MET OFFICE NOW ADMITS ARCTIC SEA ICE DIDN’T CAUSE COLD WINTER In a new report entitled “Why was the start to spring 2013 so cold?,” the chief of the UK MET Office now admits that decreased Arctic sea ice or “Arctic amplification” was not responsible for the unusually cold spring 2013 in Europe, finding “little evidence from the comparison between the cold spring of 1962 and this year that the Arctic has been a contributory factor in terms of the hypothesis” of “an increased probability of extreme weather events that result from prolonged conditions, such as drought, flooding, cold spells, and heat waves.” According to the report, “Figure 13 shows the midtroposphere temperature anomalies for 1962 and 2013; over the Arctic they are almost identical and reflect the negative NAO pattern. It is hard to argue that Arctic amplification had changed the equator to pole temperature in a systematic way to affect the circulation this spring.”
Posted on: Sat, 14 Sep 2013 21:30:33 +0000