Fierce northern winter linked to Arctic sea ice melt
TONY EASTLEY: There’s more evidence today of the retreat of sea ice in the Arctic.
Satellite pictures reveal the icy expanse reached its maximum size for the year on March the 15th yet the sea ice was the sixth lowest since satellite records began just over 30 years ago.
Climate scientists say the ice loss is contributing to the massive snowstorms and bitter weather experienced in North America and Europe.
Ashley Hall reports.
ASHLEY HALL: It’s been a particularly fierce winter and spring in North America and Europe, with massive snowstorms and bitterly cold weather.
The forecaster Claire Austin from the Meteogroup says March has been especially chilly so far.
CLAIRE AUSTIN: It’s much, much colder and it has been cold for the last few weeks. So it is unusual. We do get snowfalls even up as far as April where we see some quite significant snowfalls at times.
It is more a case that this is just incredibly cold air and it just, it doesn’t want to go away unfortunately.
ASHLEY HALL: So what’s caused this year’s fierce weather?
Climate scientists say it’s linked to the shrinking Arctic sea ice, which reached its seasonal maximum on March the 15th.
Walt Meier is a scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Colorado.
WALT MEIER: It’s about the sixth lowest since our records started in 1979, nonetheless on the low side definitely. More importantly at this time of year really is the thickness of the ice and that’s still looking quite low - probably at or near record low levels for this time of year.
JENNIFER FRANCIS: It’s such a dramatic change in the amount of sea ice up there and we’re seeing the decline happening in all seasons now, including the winter which is, as you say, it’s at its maximum extent now but it is much thinner than it was again, only a couple of decades ago.
So the change has been very rapid.
ASHLEY HALL: Jennifer Francis is a research professor at the Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences at Rutgers University in New Jersey
She says the warming of the Arctic is weakening the high altitude river of air known as the jet stream that governs weather patterns in the Northern Hemisphere.
JENNIFER FRANCIS: Last March at this time we were experiencing extremely warm conditions. I was out in my garden planting peas and you know, spring was very early but this year it’s just the other way around.
ASHLEY HALL: Some people argue that these variations have occurred throughout the history of the planet and that linking them to climate change is a bit of a stretch too far. What do you say to them?
JENNIFER FRANCIS: The changes that happened before say the middle of the 1900s are all explained by natural causes. But what has happened in just the last five or six decades is we’ve seen the largest increase in the amount of carbon dioxide in particular and other greenhouse gases and we know that it’s caused by the burning of fossil fuels, and so the increase in temperatures that we’ve seen cannot be explained any other way.
Satellite pictures reveal the icy expanse reached its maximum size for the year on March the 15th yet the sea ice was the sixth lowest since satellite records began just over 30 years ago.
Climate scientists say the ice loss is contributing to the massive snowstorms and bitter weather experienced in North America and Europe.
Ashley Hall reports.
ASHLEY HALL: It’s been a particularly fierce winter and spring in North America and Europe, with massive snowstorms and bitterly cold weather.
The forecaster Claire Austin from the Meteogroup says March has been especially chilly so far.
CLAIRE AUSTIN: It’s much, much colder and it has been cold for the last few weeks. So it is unusual. We do get snowfalls even up as far as April where we see some quite significant snowfalls at times.
It is more a case that this is just incredibly cold air and it just, it doesn’t want to go away unfortunately.
ASHLEY HALL: So what’s caused this year’s fierce weather?
Climate scientists say it’s linked to the shrinking Arctic sea ice, which reached its seasonal maximum on March the 15th.
Walt Meier is a scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Colorado.
WALT MEIER: It’s about the sixth lowest since our records started in 1979, nonetheless on the low side definitely. More importantly at this time of year really is the thickness of the ice and that’s still looking quite low - probably at or near record low levels for this time of year.
JENNIFER FRANCIS: It’s such a dramatic change in the amount of sea ice up there and we’re seeing the decline happening in all seasons now, including the winter which is, as you say, it’s at its maximum extent now but it is much thinner than it was again, only a couple of decades ago.
So the change has been very rapid.
ASHLEY HALL: Jennifer Francis is a research professor at the Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences at Rutgers University in New Jersey
She says the warming of the Arctic is weakening the high altitude river of air known as the jet stream that governs weather patterns in the Northern Hemisphere.
JENNIFER FRANCIS: Last March at this time we were experiencing extremely warm conditions. I was out in my garden planting peas and you know, spring was very early but this year it’s just the other way around.
ASHLEY HALL: Some people argue that these variations have occurred throughout the history of the planet and that linking them to climate change is a bit of a stretch too far. What do you say to them?
JENNIFER FRANCIS: The changes that happened before say the middle of the 1900s are all explained by natural causes. But what has happened in just the last five or six decades is we’ve seen the largest increase in the amount of carbon dioxide in particular and other greenhouse gases and we know that it’s caused by the burning of fossil fuels, and so the increase in temperatures that we’ve seen cannot be explained any other way.
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