Severe snowy weather in winter or extreme rains in summer in the UK might be influenced by warming trends in the Arctic, according to new findings.
Severe snowy weather in winter or extreme rains in summer in the UK might be influenced by warming trends in the Arctic, according to new findings.
Climate scientists from the UK and the US examined historic data of extreme weather events in the UK over the past decade and compared them with the position of the North Atlantic polar atmospheric jet steam using a measure called the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) index.
The NAO indicates the position of the jet stream – which is a giant current of air that broadly flows eastwards over mid-latitude regions around the globe – through a diagram which shows 'negative'and 'positive' spikes, similar to how a heart monitor looks.
The researchers highlight that the exceptionally wet UK summers of 2007 and 2012 had notably negative readings of the NAO, as did the cold, snowy winters of 2009/2010 and 2010/2011, while the exceptionally mild, wet, stormy winters experienced in 2013/2014 and 2015/2016 showed pronounced positive spikes.
Read more at University of Lincoln
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