Jennifer Francis 2, Elizabeth Barnes 0

It's really interesting, I think, to watch a nascent theory develop within a scientific discipline and get studied/modeled/debated/etc. in real-time. Now, they are by no means the only two researchers kicking the tires, so to speak, on this fairly new idea in climatology, but for simplicity's sake, and to keep score, we'll say there are a couple lead competitors duking it out over this supposition. There's Jennifer Francis on one side who believes Arctic amplification is causing large, lasting waviness, or meanders, in the northern hemisphere's jet stream and subsequent blocking and extreme weather patterns, and then there is Elizabeth Barnes on the other side who argues there is no statistically-significant evidence to support the notion.

Here are two papers authored by Francis on the subject:

Evidence linking Arctic amplification to extreme weather in mid-latitudes.

Cold winter extremes in northern continents linked to Arctic sea ice loss.

And one from Barnes:

Revisiting the evidence linking Arctic amplification to extreme weather in midlatitudes.

As the title of Barnes' study might suggest is the case, there has certainly been some intriguing back-and-forth between the two climate experts outside of peer-review, but the true test of any scientific theory is verifiability, or corroborating evidence from other researchers, and Francis has been in the lead on that tally. And now it seems she has just scored again.

We find that decreased sea-ice cover during early winter months (November–December), especially over the Barents–Kara seas, enhances the upward propagation of planetary-scale waves with wavenumbers of 1 and 2, subsequently weakening the stratospheric polar vortex in mid-winter (January–February). The weakened polar vortex preferentially induces a negative phase of Arctic Oscillation at the surface, resulting in low temperatures in mid-latitudes.

The game is far from over, but Barnes' side better mount an offensive soon, because something tells me Francis and crew ain't about to let up.

Jennifer Francis 1, Elizabeth Barnes 0

There's a theory in climate science that says a very specific effect of climate change is causing much of the extreme weather in the northern hemisphere we've seen recently, including but not limited to Sandy's bizarre left turn, a heatwave over Alaska last year, the Polar Vortex (personally, I love seeing deniers need a diaper change after being told global warming can cause cold weather in places...poor, wittle, confoozed babies), the record downpours and flooding in the eastern US a couple days ago, and on and on and on. The somewhat nascent climatological idea suggests that a warmer Arctic can cause large, lasting waves to develop in the jet stream, what is called meridionality, and...wait a second, I should let someone explain who has forgotten more about this concept than I'll ever fully comprehend...



Now, I happen to agree with Francis, if for no other reason than Curry disagrees, and we all know what has happened to Judith's credibility lately, but I must admit that this is all still debatable. This is frontier research, rather than established fact, and it would help the discussion tremendously if deniers ever woke up one day and smelled the coffee regarding the difference between the two. Fat chance, I know.

This notion has had its detractors, and perhaps foremost in opposition is Elizabeth Barnes of Colorado State University, whose study found no statistically-significant "waviness" in jet stream data over the past few decades. Problem is, the Arctic would have warmed enough to cause this jet stream meridionality only within the past 15 years or so, so looking back 30 years or more does no one any good here.

But as Francis and others point out, the Arctic has only been this warm for a short time. Perhaps the failure to find statistically significant changes is simply due to that.

"It is only in the last 15 years or so that we have been able to see this really starting to kick in," Francis said. "And that's part of the reason that when you do trend analysis, it's hard to detect a trend."

We kinda have to wait and see how the research shakes out before we know whether Francis or Barnes is right. Or maybe we don't, because a new study is saying it's Francis.

I became aware of the paper reading a Phil Plait post today. If you'd like some hearty guffaws at the expense of deniers, I suggest you click on the comment section link for that article. Poor Phil, inundated by ignorant denier impotence. Comments by highly-informed Slate contributors like Sean McCorkle, tokodave, Grenville Cramchild, nomad, TheBlackCat, among others, are very much worth the read, however. And if you'd like to chime in on this topic somewhere where deniers can respond but not flood or Gish-Gallop, then let me have it below. Whenever my comment feature starts being used to a meaningful degree, I'll do my best to keep their discussion-derailing nonsense to a minimum.