A study finds that air pollution from Asia directly affects the storm pattern over the Pacific Ocean. Researchers further speculate that this could be driving freak winter weather in North America.

"The Pacific storm track is a major driving force over global weather patterns," says the study's lead author Yuan Wang, a post-doctorate fellow at the NASA U.S. Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Air pollution reaches new heights on Beijing's second ring road in February 2014

"The modulated storm track can be linked to abnormal weather behavior in the mid-latitudes of the Northern hemisphere, including U.S. and Canada."

Results from the decade-long research project were recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

(Source: CNN)