Santa’s revenge: melting Arctic ice may be driving this winter’s chill

Sunset in the Arctic

NASA Goddard Photo and Video

CHICAGO—The US is freezing.The UK is flooding. Alaska and Scandinavia are unusually warm. And, most remarkably, all of that has been going on for roughly the entire winter. It's not just unusual weather; it's consistently unusual.

A few years back, researchers suggested that strange weather in the temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere might be a consequence of changes taking place in the Arctic. Now, with a few years of additional data, some researchers are arguing that we have detected clear signs that Arctic warming is driving our weird weather.

We sat down with Rutgers University's Jennifer Francis at the American Association for the Advancement of Science to find out what's new.