Two distinct influences of Arctic warming on cold winters over North America and East Asia

Kug, Jong‐Seong; Jeong, Jee‐Hoon; Jang, Yeon-Soo; Kim, Baek-Min; Folland, Chris K.; Min, Seung‐Ki; Son, Seok‐Woo

doi:10.1038/ngeo2517

Cited by 475 publications

(410 citation statements)

References 30 publications

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“…Hence understanding the tropical SST variability provides important implications for North American climate prediction. On the other hand, recent studies also indicate that North American climate is closely correlated with adjacent atmospheric and oceanic anomalies that are not directly attributable to ENSO (e.g., Wu 2011, 2012;Francis and Vavrus 2012;Wang et al 2014;Bond et al 2015;Hartmann 2015;Yu and Zhang 2015;Kug et al 2015). This suggests that an improved understanding of extratropical atmospheric and oceanic variability is also highly relevant to North American climate prediction.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 92%

The Asian–Bering–North American teleconnection: seasonality, maintenance, and climate impact on North America

Lin

et al. 2017

Clim Dyn

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 92%

The Asian–Bering–North American teleconnection: seasonality, maintenance, and climate impact on North America

Lin

et al. 2017

Clim Dyn

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“…These regions have been experiencing the strongest surface warming over the last century globally (IPCC, 2014), a trend which is expected to be exacerbated in the future and to significantly change hydrological patterns (AMAP, 2017). Therefore, solid understanding of present hydrological processes and variations is crucial, yet the effect of complex snow dynamics on other storages and water resources is relatively unknown (van den Hurk et al, 2016;Kug et al, 2015). While it has been shown that snow mass is the primary component of seasonal variations of TWS in large northern basins (Niu et al, 2007;Rangelova et al, 2007), it is not known what drives the TWS variations on inter-annual or longer timescales in these regions.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding terrestrial water storage variations in northern latitudes across scales

Trautmann

Koirala

Eicker

et al. 2018

Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci.

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Abstract. The GRACE satellites provide signals of total terrestrial water storage (TWS) variations over large spatial domains at seasonal to inter-annual timescales. While the GRACE data have been extensively and successfully used to assess spatio-temporal changes in TWS, little effort has been made to quantify the relative contributions of snowpacks, soil moisture, and other components to the integrated TWS signal across northern latitudes, which is essential to gain a better insight into the underlying hydrological processes. Therefore, this study aims to assess which storage component dominates the spatio-temporal patterns of TWS variations in the humid regions of northern mid-to high latitudes.To do so, we constrained a rather parsimonious hydrological model with multiple state-of-the-art Earth observation products including GRACE TWS anomalies, estimates of snow water equivalent, evapotranspiration fluxes, and gridded runoff estimates. The optimized model demonstrates good agreement with observed hydrological spatio-temporal patterns and was used to assess the relative contributions of solid (snowpack) versus liquid (soil moisture, retained water) storage components to total TWS variations. In particular, we analysed whether the same storage component dominates TWS variations at seasonal and inter-annual temporal scales, and whether the dominating component is consistent across small to large spatial scales.Consistent with previous studies, we show that snow dynamics control seasonal TWS variations across all spatial scales in the northern mid-to high latitudes. In contrast, we find that inter-annual variations of TWS are dominated by liquid water storages at all spatial scales. The relative contribution of snow to inter-annual TWS variations, though, increases when the spatial domain over which the storages are averaged becomes larger. This is due to a stronger spatial coherence of snow dynamics that are mainly driven by temperature, as opposed to spatially more heterogeneous liquid water anomalies, that cancel out when averaged over a larger spatial domain. The findings first highlight the effectiveness of our model-data fusion approach that jointly interprets multiple Earth observation data streams with a simple model. Secondly, they reveal that the determinants of TWS variations in snow-affected northern latitudes are scale-dependent. In particular, they seem to be not merely driven by snow variability, but rather are determined by liquid water storages on interannual timescales. We conclude that inferred driving mechanisms of TWS cannot simply be transferred from one scale to another, which is of particular relevance for understanding the short-and long-term variability of water resources.

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“…Accelerated warming in the Northern Hemisphere polar region, termed Arctic amplification [2] is concurrent with the rapid loss of Arctic sea-ice extent of approximately 11%/decade [3] and a 65% reduction in sea-ice thickness since 1975 [4]. In turn, ASIE and the strength of the polar vortex have been linked [5,6], with some of the most noticeable impacts experienced as anomalously cold winter conditions in the eastern North American mid-latitudes [2] and western North American anticyclogenesis [7,8]. However, warm-season impacts associated with increased meridionality and persistence also occur [9][10][11], including more frequent ridging (i.e., higher atmospheric pressure) over the Pacific Northwest and Northern Rockies regions of the coterminous U.S.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spatio-Temporal Linkages between Declining Arctic Sea-Ice Extent and Increasing Wildfire Activity in the Western United States

Knapp

Soulé

2017

Forests

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Abstract:We examined relationships between monthly Arctic sea-ice extent (ASIE) and annual wildfire activity for seven regions in the western United States during 1980-2015 to determine if spatio-temporal linkages exist between ASIE, upper-level flow, and surface climatic conditions conducive to western U.S. wildfire activity. Winter ASIE had significant (p < 0.05) negative relationships with annual wildfire area burned (r s = −0.391 − −0.683), with the strongest relationship occurring in the Northern Rockies. We explored spatial linkages between ASIE and 300-hPa flow (+), temperature (+), precipitation (−), and soil moisture (+) using monthly values of ASIE and gridded values for the climatic parameters. Relationships were best expressed between January ASIE and conditions in the current-year July over the Pacific Northwest and Northern Rockies. Reduced wintertime ASIE is teleconnected with increased ridging in summertime 300-hPa flow over the western U.S., resulting in warmer and drier conditions during peak fire season. Our findings suggest that reductions in ASIE are one of the driving forces behind the increasing annual trend (>36,000 ha) in area burned in the western U.S. since 1980.

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Two distinct influences of Arctic warming on cold winters over North America and East Asia

Cited by 475 publications

References 30 publications

The Asian–Bering–North American teleconnection: seasonality, maintenance, and climate impact on North America

The Asian–Bering–North American teleconnection: seasonality, maintenance, and climate impact on North America

Understanding terrestrial water storage variations in northern latitudes across scales

Spatio-Temporal Linkages between Declining Arctic Sea-Ice Extent and Increasing Wildfire Activity in the Western United States

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