Link between anomalously cold winters in Russia and sea-ice decline in the Barents Sea

There were several anomalously cold winter weather regimes in Russia in the early 21st century. These regimes were usually associated with a blocking anticyclone south of the Barents Sea. Numerical simulations with an atmospheric general circulation model (AGCM) using prescribed sea-ice concentration (SIC) data for different periods during the last 50 years showed that a rapid sea-ice area decline in the Barents Sea in the last decade could bring about the formation of such a blocking anticyclone and cooling over northern Eurasia. The SIC reduction in the former period, from the second half of the 1960s to the first half of the 1990s, results in a weaker response of opposite sign. This suggests a nonlinear atmospheric circulation response to the SIC reduction in the Barents Sea, which has been previously found in the idealized AGCM simulations. An impact of the Barents Sea SIC reduction on the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), in particular, on the formation of the anomalously low NAO index, is found. The results indicate an important role that the Barents Sea, a region with the largest variability of the ocean–atmosphere heat exchange in the Arctic in wintertime, plays in generating anomalous weather regimes in Russia.