One thing you can say about the winter of 2010-’11, for what it’s worth: the Arctic doesn’t seem so remote anymore. You don’t have to be a meteorologist to get the feeling that the polar atmosphere has sprung a leak — that the freezing down here has something to do with the warming up there.

Our changing climate has the appearance of gradual and minor increases in average temperatures on a global scale, but at the poles, especially the Arctic, there is nothing very gradual or minor about the loss of the sea ice and its effects on the atmosphere around the Northern Hemisphere.

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