Reading that article was painful. I felt sorry for John Vidal, http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/johnvi...

who so clearly was trying to explain something that he had little understanding of. The simple answer is no, Arctic ice loss does not cause "snowy winters in the US, UK, Europe, Russia and China". Snowy winters in the upper temperate zone are caused by the Arctic Oscillation, which also causes sea ice loss in the Arctic. In the words of James Hansen:

"The degree to which Arctic air penetrates into middle latitudes is related to the AO index, which is defined by surface atmospheric pressure patterns. When the AO index is positive, surface pressure is low in the polar region. This helps the middle latitude jet stream to blow strongly and consistently from west to east, thus keeping cold Arctic air locked in the polar region. When the AO index is negative, there tends to be high pressure in the polar region, weaker zonal winds, and greater movement of frigid polar air into middle latitudes." -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_osci...

The wind blows the cold Arctic air South to make those snowy winters. It also blows the sea ice South through the Greenland and Norwegian Seas into the Atlantic as ice bergs. http://i184.photobucket.com/albums/x318/...

This causes the ice to leave the Arctic and melt without the need for any warming in the Arctic at all.

However, there is an unsurprising negative correlation between sea surface temperature and Arctic Ice extent. To make it easy to compare the negative correlation, I scaled the Arctic Ice area 12 month average to 0.256 and overlaid that with the Northern Hemisphere ocean surface temperature anomaly scaled to -1 (it goes down as the temperature goes up). Not the greatest correlation, but better than with the AO. Theoretically, when the AO is low (blue) the ice get blown away and melts. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Arctic...

On the ice verses ocean temperature graph, the green line (representing ice area) goes down. http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/nsidc-s...

Anyway, as poorly as the data supports it, that is the theory. It is not uncommon to have the data laugh at theory in climatology.

I would agree with NW Jack that the Arctic Oscillation played a major role with the snowy weather felt in the last few weeks as you can see here:

http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/pr...

and read here for a description:

http://nsidc.org/cryosphere/arctic-meteo...

I would also agree with AntarcticIce that there are more variables involved as well and that day to day weather is a very complex subject. I'm curious as to what you think a few weeks of snowfall at the start of spring means?

The article states that the rapid ice loss of the Arctic has a tendency to affect the jet stream. If we look at the how the jet stream has progressed over the past 20 days we can see that indeed, it has shifted and the cold from the Arctic is flowing over much of Europe and northern Asia.

http://squall.sfsu.edu/scripts/nhemjetst...

I don't see why some people have such a hard time acknowledging that a loss of albedo in the Arctic may very well affect wind patterns and weather.

The loss of Arctic ice has slowed down the movement of the jetstream in such a way that weather patterns are slower to change. If you're having a heat wave, it lasts longer, and if you're having a cold spell, it lasts longer. That leads to more extreme weather, both hot and cold. The United Kingdom is also at the mercy of the Gyulf stream which carries warm water past the islands and make their weather more temperate. Loss of ice in the Arctic may slow down the gulf current, it which case winters in England will be much more frigid. I hope all you doubters over there have your parkas.

Nobody denies weather is a complex issue, a few answers here try to blame one thing or another, the fact is many things can affect regional weather, currents, jet streams, El Nino/La Nina or the PDO and there are quite a few other lesser known events.

Snow (as has attempted to be explained to deniers many times) is not a process that is entirely cold it requires cold and warm air mixing with water vapor as well, many deserts get more than cold enough at night or at altitude to have snow but there usually no water vapor.

A warming Arctic means less water vapor locked into snow and ice there and more in in south latitudes, denier tried this card a few years ago with snowfalls in the U.S. will trying to ignore the lack of snow falling in Canada that year, but Canada had the winter Olympics and the whole world saw the problem they were having with snow coverage for events while denier where predicting a new ice age, as they have each winter for the last few years. Presumably sticking their fingers in their ears over summer as droughts and record warm have happened around the world. Which is usually followed by the chant that in Winter snow proves AGW is not happening but in summer heatwaves and drought are just weather.

You claim to be Canadian, O.K. 1998 which even most deniers admit was a very warm year was also the year of the Canadian ice storms

http://canadaonline.about.com/cs/weather...

Yet this was a year that remained the warmest on record till 2005, scientists make no hard and fast predictions on what weather may do, they in fact say we will have wild and unpredictable weather, that would seem to be exactly what we are having. They do make longer term estimates on things like Hurricanes out to the end of the century, it's only deniers that try to shrink that estimate to a few years so they can pretend nothing is happening.

edit for kano : "Anyway arctic ice is not that reduced it is -0.515% lower than average mean."

So you would claim the difference between the left image and the right image is only -0.5%, interesting.

http://igloo.atmos.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/test...

So I guess using those sorts of observation skills you claim this is a flat line as well.

http://climate.nasa.gov/key_indicators#s...

Deniers are funny, in a sad sort of way.

No it is due to the Arctic oscillation being mainly negative, which causes the jet stream moving south.

Arctic oscillation for the last decade has been mainly positive, why it should change now is unknown, as it is can be positive or negative with more or less ice.

30 35 yrs ago the arctic oscillation also were more negative.

Anyway arctic ice is not that reduced it is -0.515% lower than average mean.

But I just knew they would find a way to blame the cold weather on climate change.

http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/...

edit Antarctica Cherry picked data as usual, I am talking of ice extent NOW, that they say is causing climate change in the northern hemisphere.

Is an appeal to ridicule fallacy better than specifically addressing potential flaws in a piece of scientific work?

Let's see how Mike goes with this question and perhaps we'll find out.

Yep, snow is moving south... Even snow likes warmer climate.

This is a cool video