David Battisti, Edward Blanchard-Wrigglesworth, Stephen Po-Chedley, and Ryan Eastman of the Department of Atmospheric Sciences and Eric Steig of the Department of Earth and Space Sciences recently published a paper in Nature about the influence of high-latitude atmospheric circulation changes on summertime Arctic sea ice. The study found that a substantial amount of summer sea ice loss in recent decades was due to natural variability in the atmosphere over the Arctic Ocean.