Eurasian cooling in response to Arctic sea-ice loss is not proved by maximum covariance analysis

The extent to which the ongoing decline in Arctic sea ice affects mid-latitude climate has received great attention and polarised opinions. basic issue is whether inter-annual variability cause of, or response to, atmospheric circulation. Mori et al. (M19) claims have reconciled previous conflicting studies by showing that a consistent sea-ice anomalies can be identified between ERA-Interim reanalysis, taken as observations, an ensemble of atmosphere-only (AMIP) model simulations. Here we demonstrate such conclusion cannot drawn, due issues with interpretation maximum covariance analysis performed. After applying M19 approach output from simple statistical model, conclude predominant forcing variability, rather than converse, more plausible explanation results presented M19.