Ocean surface cooling, in the North Atlantic as well as the Southern Ocean, increases tropospheric horizontal temperature gradients, eddy kinetic energy and baroclinicity, which drive more powerful storms. (climatestate.com)
(One idea I had was that decreased horizontal temperature gradient at one point might cause increased temperature gradient some distance downstream — the idea being that there would be less eddie circulation generated upstream, and this lack of heat transport might propogate downstream, allowing a greater temperature gradient to build up downstream, which would then give rise to stronger eddie circulations that would propogate even farther downstream... Would that work?) (realclimate.org)
You can get horizontal pressure gradients from uneven distributions of molecular nitrogen (N2) ice, and you can get horizontal temperature gradients from uneven heating from the sun. (space.com)