Britain to get colder winters due to climate change: Experts
By IANSSaturday, December 25, 2010
LONDON - Britain will be hit by longer and bitter winters in coming years as the melting ice in the Arctic Sea due to global warming has changed the wind patterns in the northern hemisphere, experts have said.
Melting Arctic Sea ice has changed wind patterns in the northern hemisphere, bringing blasts of colder air across Britain and scientists believe that the country is three times likely to be hit by bitterly cold winter months, according to the Daily Mail.
Vladimir Petoukhov, who conducted the study at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact in Germany, said the disappearing sea ice will have an unpredictable impact on the climate.
“There are complex interconnections in the climate system, and in the Barents-Kara Sea we have discovered a powerful feedback mechanism. Our results imply that several recent severe winters do not conflict with the global warming picture but rather supplement it,” he was quoted as saying.
The experts said that rising temperatures in the Arctic - increasing at two to three times the global average - have peeled back the region’s floating ice cover by 20 percent over the last three decades.
As the Arctic ice cap has melted the heat from the relatively-warm seawater escapes into the colder atmosphere above, creating an area of high pressure. That creates clockwise winds that sweep south over Britain and northern Europe.
Scientists, however, said it was too early to say if the freezing conditions this year and last year were caused by changes in the Arctic.
But as the ice continues to melt, Britain will begin to have warmer than average winters - but not for another half a century.
Stefan Rahmstorf, professor of physics of the ocean at the Potsdam Institute, said: “If you look ahead 40 or 50 years, these cold winters will be getting warmer because, even though you are getting an inflow of cold polar air, that air mass is getting warmer because of the greenhouse effect.
“So it’s a transient phenomenon. In the long run, global warming wins out.”
