The Arctic matters: extreme weather responds to diminished Arctic Sea ice - environmentalresearchweb

The short answer to whether the disappearance of multi-year Arctic sea ice will make extreme weather events more frequent is yes....and no, according to Jennifer Francis

The recent era of rapid Arctic warming is short (since the mid-1990s), thus previous observation-based studies have struggled to identify robust signals amid the substantial noise of natural atmospheric variability. To circumvent this obstacle, Screen et al force two state-of-the-art atmospheric global climate models with sea-ice and ocean-temperature conditions representative of the late 20th century as well as with projections for the end of the 21st century, when sea ice will be nearly gone in summer. By comparing the atmospheric response to these contrasting conditions, they assess changes in the occurrences of a variety of standard extreme weather metrics related to temperature and precipitation. Simulations are performed for 260 years with each model and in each set of conditions, allowing the authors to detect robust signals of change in extreme events owing to Arctic sea ice loss alone. A response was considered robust only if confidence in the difference exceeded 95% and both models were in agreement.

Not surprising, the regions nearest to the Arctic exhibit the largest response to ice loss (figure 1 presents a summary of the study's results). The signs of these high-latitude changes make sense in a world with much less sea ice: reduced extreme cold as extra solar energy is gained in newly ice-free areas, increased extreme heat events as the ice-free season lengthens, and more abundant precipitation as evaporation increases.

Source: Environmental Research Web