Climate change provides for fair-weather

German researchers reported in Nature, that the frequency of polar cyclones would decrease in half by the end of the century. The formation regions of the polar lows are moving at the same time further north. This should be one of the few cases in which climate change makes for less rather than more extreme weather events.

Climate change provides for fair-weather

Polar lows are small-scale storms, which occur in high-latitude oceans and tropical cyclones are quite similar.

They are made responsible for making the maritime and offshore a large risk, as they develop without warning. The researchers compared the global data from 1948 to 2006.

Using computer models, the scientists simulated the frequency and distribution of polar cyclones towards the end of the century. The result of simulations shows a fifty percent decrease in the frequency of cyclones.

This demonstrates a new spatial division. The sealing center continues to move up into the Greenlandic Sea.

The decline is attributed to an altered vertical temperature gradient: “The atmosphere heated up today and in future more quickly than the ocean below it.

This is the result of the driving force – from the temperature difference between water and air, “the researchers said, which is in contrary to the general trend of warming in parts of the North Atlantic have cooled slightly.