Arctic sea-ice loss linked to colder, drier UK winters

Adam Vaughn in the Guardian (UK): The reduction in Arctic sea ice caused by climate change is playing a role in the UK's recent colder and drier winter weather, according to the Met Office.

Speaking to MPs on the influential environmental audit committee about the state of the warming Arctic, Julia Slingo, the chief scientist at the Met Office, said that decreasing amounts of ice in the far north was contributing to colder winters in the UK and northern Europe as well as to drought. But she stressed that while it was one factor and not the "dominant driver" in the UK.

The south-east and other parts of England are experiencing especially dry conditions after months of below-average rainfall, with some water companies pledging on Monday to introduce hosepipe bans to conserve water.

Recent years have seen a spate of cold winters, with 2009-10 being recorded as the coldest in 31 years. Recent studies have linked the gradual shrinking of Arctic sea ice to colder weather in the UK and the rest of Europe, as well as the US and China. However the Met Office has not spoken about the issue before. The hot, dry spring of 2011 has also been linked to melting sea ice by meteorologists.

Despite the colder winters, nine of the 10 hottest years on record have occurred since 2001, according to the Met Office's temperature data. Such warming, driven to largely by man-made activities, is causing Arctic sea ice to melt at a rate of 12% a decade in summer...

Arctic ice photo by Patrick Kelly, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license