So Wang and colleagues took those known statistical relationships one step further.The team applied them to a state of the art climate model with wildfire prediction capabilities.In that way, we were able to identify the response of the climate system, including the fire weather over the western U.S. and other responses to the Arctic sea ice.What they found is “a tale of two vortices.”So when the summer sea ice is much reduced, ocean can absorb and store more heat from sunlight.Less sea ice cover over the Arctic will allow more heat also to be released from the ocean to the atmosphere in the following autumn and early winter.Otherwise, the sea ice can insulate the heat from the ocean to the air.So, more heat is released to the atmosphere as the sea ice declines.The anomalous heat in the Arctic can form rising air from the surface, and that can strengthen the low pressure system, which is one of the the spinning vortex.It’s counter-clockwise. This forms a low pressure system.And Wang says when it moves south, it pushes the polar jet stream off its normal course and forms a second vortex.So this shift also facilitate the formation of a high pressure system over the western U.S.
