Winter cold of eastern continental boundaries induced by warm ocean waters

Yohai Kaspi () and Tapio Schneider
Additional contact information
Yohai Kaspi: California Institute of Technology
Tapio Schneider: California Institute of Technology

Nature, 2011, vol. 471, issue 7340, 621-624

Abstract: Why New England winters are so chilly It is well known that the northeastern reaches of Asia and North America are far colder in the winter than western areas at similar latitudes. The generally accepted explanation is that the weather systems are influenced by elevated terrain and by the movement of prevailing atmospheric circulation over warm ocean currents. Yohai Kaspi and Tapio Schneider now show that oceans are indeed an important underlying cause for the temperature difference, but they identify a surprising mechanism for the phenomenon. Climate modelling suggests that paradoxically, the relative coldness of North America, not the warmth of Europe, arises because of the warm waters of the Gulf Stream. Warm Gulf Stream waters adjacent to the North American coast — and similarly warm ocean waters on Asia's Pacific coast — generate atmospheric waves that draw cold northern air to continental areas westward of the currents.

Date: 2011
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature09924 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:471:y:2011:i:7340:d:10.1038_nature09924

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/nature09924

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().