Part Two / How our Planet is Changing

2.6 Arctic Warming and the Jet Stream

All online sources accessed on

  1. The Arctic is warming rapidly Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme, Arctic Climate Change Update 2021: Key Trends and Impacts. Summary for Policy-makers, 2021, https://www.amap.no/documents/doc/arctic-climate-change-update-2021-key-trends-and-impacts.-summary-for-policy-makers/3508.

  2. when the Arctic is abnormally warm Cohen, J., et al., ‘Warm Arctic episodes linked with increased frequency of extreme winter weather in the United States’, Nature Communications, 9, 2018: Article 869, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-02992-9.

    jet streams in the northern hemisphere Martin, J. E., ‘Recent trends in the waviness of the northern hemisphere wintertime polar and subtropical jets’, Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 126 (9), 2021: Article e2020JD033668, https://doi.org/10.1029/2020JD033668.

    Steve Vavrus and I first proposed Francis, J. A., and Vavrus, S. J., ‘Evidence linking Arctic amplification to extreme weather in mid-latitudes’, Geophysical Research Letters, 126 (9), 2021: Article e2020JD033668, https://doi.org/10.1029/2020JD033668.

  3. The extreme cold spell … the US south-central states Cohen J., et al., ‘Linking Arctic variability and change with extreme winter weather in the United States’, Science, 373 (6559), 2021: 1116–21, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abi9167.

    crippled power supplies … froze water pipes Wikipedia, ‘2021 Texas power crisis’, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Texas_power_crisis.

    A new line of research has also uncovered a summer connection Mann, M. E., et al., ‘Projected changes in persistent extreme summer weather events: the role of quasi-resonant amplification’, Science Advances, 4 (10), 2018: Article eaat3272, https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aat3272.

    These splits tend to occur when the spring snowcover Rutgers University Global Snow Lab, http://climate.rutgers.edu/snowcover/.