Source: ITV News
URL: http://www.itv.com/news/2013-04-10/met-office-investigating-arctic-link-in-record-low-temperatures/
Date: 10/04/2013
Event: Julia Slingo: We need to "get to grips with" climate disruption such as "cold winters, cold springs"
Attribution: ITV News
People:
Lawrence McGinty: ...and I'll be telling you why rapidly retreating Arctic sea ice could be responsible for the kind of winter and spring we've just had.
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Mary Nightingale: Still to come, on the programme...
Lawrence McGinty [standing at the North Pole]: This is the only place on Earth where it doesn't matter what direction I look in, I'm always looking due south. Because this is the North Pole.
Mary Nightingale: He will be live in the Arctic, as we investigate melting ice and its impact on our extreme weather.
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Mark Austin: Welcome back. If you want to know why Britain's been in the grip of a spring freeze with historic low temperatures, the answer may well lie in the Arctic. Scientists say what's going on there could be having a specific impact on weather patterns here. And the Met Office has told ITV News tonight the cause of the extreme cold in Britain will now be urgently investigated.
In the Arctic, since record began in 1979, sea ice has been both melting and thinning rapidly. Almost half of it has disappeared over the last three decades. The lowest level ever recorded was just six months ago. Our Science Editor, Lawrence McGinty, has made the rare journey to the heart of the Arctic, to the North Pole, and sent this report.
Lawrence McGinty: Mile upon mile upon mile of frozen sea - the Arctic is a dreadful place. But until recently, it was a dreadful place that was too far away to worry about. But now that's all changing. This is the only place on Earth where it doesn't matter what direction I look in, I'm always looking due south. Because this is the North Pole. And wherever you look, the Arctic is warming. Its icy blanket is shrinking. And that could mean big changes in weather patterns in Britain.
We started out for the Pole from this remarkable Russian camp called Barneo, floating on ice about 14 miles away. A Russian helicopter took us, with a group of polar scientists. Their aim: to take the pulse of the Arctic. Almost as soon as we touched down, they're drilling holes through the ice, to measure its thickness. The ice here - only a mile from the Pole - is thin, about 5 feet thick. It was formed last winter, what they call "first-year ice". It's fragile and will break up more easily in the summer melt - one result of the fact that the Arctic is warming two or three times faster than anywhere else. Jamie Morison is a leading Arctic scientist, who's been coming here for decades.
Jamie Morison: I have to say I've been, kind of, on the conservative side, about this. But boy, when I look out, and you're standing on ice that is just a lot thinner than it was the previous year, and the year before that, it's hard not to think something - some sort of global warming trend is involved.
Lawrence McGinty: Another polar veteran, Sergei Pisarev, disagrees. He thinks Arctic warming is mostly a natural cycle. But whatever the cause, the Arctic is warming.
Sergei Pisarev: Independently, why it's happened, the nature sent a direct signal in one direction. I mean, warming, all things warming, all indicators say changes in one direction.
Lawrence McGinty: Scientists are now becoming concerned that warming here could affect our weather in Britain. They believe it's the difference in temperature between the cold Arctic and the warmer south that drives the jet stream, a fast-moving river of air high in the sky. With the Arctic now warming, less energy goes into the jet stream. It slows down, into long, lazy loops that are almost static. That means long periods of extreme weather, like the record low temperatures in March, are more likely, in Britain.
Over 600 miles south of the Pole, in Spitsbergen, I went to the university, to put that theory to a leading expert on climate back in the UK. She told me she wanted an urgent review.
Julia Slingo [via a webcam]: When you see climate disruption of the nature that we've had in the UK in the last few years, with extreme drought, floods, now, you know, cold winters, cold springs, then we need to get to grips with it, and quickly. Because if this is how climate change could manifest itself, then we need to understand that, as a matter of urgency.
Lawrence McGinty: The link between the Arctic and our weather is far from certain, so more research is urgent. But it's a real and worrying possibility. The news from the North Pole? Not only is the Arctic warming, but that warming could already have affected our weather in Britain, bringing us the coldest March for 50 years. Lawrence McGinty, ITV News, at the North Pole.
Mark Austin: And Lawrence is now in Longyearbyen, the northernmost town in the world, and I hope we can speak to him. Lawrence, we've just had the worst March for 50 years, then. How worried are scientists by all this?
Lawrence McGinty: Well, I think it's very significant, Mark, that a scientist as senior and as influential in scientific circles as Julia Slingo says that it's a "matter of urgency" that the scientists answer the question of whether what's happening here in the Arctic - Arctic warming - could be bringing us more extreme weather in Britain. She told me in that interview she wants to get together the best scientific brains and hammer out some kind of answer to that question. Of course, it is a question - the link isn't certain. But at least it's now a real possibility that Arctic warming could bring us warmer, drought summers and colder winters. And a possibility that's worrying Julia Slingo.
Mark Austin: All very interesting. Lawrence, thank you very much indeed.