- Declining northern hemisphere snow cover. Note that the decline is mainly in spring/summer/fall - December snow cover has actually increased (I'm guessing due to a more exposed Arctic ocean) and there is little change in Jan/Feb.
- The glut in Chinese-made solar panels.
- Arctic permafrost carbon feedback.
- This blog is now officially in the tank for Pippa (take 2).
- Some good Michael Levi thoughts on the uncertainties in tackling climate change.
- Decent employment report (by recent standards anyway).
Saturday, October 6, 2012
Weekend Links
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3 comments:
Stuart,
With regards the changes in snow. Judah Cohen connects snow advance in Siberia to changes in the AO, he has previously shown how snowfall causing rapid advance of the snowline in 2009 lead to the cold NH winter of 2009/10.
In "Arctic warming, increasing snow cover and widespread boreal winter cooling" Cohen et al (2012) expand on the linkage with Arctic sea ice. The key figure in that respect is included in this blog post:
http://dosbat.blogspot.co.uk/2011/12/cold-winters-arctic-connection.html
Which also links to a pre-print of the original paper.
Basically, as you imply, it goes like this: Less sea ice -> more open water -> increased tropospheric humidity over the Arctic -> increased rate of advance of the snowline in autumn* -> impact upon the stratosphere and hence polar vortex.
*Technically the increased rate of advance is due to the two factors, i) anomalously low snow extent in summer ii) anomalously high areal fall of snow over Eurasia.
Chris - thanks for the interesting discussion/links. Note that the Cohen paper seems to have moved to http://web.mit.edu/jlcohen/www/papers/Cohenetal_ERL12.pdf
Thanks Stuart, I've updated the link.
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