The changing climate is more complicated to model than we assumed. There are interrelated variables that work together to amplify the effects.

For example, as summer sea-ice and snow shrink back in the Arctic, the number of summertime “extreme” weather events in the middle latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere is increasing, according to research published recently in Nature Climate Change by two Chinese scientists and their Rutgers colleague.
“It’s becoming increasingly clear, I think, that the loss of sea ice and snow cover is setting up the conditions that jump-start summer,” said Jennifer Francis, research professor at the Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences in Rutgers’ School of Environmental and Biological Sciences. “The soil dries out earlier and that allows it to get hotter earlier. This phenomenon is also changing circulation patterns in the atmosphere.”