The Arctic plays a fundamental role in the climate system and has shown significant climate change in recent decades, including the Arctic warming and decline of Arctic sea-ice extent and thickness. In contrast to the Arctic warming and reduction of Arctic sea ice, Europe, East Asia and North America have experienced anomalously cold conditions, with record snowfall during recent years. In this paper, we review current understanding of the sea-ice impacts on the Eurasian climate. Paleo, observational and modelling studies are covered to summarize several major themes, including: the variability of Arctic sea ice and its controls; the likely causes and apparent impacts of the Arctic sea-ice decline during the satellite era, as well as past and projected future impacts and trends; the links and feedback mechanisms between the Arctic sea ice and the Arctic Oscillation/North Atlantic Oscillation, the recent Eurasian cooling, winter atmospheric circulation, summer precipitation in East Asia, spring snowfall over Eurasia, East Asian winter monsoon, and midlatitude extreme weather; and the remote climate response (e.g., atmospheric circulation, air temperature) to changes in Arctic sea ice. We conclude with a brief summary and suggestions for future research.

Determining the sources of moisture for the devastating precipitation event over Henan in July 2021 helps understand the mechanisms of such extreme precipitation events. In this study, the moisture sources and transport trajectories for the event are investigated using a Lagrangian approach. Moisture is transported to Henan along three routes that are driven by the western Pacific subtropical high (WPSH), WPSH and the tropical cyclone In‐Fa, as well as WPSH and the tropical cyclone Cempaka, respectively. The WPSH‐In‐Fa‐driven air parcels have the highest moistening and precipitating efficiency among the three routes. Overall, southern China contributes the most to moisture sources (38.1%), followed by the western North Pacific (30.0%). The results indicate that the terrestrial and oceanic moisture over southern China‐western North Pacific are both crucial for the extreme precipitation event over Henan.

This study analyses the decadal changes in winter precipitation and extreme precipitation in a warming environment in China. The results show that, together with a trend of winter warming in China, winter precipitation and extreme precipitation in the region are also increasing. In addition, concurrent with the decadal warming shift that occurred in the mid-1980s, precipitation and extreme precipitation both increased significantly. Quantitative analysis shows that precipitation and extreme precipitation increased at rates of 9.7% and 22.6% per 1°C of surface warming in China. This rate of precipitation increase is greater than the global mean, which indicates that precipitation in China is highly sensitive to climate warming and further highlights the importance of studying regional responses to climate warming. The fact that extreme precipitation is increasing at a higher rate than precipitation implies that winter precipitation in China will increasingly be of more extreme type in the context of global warming, which could partly explain why there have recently been a number of record-breaking extreme snowfall events in China.