Climate Watch: "The Arctic is showing stunning winter warmth, and these scientists think they know why"

It is all looking rather consistent with an outlook that has been dubbed "Warm Arctic, Cold Continents" -- a notion that remains scientifically contentious but, if accurate, is deeply consequential for how climate change could unfold in the Northern Hemisphere winter.

The core idea here begins with the fact that the Arctic is warming up faster than the mid-latitudes and the equator, and losing its characteristic floating sea ice cover in the process. This also changes the Arctic atmosphere, the theory goes, and these changes interact with large scale atmospheric patterns that affect our weather (phenomena like the jet stream and the polar vortex). We won't get into the details yet, but in essence, the result can be a kind of swapping of the cold air masses of the Arctic with the warm air masses to the south of them. The Arctic then gets hot (relatively), and the mid-latitudes -- including sometimes, as during the infamous "polar vortex" event of 2013-2014, the United States -- get cold. Read More

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It's Going to Be the Warmest Christmas at the North Pole Ever