Global patterns of weather heavily impacted by melting Arctic ice, experts warn

Global patterns of weather heavily
impacted by melting Arctic ice, experts warn

The melting of global ice is drastically impacting global
patterns of weather and trade as well as the U.S. military's strategic planning,
climate experts warn. The majority of the sea ice that forms each fall and
winter in the Arctic now melts each spring and summer, sending climate patterns
out of whack.


The
National Snow and Ice Data Center announced that the Arctic sea ice reached its
maximum reach for the year on March 15, covering 5.84 million square miles,
which is the sixth lowest maximum sea ice coverage in the 35-year satellite
record.

LOS ANGELSS, CA (Catholic Online): "There are tremendous two-way and
multiple interactions between the Arctic and the rest of the world," retired
Rear Adm. David Titley said in a teleconference for Climate Nexus, a group
trying to heighten awareness about climate change.

The melting ice in the
Arctic, these experts say, is directly connected to the recent spate of stormy
winter weather in parts of the U.S. and Europe. Experts also note that the
prospect of ice-free summers in the Arctic as soon as 2030 has begin to impact
international trade and U.S. Navy plans to protect Arctic resources.

The
National Snow and Ice Data Center announced that the Arctic sea ice reached its
maximum reach for the year on March 15, covering 5.84 million square miles,
which is the sixth lowest maximum sea ice coverage in the 35-year satellite
record.

"The last 10 years have been the lowest 10 years," research
scientist Walt Meier said, adding that while this year was low, "we actually
have the largest growth of ice in our record from the minimum to the maximum"
primarily because the ice was recovering from the record low in 2012.


Oceanographer Wieslaw Maslowski noted that in addition to the shrinking
extent of sea ice that the remaining ice is thinning perhaps twice as fast as
the observed ice extent.

Senior scientist with the National Institute
Center for Climatic Research, Stephen Vavrus says that the changing sea ice
dynamics are perhaps most felt outside of the Arctic via changes in weather
patterns.

The melting ice, Vavrus explained, allows heat stored in the
ocean to escape to the atmosphere where it changes the pressure patterns,
including "the jet-stream level winds that affect our weather in the middle
latitudes."

Vavrus' colleagues hypothesize that the warming Arctic causes
the jet stream to slow down and meander like a river flowing through the plains.
As a result, this transports less warm air over the lands from the
oceans.

"That essentially helps to refrigerate the land during the
wintertime and we get colder and more snow and more extreme cold as well,"
Vavrus said. "And we've seen examples of that in this past winter with the
slowed westerly wind."

This phenomenon also explains the unusually warm
spring in 2012. If a meandering jet stream is like a river, some bends are
favorable to cold outbreaks; others are favorable to extreme
warmth.

"Just depending on how those jet stream waves happen to set up in
a particular week or month or season, that could help to explain why you could
get weather extremes of both types," he said.