"Nature Climate Change" (2015-2016 influence factor: 17.184), a top journal in the field of international Climate Change, published the latest research results of professor tian wenshou and others from the school of atmospheric science, lanzhou university, with the title of "Persistent Shift of the Arctic Polar Vortex towards the Eurasian Continent in Recent Decades".

In recent years, cold winter events have occurred frequently in Eurasia and North America in the northern hemisphere, such as snow disaster in southern China in 2008, extreme cold in Europe in 2011 and boss cold wave in Eurasia in 2016, all of which have continuously challenged people's understanding and understanding of global warming.The forecast of winter weather in the northern hemisphere is a difficult problem for global atmospheric scientists.Studies in the last decade or so have found that the intensity of polar vortex in the arctic stratosphere has gradually weakened in recent years, and cold air has been continuously transported from polar regions and high latitudes to middle latitudes, causing frequent cold winter events in recent years.However, there are few studies on the long-term changes in the position and morphology of polar vortices in the stratosphere.

Professor zhang jiankai and professor tian wenshou et al. found that the polar vortex of the arctic stratosphere had a significant trend of migration to Eurasia at the end of winter (February) in recent 30 years, and believed that the decrease of sea ice in the arctic region, especially the Barents sea-kara sea region, and the increase of snow cover in Eurasia were important reasons for the migration of the polar vortex of the stratosphere.The study further points out that when the stratospheric polar vortex shifts to Eurasia, the temperature of parts of Eurasia and even parts of North America is unusually cold compared with the average climate.In the future, the sea ice area will continue to decrease, so it is worth paying close attention to the position change of polar vortex in the arctic stratosphere and the climate change of mid-high latitude in the northern hemisphere caused by it.

The research of this paper was supported by the national science foundation for outstanding young people and natural science foundation of China.