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Towards normal Siberian winter temperatures?
Author(s) -
Koenigk Torben,
FuentesFranco Ramon
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
international journal of climatology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.58
H-Index - 166
eISSN - 1097-0088
pISSN - 0899-8418
DOI - 10.1002/joc.6099
Subject(s) - climatology , arctic oscillation , environmental science , arctic , siberian high , north atlantic oscillation , sea ice , pacific decadal oscillation , arctic ice pack , arctic sea ice decline , sea surface temperature , northern hemisphere , geology , oceanography , geography , antarctic sea ice , east asia , archaeology , china
Siberia is a region where despite global warming a winter cooling trend has been observed over last decades. This cooling trend and its potential linkage to Arctic sea ice loss are controversially discussed. However, recent winters have not been taken into account so far. Here, we analyse ERA‐Interim reanalysis data until 2017 and ERA20C reanalysis to investigate the robustness of the winter surface air temperature trends to updated and extended time periods. Our results show that winter temperatures in Siberia were above normal after 2013 leading to strongly reduced cooling trends since 1980. The trend before 2014 was dominated by four cold winters between 2010 and 2013. These cold winters were mainly caused by strong negative phases of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), except for the winter 2011/2012, where the NAO was positive and a strongly negative phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) in combination with low sea ice in the Barents Sea caused the cold winter. Both NAO and PDO shift from more negative to positive phases in 2014 and contribute to a return to warmer Siberian temperatures. Furthermore, the NAO shows no trend between 1980 and 2017 indicating that the suggested linkage between Arctic sea ice loss and a negative trend in this mode is not robust. However, continuously low Arctic sea ice in recent years and a slightly negative trend in the PDO since 1980 contribute to the remaining observed cold trends over parts of Eurasia between 1980 and 2017.