  The Arctic has warmed dramatically compared to the global average over the
last few decades. During this same period, there have been strong cooling
trends observed in the wintertime, near-surface air temperature over central
Eurasia, a phenomenon known as Eurasian cooling. Many studies have suggested
that the loss of sea ice, especially in the Barents and Kara Seas, is related
to the cooling over Eurasia, although this connection and its possible
mechanism is still a source of heated debate. Observations and reanalyses show
a clear pattern of co-variability between Arctic sea ice and Eurasian
wintertime temperatures. However, there is an open question regarding how
robustly this teleconnection pattern is reproduced in the current generation of
climate models.
  This study has examined Eurasian cooling in twenty models from the Coupled
Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5), both in terms of temperature
trends and by using singular value decomposition to identify patterns of
co-variability between Arctic sea ice concentrations and near-surface
temperatures over Eurasia. These are compared to trends and patterns of
co-variability found in the ERA-Interim reanalysis. While most of the CMIP5
models have a robust pattern of co-variability that is similar to that found in
the reanalysis, many fail to reproduce the wintertime cooling that has been
observed. An examination of Arctic sea ice extent in the models suggests one
possible explanation is the inability of the models to accurately simulate the
wintertime sea ice changes over critical locations such as the Barents and Kara
Seas.
