Eurasian cooling in response to Arctic sea-ice loss is not proved by maximum covariance analysis

Zappa, G., Ceppi, P. and Shepherd, T. G. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6631-9968 (2021) Eurasian cooling in response to Arctic sea-ice loss is not proved by maximum covariance analysis. Nature Climate Change, 11. pp. 106-108. ISSN 1758-678X doi: 10.1038/s41558-020-00982-8

Abstract/Summary

The extent to which the ongoing decline in Arctic sea ice affects mid-latitude climate has received great attention and polarised opinions. The basic issue is whether the inter-annual variability in Arctic sea ice is the cause of, or the response to, variability in mid-latitude atmospheric circulation. Mori et al. (M19) claims to have reconciled previous conflicting studies by showing that a consistent mid-latitude climate response to inter-annual sea-ice anomalies can be identified between the ERA-Interim reanalysis, taken as observations, and an ensemble of atmosphere-only (AMIP) climate model simulations. Here we demonstrate that such a conclusion cannot be drawn, due to issues with the interpretation of the maximum covariance analysis performed. After applying the M19 approach to the output from a simple statistical model, we conclude that a predominant atmospheric forcing of the sea-ice variability, rather than the converse, is a more plausible explanation of the results presented in M19.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/95136
Identification Number/DOI	10.1038/s41558-020-00982-8
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Science > School of Mathematical, Physical and Computational Sciences > Department of Meteorology
Publisher	Nature Publishing Group
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