{"id":5637,"date":"2023-02-22T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-02-22T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/modernsciences.org\/staging\/4414\/?p=5637"},"modified":"2023-02-09T06:22:22","modified_gmt":"2023-02-09T06:22:22","slug":"atmospheric-rivers-are-hitting-the-arctic-more-often-and-increasingly-melting-its-sea-ice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/modernsciences.org\/staging\/4414\/atmospheric-rivers-are-hitting-the-arctic-more-often-and-increasingly-melting-its-sea-ice\/","title":{"rendered":"Atmospheric rivers are hitting the Arctic more often, and increasingly melting its sea ice"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n Rain and warm air make it harder for sea ice to grow.\n Bonnie Jo Mount\/The Washington Post via Getty Images<\/a><\/span>\n <\/figcaption>\n <\/figure>\n\nPengfei Zhang<\/a>, Penn State<\/a><\/em><\/span>\n\n

Atmospheric rivers<\/a>, those long, powerful streams of moisture in the sky, are becoming more frequent in the Arctic, and they\u2019re helping to drive dramatic shrinking<\/a> of the Arctic\u2019s sea ice cover.<\/p>\n\n

While less ice might have some benefits \u2013 it would allow more shipping<\/a> in winter and access to minerals \u2013 sea ice loss also contributes to global warming<\/a> and to extreme storms<\/a> that cause economic damage well beyond the Arctic.<\/p>\n\n

I\u2019m an atmospheric scientist<\/a>. In a new study<\/a> of the Barents-Kara Seas and the neighboring central Arctic, published Feb. 6, 2023, in Nature Climate Change, my colleagues and I found that these storms reached this region more often and were responsible for over a third of the region\u2019s early winter sea ice decline since 1979. <\/p>\n\n

More frequent atmospheric rivers<\/h2>\n\n

By early winter, the temperature in most of the Arctic is well below freezing and the days are mostly dark. Sea ice should be growing and spreading over a wider area<\/a>. Yet the total area with Arctic sea ice has fallen dramatically<\/a> in recent decades.<\/p>\n\n

Part of the reason is that atmospheric rivers have been penetrating into the region more frequently<\/a> in recent decades.<\/p>\n\n