How global warming will actually 'make our winters colder and more severe'

Britain will experience twice as many severe winters as usual over the coming decade due to the effects of global warming.

16:53 27 October 2014

Researchers have confirmed that global warning will result in colder weather in some parts of the world. Britain, for one, is expected to experience twice as many severe winters as usual over the coming decade because of this, it has been claimed.

Climate scientists suggest that the loss of floating Artic sea ice in the Barents and Kara seas north of Scandinavia will impact the global circulation of air currents. This, they say, will lead to bitterly cold winds blowing for extended periods in winter over Europe and Central Asia.

Colin Summerhayes, of the Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge, said: “This counterintuitive effect... makes some people think that global warming has stopped. It has not. Although average surface warming has been slower since 2000, the Arctic has gone on warming rapidly throughout this time.”

Professor Jennifer Francis, of New Jersey’s Rutgers University, one of the first researchers to make a link between loss of sea ice and changes to the jet stream, said: “Based on this new solid and convincing work, together with the other recent studies that support the existence of this particular mechanism, I think we can say this response is real.”