Northern Eurasian snowpack could be a predictor of winter weather in US

Science Daily: Every winter, weather forecasters talk about the snow cover in the northern U.S. and into Canada as a factor in how deep the deep-freeze will be in the states. A new study by researchers at the University of Georgia indicates they may be looking, at least partially, in the wrong place. It turns out that snow piling up over a band of frozen tundra from Siberia to far-northern Europe may have as much effect on the climate of the U.S. as the much-better-known El Niño and La Niña.

The new work, just published in the International Journal of Climatology, reports that to understand how cold (or warm) the winter season will be in the U.S., researchers and weather forecasters should also take a closer look at snowpack in northern Eurasia laid down the previous October and November.

"To date, there had been no thorough examination of how snow cover from various regions of Eurasia influences North American winter temperatures," said climatologist Thomas Mote of UGA's department of geography and leader of the research. "The goal of this research was to determine whether there is a significant relationship between autumn snow extent in specific regions of Eurasia and temperatures across North America during the subsequent winter."

…While other scientists have postulated that snow cover on the Eurasian landmass has a strong effect on winters in North America, the new study is the first to narrow down the location of the area that causes the most direct effect on U.S. winters -- an area in northwest Eurasia that includes part of Siberia -- though the entire effective area extends as far west as northern Scandinavia….

View of a pond in Chernoistochinsk Bila, shot by Ляпцев Павел Сергеевич (Pavel Sergeievich Lyapshev), Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license