Jennifer Francis fights back: Arctic amplification

Jennifer Francis, Quihong Tang, and Xuejun Zhang have a new paper in Nature Climate Change, titled “Extreme summer weather in northern mid-latitudes linked to a vanishing cryosphere”.  Dr Francis has argued eloquently that either the diminished cryosphere or the energy balancing mechanisms that cause its disappearance are having significant effects on mid-latitude weather. Some of her earlier reports have been challenged but it remains an active area of research, and that means we’ll probably see a consensus emerge in a year or two.

I don’t know the outcome, of course, but the meteorological principles seem sound. What’s interesting is that, if this proves out, it provides a fairly direct chain of logic connecting excess and extravagant emissions of carbon dioxide from human sources to weather effects at temperate latitudes.  That would be remarkable.

Hat tip to Dan Satterfield for the reference to the new Tang, Zhang, and Francis paper.

Supplementary material for their paper is available online and is not behind a paywall.

Update, 2017-03-28

Press report of a new paper on this, co-authored by Professor Michael Mann. I look forward to reading the original.