clim. 25, 1431–1452 (2012).
Boeke, R. C. & Taylor, P. C. Seasonal energy exchange in sea ice retreat regions contributes to differences in projected Arctic warming. Nat. Commun. 9, 5017 (2018).
Acknowledgements
We thank J. Liu for constructive discussions regarding the design and impact of the FixedIce run. M.S. was supported by the Chinese Academy of Sciences Strategic Priority Research Program (grant no. XDA19070403). A.D. was supported by the National Science Foundation (grant nos. AGS-1353740 and OISE-1743738), the US Department of Energy’s Office of Science (grant no. DE-SC0012602) and the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (grant nos. NA15OAR4310086 and NA18OAR4310425).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Contributions
A.D. designed the research and performed the numerical experiments and analyses. M.S. helped make the necessary code changes for the FixedIce run.
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing interests.
Additional information
Peer review information Nature Climate Change thanks Patrick Taylor, Robert Tomas and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.
Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Extended data
Extended Data Fig. 1 CESM1-somulated Arctic sea-ice, temperature and flux changes.
(a) Eleven-year-moving averaged time series of the changes (relative to the control-run climatology) in Arctic (67o–90oN, red) and global-mean (magenta) annual surface air temperature (Tas), Arctic-minus-global annual Tas difference (black), and Arctic annual sea-ice concentration (SIC, blue) from the 1% CO2 run (solid lines) and FixedIce run (dashed lines). (b, c) CESM1-simulated changes (relative to the control-run climatology) averaged over years 131–150 as a function of month in Arctic sea-ice concentration (SIC, in % area, gray bars) and surface net shortwave (SW) radiation (red), upward longwave (LW) radiation (magenta), and sensible plus latent heat fluxes (blue) from the (b) 1% CO2 run and (c) FixedIce run.
Extended Data Fig. 2 CESM1-simualted October-March mean changes over 40o–90oN around the time of the 1st CO2 doubling (that is, for years 61–80).
Same as Fig. 1 but at the time of the 1st CO2 doubling (that is, for year 61–80 mean).
Extended Data Fig. 3 CESM1-simualted October-March mean changes over 40o–90oN around the time of the 3rd CO2 doubling (that is, for years 201–220).
Same as Fig. 1 but around the 3rd CO2 doubling (that is, for year 201–220 mean).
Extended Data Fig. 4 CESM1-simualted changes in zonal-mean temperature around the time of the 1st CO2 doubling (that is, for years 61–80).
Same as Fig. 3 but around the time of the 1st CO2 doubling (that is, for years 61–80).
Extended Data Fig. 5 CESM1-simualted changes in zonal-mean temperature around the time of the 3rd CO2 doubling (that is, for years 201–220).
Same as Fig. 3 but around the time of the 3rd CO2 doubling (that is, for years 201–220).
Extended Data Fig. 6 CESM1-simulated climatology (contours) and changes (color) in October-March zonal-mean U wind around the 1st CO2 doubling (that is, for years 61–80).
Same as Fig. 4 but around the time of the 1st CO2 doubling (that is, for years 61–80).
Extended Data Fig. 7 CESM1-simulated climatology (contours) and changes (color) in October-March zonal-mean U wind around the 3rd CO2 doubling (that is, for years 201–220).
Same as Fig. 4 but around the time of the 3rd CO2 doubling (that is, for years 201–220).
Extended Data Fig. 8 CESM1-simulated climatology (contours) and changes (color) in October-March zonal-mean V wind around the 2nd CO2 doubling (that is, for years 131–150).
CESM1-simualted climatology (contours, in 0.1 m/s) and changes (color, in 0.1 m/s, relative the control-run climatology) averaged over years 131–150 of October-March zonal-mean meridional wind from the (a) 1% CO2 run and (b) FixedIce run. Panel c is the panel a minus b difference. Significant wind changes in (a, b) or differences in (c) at the 5% level are marked by the black dots. The contours in (c) are for the control-run climatology of the meridional wind. The changes around the 1st CO2 doubling (for years 61–80) have similar patterns with smaller magnitudes.
Extended Data Fig. 9 CESM1-simulated climatology (contours) and changes (color) in October-March zonal-mean V wind around the 3rd CO2 doubling (that is, for years 201–220).
Same as Extended Data Fig. 8, but for changes around the time of the 3rd CO2 doubling (that is, for years 201–220).
Extended Data Fig. 10 Schematic diagram showing how the surface fluxes are applied in the standard 1%CO2 run (top) and the FixedIce run (bottom) over Arctic sea-ice covered areas.
Schematic diagram showing how the surface fluxes are applied in the standard 1%CO2 run (top) and the FixedIce run (bottom) over Arctic sea-ice covered areas. In the FixedIce run (with the same 1%-per-year increase in atmospheric CO2), sea-ice loss (outlined by the dashed lines in the lower-right panel) is small, and the fluxes from the ice model are applied to the same ice fraction as in year 1 (that is, they are extended to the volume outlined by the dashed lines in the lower-right panel), and the atmosphere and ocean components only see a fixed ice cover (with seasonal cycle). However, the ice model still dynamically calculates the ice fraction and the fluxes over sea ice. The ice model does not see this artificial ice fraction change but it feels the changed surface fluxes and near-surface states resulting from this change, and this leads to much slower ice melting and greatly reduced Arctic amplification in the FixedIce run than in the standard 1%CO2 run. The main ice-atmosphere and water-atmosphere fluxes include sensible (SH) and latent (LH) heat fluxes, longwave (LW) and shortwave (not shown) radiative fluxes, and wind stress fluxes (not shown). The ice-ocean fluxes include heat (H), salt (S), freshwater (W), and wind stress (not shown) fluxes.
Supplementary information
Supplementary Information
Supplementary Figs. 1–5.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Dai, A., Song, M. Little influence of Arctic amplification on mid-latitude climate. Nat. Clim. Chang. 10, 231–237 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-020-0694-3
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-020-0694-3
This article is cited by
-
Arctic sea ice loss warmed the temperate East Asian winter in the mid-Holocene
Communications Earth & Environment (2024)
-
The role of Arctic sea ice loss in the interdecadal trends of the East Asian summer monsoon in a warming climate
npj Climate and Atmospheric Science (2024)
-
Response of winter climate and extreme weather to projected Arctic sea-ice loss in very large-ensemble climate model simulations
npj Climate and Atmospheric Science (2024)
-
Record-breaking fire weather in North America in 2021 was initiated by the Pacific northwest heat dome
Communications Earth & Environment (2024)
-
Winter “warm Arctic-cold Eurasia” pattern and its statistical linkages to oceanic precursors during the era of satellite observations
Climate Dynamics (2024)