scholarly journals Atmospheric Forcing of Antarctic Sea Ice on Intraseasonal Time Scales

2012 ◽  
Vol 25 (17) ◽  
pp. 5962-5975 ◽  
Author(s):  
James A. Renwick ◽  
Alison Kohout ◽  
Sam Dean

Abstract Intraseasonal relationships between Antarctic sea ice and atmospheric circulation have been investigated using a 29-yr record of pentad-mean Antarctic sea ice concentration and Southern Hemisphere 500-hPa height fields. Analyses were carried out for four sea ice seasons: minimum extent, growth, maximum extent, and decay. Interannual variability was removed from both datasets to focus on intraseasonal variations. Patterns of sea ice variability and linkages to the atmospheric circulation varied markedly with season. The strongest and most coherent relationships were evident during the maximum ice extent period and to a lesser degree during the growth period. At those times of year, the strongest relationships were associated with atmospheric circulation anomalies leading sea ice anomalies by 4 or 5 days, suggesting that variations in the atmospheric circulation force changes in the sea ice field. Ice decreases are generally found in regions of poleward flow and ice increases are found in regions of equatorward flow. Mechanisms appear to be related both to thermal advection and to mechanical forcing, with the relative importance of each varying in space and in time. During the period of maximum ice extent, the leading pattern from a maximum covariance analysis between 500-hPa height and sea ice concentration accounted for 38% of the squared covariance between fields, and the associated time series were correlated at 0.74. The leading patterns of variability exhibit clear zonal wavenumber 3 signatures and appear to be largely a result of internal variability in the extratropical circulation.

2011 ◽  
Vol 24 (16) ◽  
pp. 4508-4518 ◽  
Author(s):  
Qigang Wu ◽  
Xiangdong Zhang

Abstract A lagged maximum covariance analysis (MCA) is applied to investigate the linear covariability between monthly sea ice concentration (SIC) and 500-mb geopotential height (Z500) in the Southern Hemisphere (SH). The dominant signal is the atmospheric forcing of SIC anomalies throughout the year, but statistically significant covariances are also found between austral springtime Z500 and prior SIC anomalies up to four months earlier. The MCA pattern is characterized by an Antarctic dipole (ADP)-like pattern in SIC and a positively polarized Antarctic Oscillation (AAO) in Z500. Such long lead-time covariance suggests the forcing of the AAO by persistent ADP-like SIC anomalies. The leading time of SIC anomalies provides an implication for skillful predictability of springtime atmospheric variability.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-6
Author(s):  
Hao Luo ◽  
Qinghua Yang ◽  
Longjiang Mu ◽  
Xiangshan Tian-Kunze ◽  
Lars Nerger ◽  
...  

Abstract To improve Antarctic sea-ice simulations and estimations, an ensemble-based Data Assimilation System for the Southern Ocean (DASSO) was developed based on a regional sea ice–ocean coupled model, which assimilates sea-ice thickness (SIT) together with sea-ice concentration (SIC) derived from satellites. To validate the performance of DASSO, experiments were conducted from 15 April to 14 October 2016. Generally, assimilating SIC and SIT can suppress the overestimation of sea ice in the model-free run. Besides considering uncertainties in the operational atmospheric forcing data, a covariance inflation procedure in data assimilation further improves the simulation of Antarctic sea ice, especially SIT. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of assimilating sea-ice observations in reconstructing the state of Antarctic sea ice, but also highlight the necessity of more reasonable error estimation for the background as well as the observation.


2018 ◽  
Vol 59 (76pt2) ◽  
pp. 201-212 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hoi Ming Lam ◽  
Gunnar Spreen ◽  
Georg Heygster ◽  
Christian Melsheimer ◽  
Neal W. Young

ABSTRACTLarge discrepancies have been observed between satellite-derived sea-ice concentrations(IC) from passive microwave remote sensing and those derived from optical images at several locations in the East Antarctic, between February and April 2014. These artefacts, that resemble polynyas in the IC maps, appear in areas where optical satellite data show that there is landfast sea ice. The IC datasets and the corresponding retrieval algorithms are investigated together with microwave brightness temperature, air temperature, snowfall and bathymetry to understand the failure of the IC retrieval. The artefacts are the result of the application of weather filters in retrieval algorithms. These filters use the 37 and 19 GHz channels to correct for atmospheric effects on the retrieval. These channels show significant departures from typical ranges when the artefacts occur. A melt–refreeze cycle with associated snow metamorphism is proposed as the most likely cause. Together, the areas of the artefacts account for up to 0.5% of the Antarctic sea-ice area and thus cause a bias in sea-IC time series. In addition, erroneous sea ICs can adversely affect shipping operations.


2015 ◽  
Vol 56 (69) ◽  
pp. 45-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xi Zhao ◽  
Haoyue Su ◽  
Alfred Stein ◽  
Xiaoping Pang

AbstractThe performance of passive microwave sea-ice concentration products in the marginal ice zone and at the ice edge draws much attention in accuracy assessments. In this study, we generated 917 pseudo-ship observations from four Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) images based on the Antarctic Sea Ice Processes and Climate (ASPeCt) protocol to assess the quality of the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer for Earth Observing System (AMSR-E) ARTIST (Arctic Radiation and Turbulence Interaction STudy) Sea Ice (ASI) concentrations at the ice edge in Antarctica. The results indicate that the ASI pixels in the pseudo-ASPeCt observations have a mean ice concentration of 13% and are significantly different from the well-established 15% threshold. The average distance between the pseudo-ice edge and the 15% threshold contour is ~10 km. The correlation between the sea-ice concentration (SIC), SICASI and SICMODIS values at the ice edge was considerably lower than the high coefficients obtained from a transect analysis. Underestimation of SICASI occurred in summer, whereas no clear bias was observed in winter. The proposed method provides an opportunity to generate a new source of reference data in which the spatial coverage is wider and more flexible than in traditional in situ observations.


2013 ◽  
Vol 9 (6) ◽  
pp. 6515-6549 ◽  
Author(s):  
F. Klein ◽  
H. Goosse ◽  
A. Mairesse ◽  
A. de Vernal

Abstract. The consistency between a new quantitative reconstruction of Arctic sea-ice concentration based on dinocyst assemblages and the results of climate models has been investigated for the mid-Holocene. The comparison shows that the simulated sea-ice changes are weaker and spatially more homogeneous than the recorded ones. Furthermore, although the model-data agreement is relatively good in some regions such as the Labrador Sea, the skill of the models at local scale is low. The response of the models follows mainly the increase in summer insolation at large scale. This is modulated by changes in atmospheric circulation leading to differences between regions in the models that are albeit smaller than in the reconstruction. Performing simulations with data assimilation using the model LOVECLIM amplifies those regional differences, mainly through a reduction of the southward winds in the Barents Sea and an increase in the westerly winds in the Canadian Basin of the Arctic. This leads to an increase in the ice concentration in the Barents and Chukchi Seas and a better agreement with the reconstructions. This underlines the potential role of atmospheric circulation to explain the reconstructed changes during the Holocene.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhankai Wu ◽  
Xingdong Wang

This study was based on the daily sea ice concentration data from the National Snow and Ice Data Center (Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, Boulder, CO, USA) from 1998 to 2017. The Antarctic sea ice was analysed from the total sea ice area (SIA), first year ice area, first year ice melt duration, and multiyear ice area. On a temporal scale, the changes in sea ice parameters were studied over the whole 20 years and for two 10-year periods. The results showed that the total SIA increased by 0.0083×106 km2 yr-1 (+2.07% dec-1) between 1998 and 2017. However, the total SIA in the two 10-year periods showed opposite trends, in which the total SIA increased by 0.026×106 km2 yr-1 between 1998 and 2007 and decreased by 0.0707×106 km2 yr-1 from 2008 to 2017. The first year ice area increased by 0.0059×106 km2 yr-1 and the melt duration decreased by 0.0908 days yr-1 between 1998 and 2017. The multiyear ice area increased by 0.0154×106 km2 yr-1 from 1998 to 2017, and the increase in the last 10 years was about 12.1% more than that in the first 10 years. On a spatial scale, the Entire Antarctica was divided into two areas, namely West Antarctica (WA) and East Antarctica (EA), according to the spatial change rate of sea ice concentration. The results showed that WA had clear warming in recent years; the total sea ice and multiyear ice areas showed a decreasing trend; multiyear ice area sharply decreased and reached the lowest value in 2017, and accounted for only about 10.1% of the 20-year average. However, the total SIA and multiyear ice area all showed an increased trend in EA, in which the multiyear ice area increased by 0.0478×106 km2 yr-1. Therefore, Antarctic sea ice presented an increasing trend, but there were different trends in WA and EA. Different sea ice parameters in WA and EA showed an opposite trend from 1998 to 2007. However, the total SIA, first year ice area, and multiyear ice area all showed a decreasing trend from 2008-2017, especially the total sea ice and first year ice, which changed almost the same in 2014-2017. In summary, although the Antarctic sea ice has increased slightly over time, it has shown a decreasing trend in recent years.


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