In this episode of Shaping The Future, we discuss the abrupt cooling of the Arctic in the late summer months that is preventing the widely anticipated further collapse of summer sea ice, whilst intensifying heatwaves at lower latitudes.

This new hypothesis was recently published by Professor Jennifer Francis from the Woodwell Climate Research Centre in Falmouth, Massachusetts and Dr Woo from Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, and Institute of Atmospheric Sciences, Fudan University, in Shanghai.

It is not often anyone ever mentions negative feedback mechanisms when it comes to sea ice but this is exactly what is being suggested.

Jennifer Francis has also been involved in research that links sea ice loss to changes in jet stream patterns that impact our weather in the northern hemisphere, and this work further unpicks the complexity of how the Arctic climate system interacts with the rest of the world.

Thank you for listening to this podcast. In the next episode, I will be speaking with Dr Saima Wazed, who is the thematic ambassador of the Climate Vulnerable Forum representing Bangladesh.

Dr Wazed discusses how extreme climate events can render people immediately vulnerable from a mental health perspective as they struggle to come to terms with the losses that these incur from livelihoods to suffering the loss of loved ones or both.

A link to Dr’s Woo and Francis scientific paper is provided in the notes below.

Download: Why has no new record-minimum Arctic sea-ice extent occurred since September 2012?

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/abc047