Influence of low Arctic sea‐ice minima on anomalously cold Eurasian winters

Abstract

Influence of low Arctic sea‐ice minima in early autumn on the wintertime climate over Eurasia is investigated. Observational evidence shows that significant cold anomalies over the Far East in early winter and zonally elongated cold anomalies from Europe to Far East in late winter are associated with the decrease of the Arctic sea‐ice cover in the preceding summer‐to‐autumn seasons. Results from numerical experiments using an atmospheric general circulation model support these notions. The remote response in early winter is regarded as a stationary Rossby wave generated thermally through an anomalous turbulent heat fluxes as a result of anomalous ice‐cover over the Barents‐Kara Seas in late autumn, which tends to induce an amplification of the Siberian high causing colder conditions over the Far East. The late‐winter cold anomalies over Eurasia are also reproduced in our experiment, which is associated with the negative phase of the North Atlantic Oscillation.