Variability of Fram Strait sea ice export: causes, impacts and feedbacks in a coupled climate model

Analyses of a 500-year control integration of the global coupled atmosphere–sea ice–ocean model ECHAM5.0/MPI-OM show a high variability in the ice export through Fram Strait on interannual to decadal timescales. This variability is mainly determined by variations in the sea level pressure gradient across Fram Strait and thus geostrophic wind stress. Ice thickness anomalies, formed at the Siberian coast and in the Chukchi Sea, propagate across the Arctic to Fram Strait and contribute to the variability of the ice export on a timescale of about 9 years. Large anomalies of the ice export through Fram Strait cause fresh water signals, which reach the Labrador Sea after 1–2 years and lead to significant changes in the deep convection. The associated anomalies in ice cover and ocean heat release have a significant impact on air temperature in the Labrador Sea and on the large-scale atmospheric circulation. This affects the sea ice transport and distribution in the Arctic again. Sensitivity studies, simulating the effect of large ice exports through Fram Strait, show that the isolated effect of a prescribed ice/fresh water anomaly is very important for the climate variability in the Labrador Sea. Thus, the ice export through Fram Strait can be used for predictability of Labrador Sea climate up to 2 years in advance.     

Effects of variability of sea ice transport through the Fram Strait on the intensity of the Atlantic deep circulation

Results from an ice-ocean coupled model are used to investigate the impact of long-term variability in sea ice transport at the Fram Strait on the intensity of the Atlantic deep circulation. An increase (or decrease) in sea ice transport through the Fram Strait leads to a stronger (or weaker) deep circulation in the Atlantic. Change in the sea ice transport is accompanied by a salinity anomaly in the surface layer of the Arctic Ocean. Such an anomaly could inversely affect the Atlantic circulation once it reaches deep water formation regions. If the Canadian Archipelago is closed, the anomaly is subsequently transported through the Fram Strait, and counters the initial changes in the Atlantic deep circulation. On the other hand, if the Canadian Archipelago is open, some of the anomaly is transported to the Canadian Archipelago, and the initial change in the Atlantic deep circulation persists. In the Arctic Ocean basin, the time scale and path of the salinity anomalys propagation depends on the large-scale flow at the surface of the Arctic Ocean. Our results suggest that the salinity anomaly transport and its propagation pathway out of the Arctic Ocean are important determinants of the role of sea ice transport variability through the Fram Strait in controlling the intensity of the Atlantic deep circulation.     

Summer sea ice severity in Hudson Strait, 1751–1870

Annual indices of sea ice severity in Hudson Strait, for the period 1751 to 1870, are derived from written historical evidence contained in ships' log-books. These logs were all kept on Hudson's Bay Company ships sailing from London to the Company's trading posts. The log-books are homogeneous in nature and this property facilitates their numerical interpretation. The annual indices are subjected to face validity testing which indicates that they may plausibly be accepted as measures of sea ice severity. The results are examined in relation to the presentday behaviour of sea ice in Hudson Strait and they provide evidence that the summer severity of ice conditions is mainly determined by atmospheric circulation conditions.     

On the sensitivity of Antarctic sea ice model biases to atmospheric forcing uncertainties

Climate Dynamics - Although atmospheric reanalyses are an extremely valuable tool to study the climate of polar regions, they suffer from large uncertainties in these data-poor areas. In this work,...     

Properties of adjoint sea ice sensitivities to atmospheric forcing and implications for the causes of the long term trend of Arctic sea ice

Based on adjoint sensitivities of the coupled Massachusetts Institute of Technology ocean–sea ice circulation model, the potential influence of thermodynamic atmospheric forcing on the interannual variability of the September sea ice area (AREA) and volume (VOLUME) in the Arctic is investigated for the three periods 1980–1989, 1990–1999 and 2000–2009. Sensitivities suggest that only large forcing anomalies prior to the spring melting onset in May can influence the September sea ice characteristics while even small changes in the atmospheric variables during subsequent months can significantly influence September sea ice state. Specifically, AREA close to the ice edge in the Arctic seas is highly sensitive to thermodynamic atmospheric forcing changes from June to July. In contrast, VOLUME is highly sensitive to atmospheric temperature changes occurring during the same period over the central parts of the Arctic Ocean. A comparison of the sea ice conditions and sensitivities during three different periods reveals that, due to the strong decline of sea ice concentration and sea ice thickness, sea ice area became substantially more sensitive to the same amplitude thermodynamic atmospheric forcing anomalies during 2000–2009 relative to the earlier periods. To obtain a quantitative estimate of changes that can be expected from existing atmospheric trends, adjoint sensitivities are multiplied by monthly temperature differences between 1980s and two following decades. Strongest contributions of surface atmospheric temperature differences to AREA and VOLUME changes are observed during May and September. The strongest contribution from the downward long-wave heat flux to AREA changes occurs in September and to VOLUME changes in July–August. About 62 % of the AREA decrease simulated by the model can be explained by summing all contributions to the thermodynamic atmospheric forcing. The changing sea ice state (sensitivity) is found to enhance the decline and accounts for about one third of the explained reduction. For the VOLUME decrease, the explained fraction of the decrease is only about 37 %.     

Investigating the variability of the Arctic sea ice thickness in response to a stochastic thermodynamic atmospheric forcing

The natural low frequency variability of the sea-ice thickness in the Arctic is investigated based on a 10 000 years simulation with a one-dimensional thermodynamic sea-ice model forced by random perturbations of the air surface temperature and solar radiation. The simulation results suggest that atmospheric random perturbations are integrated by the sea-ice. Moreover those perturbations occurring at the onset of ice melting force the largest ice thickness anomalies, which are successively amplified in summer by the albedo feedback and damped in winter by the feedback of the heat conduction through the ice. They also result in a global shift of the melting season which, in the mean annual cycle, leads to earlier melting as compared to the mean climatological cycle. The power spectrum of the ice anomalies suggests that the thickness of the perennial ice should vary preferentially on a time scale of approximately 20 years. The shape of the spectrum is consistent with that of a first order Markov process in which the characteristic time scale of the ice fluctuations would be the relaxation time scale associated with the linear feedback. The equivalent Markov model is constructed by linearizing the ice growth rate anomaly equations and allows us to derive an analytical expression of the feedback and of the forcing of the anomalies. The characteristic time scale depends explicitly on those model parameters involved in the atmosphere-ice interaction but also on the mean seasonal characteristics of the forcing and of the ice thickness. Received: 18 August 1999 / Accepted: 10 May 2000     

Atmospheric inversion strength over polar oceans in winter regulated by sea ice

Low-level temperature inversions are a common feature of the wintertime troposphere in the Arctic and Antarctic. Inversion strength plays an important role in regulating atmospheric processes including air pollution, ozone destruction, cloud formation, and negative longwave feedback mechanisms that shape polar climate response to anthropogenic forcing. The Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument provides reliable measures of spatial patterns in mean wintertime inversion strength when compared with available radiosonde observations and reanalysis products. Here, we examine the influence of sea ice concentration on inversion strength in the Arctic and Antarctic. Correlation of inversion strength with mean annual sea ice concentration, likely a surrogate for the effective thermal conductivity of the wintertime ice pack, yields strong, linear relationships in the Arctic (r?=?0.88) and Antarctic (r?=?0.86). We find a substantially greater (stronger) linear relationship between sea ice concentration and surface air temperature than with temperature at 850?hPa, lending credence to the idea that sea ice controls inversion strength through modulation of surface heat fluxes. As such, declines in sea ice in either hemisphere may imply weaker mean inversions in the future. Comparison of mean inversion strength in AIRS and global climate models (GCMs) suggests that many GCMs poorly characterize mean inversion strength at high latitudes.     

Sensitivity of sea ice to wind-stress and radiative forcing since 1500: a model study of the Little Ice Age and beyond

Three different reconstructed wind-stress fields which take into account variations of the North Atlantic Oscillation, one general circulation model wind-stress field, and three radiative forcings (volcanic activity, insolation changes and greenhouse gas changes) are used with the UVic Earth System Climate Model to simulate the surface air temperature, the sea-ice cover, and the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) since 1500, a period which includes the Little Ice Age (LIA). The simulated Northern Hemisphere surface air temperature, used for model validation, agrees well with several temperature reconstructions. The simulated sea-ice cover in each hemisphere responds quite differently to the forcings. In the Northern Hemisphere, the simulated sea-ice area and volume during the LIA are larger than the present-day area and volume. The wind-driven changes in sea-ice area are about twice as large as those due to thermodynamic (i.e., radiative) forcing. For the sea-ice volume, changes due to wind forcing and thermodynamics are of similar magnitude. Before 1850, the simulations suggest that volcanic activity was mainly responsible for the thermodynamically produced area and volume changes, while after 1900 the slow greenhouse gas increase was the main driver of the sea-ice changes. Changes in insolation have a small effect on the sea ice throughout the integration period. The export of the thicker sea ice during the LIA has no significant effect on the maximum strength of the AMOC. A more important process in altering the maximum strength of the AMOC and the sea-ice thickness is the wind-driven northward ocean heat transport. In the Southern Hemisphere, there are no visible long-term trends in the simulated sea-ice area or volume since 1500. The wind-driven changes are roughly four times larger than those due to radiative forcing. Prior to 1800, all the radiative forcings could have contributed to the thermodynamically driven changes in area and volume. In the 1800s the volcanic forcing was dominant, and during the first part of the 1900s both the insolation changes and the greenhouse gas forcing are responsible for thermodynamically produced changes. Finally, in the latter part of the 1900s the greenhouse gas forcing is the dominant factor in determining the sea-ice changes in the Southern Hemisphere.

Polar amplification of surface warming on an aquaplanet in “ghost forcing” experiments without sea ice feedbacks

Polar amplification of surface warming has previously been displayed by one of the authors in a simplified climate system model with no ice-albedo feedbacks. A physical mechanism responsible for this pattern is presented and tested in an energy balance model and two different GCMs through a series of fixed-SST and “ghost forcing” experiments. In the first ghost forcing experiment, 4 W/m² is added uniformly to the mixed layer heat budget and in the second and third, the same forcing is confined to the tropics and extra-tropics, respectively. The result of the uniform forcing is a polar amplified response much like that resulting from a doubling of CO₂. Due to an observed linearity this response can be interpreted as the sum of the essentially uniform response to the tropical-only forcing and a more localized response to the extra-tropical-only forcing. The flat response to the tropical forcing comes about due to increased meridional heat transports leading to a warming and moistening of the high-latitude atmosphere. This produces a longwave forcing on the high-latitude surface budget which also has been observed by other investigators. Moreover, the tropical surface budget is found to be more sensitive to SST changes than the extra-tropical surface budget. This strengthens the tendency for the above mechanism to produce polar amplification, since the tropics need to warm less to counter an imposed forcing.     

适应极地快速变化海冰模式的研发与挑战

极地海冰是地球气候系统的重要组成部分,也是气候环境变化的指示器和放大器.极地海冰复杂的多尺度物理过程和极地观测资料的匮乏,给海冰模式的研发带来了巨大的挑战.在过去的半个多世纪中,大气-海冰-海洋的复杂相互作用和冰内物理过程在海冰模式中的数学描述取得了重大的进展,但海冰模式对一些重要物理过程的描述仍很不完善,尤其是近年来...     

Parameterizing turbulent exchange over sea ice: the ice station weddell results

A 4-month deployment on Ice Station Weddell (ISW) in the western Weddell Sea yielded over 2000 h of nearly continuous surface-level meteorological data, including eddy-covariance measurements of the turbulent surface fluxes of momentum, and sensible and latent heat. Those data lead to a new parameterization for the roughness length for wind speed, z₀, for snow-covered sea ice that combines three regimes: an aerodynamically smooth regime, a high-wind saltation regime, and an intermediate regime between these two extremes where the macroscale or `permanent' roughness of the snow and ice determines z₀. Roughness lengths for temperature, z_T, computed from this data set corroborate the theoretical model that Andreas published in 1987. Roughness lengths for humidity,z_Q, do not support this model as conclusively but are all, on average, within an order of magnitude of its predictions. Only rarely arez_Tand z_Q equal to z₀. These parameterizations have implications for models that treat the atmosphere-ice-ocean system.     

Radiometer studies of low-salinity sea ice

Theoretical and experimental studies of ultra-high-frequency (UHF) and microwave radiometry to sense remotely the thickness and other characteristics of low-salinity (less than one per mille) sea ice are described. The experimental studies used a 600-MHz and a multichannel, multibeam, 4.7-GHz radiometer carried by a helicopter to measure the brightness temperature of different types of sea ice in the Gulf of Bothnia in 1975 and 1976.The developed theory and experiments show that the brightness temperature of low-salinity sea ice oscillates as a function of ice thickness at UHF frequencies. Due to higher attenuation, the oscillations quickly die away at 4.7 GHz and the brightness temperature reaches an almost constant value when the thickness exceeds a few decimetres. By using a three-channel UHF radiometer with suitably selected center frequencies, the oscillations can be reduced and the effective brightness temperature will grow more linearly with the ice thickness.Experiments show that ice ridges appear as thick ice at 600 MHz and as thinner ice at 4.7 GHz, thus allowing them to be detected by radio techniques.     

Sensitivity of a global ice–ocean model to the Bering Strait throughflow

 To understand the influence of the Bering Strait on the World Ocean’s circulation, a model sensitivity analysis is conducted. The numerical experiments are carried out with a global, coupled ice–ocean model. The water transport through the Bering Strait is parametrized according to the geostrophic control theory. The model is driven by surface fluxes derived from bulk formulae assuming a prescribed atmospheric seasonal cycle. In addition, a weak restoring to observed surface salinities is applied to compensate for the global imbalance of the imposed surface freshwater fluxes. The freshwater flux from the North Pacific to the North Atlantic associated with the Bering Strait throughflow seems to be an important element in the freshwater budget of the Greenland and Norwegian seas and of the Atlantic. This flux induces a freshening of the North Atlantic surface waters, which reduces the convective activity and leads to a noticeable (6%) weakening of the thermohaline conveyor belt. It is argued that the contrasting results obtained by Reason and Power are due to the type of surface boundary conditions they used. Received: 27 October 1995/Accepted: 20 November 1996     

Effective sea ice area based on a thickness threshold

As Arctic sea ice declines in response to climate change, a shift from thick multiyear ice to a thinner ice cover is occurring. With this transition, ice thicknesses approach a threshold below which ice no longer insulates the atmosphere from oceanic surface fluxes. While this is well known, there are no estimates of the magnitude of this threshold, nor of the proportion of sea ice area that is below this threshold as ice thins. We determine this threshold by simulating the atmospheric response to varying thicknesses, ranging from 0.0 to 2.0 m and determine that threshold to be 0.40–0.50 m. The resulting “effective” ice area is 4–14% lower than reported total ice area, as 0.39–0.97 × 10⁶ km² of the total ice area falls below the threshold throughout the twentieth century, including during notable ice minima. The atmosphere above large non-insulating ice-covered regions is susceptible to more than 2 °C of warming despite ice presence. Observed mean Arctic Ocean ice thickness is projected to fall below this threshold as early as the mid-2020s. Studies on ocean–atmosphere interactions in relation to sea ice area should focus on this insulating sea ice area, where ice is at least 0.40–0.50 m thick, and treat ice regions below 0.40–0.50 m thickness with caution.

     

Variations of sea ice temperature from CHINARE 2003 and its application on sea ice model evaluation

Variation of vertical profiles of sea ice temperature and adjacent atmosphere and ocean temperatures were measured by ice drifting buoys deployed in the northeast Chukchi Sea as part of the 2003 Chinese Arctic Research Expedition.The buoy observations (September 2003 to February 2005) show that the cooling of the ice began in late September,propagated down through the ice,reaching the bottom of the ice in December,and continued throughout the winter.In winter 2003/04,some obvious warmings were observed in the upper portion of the ice in response to major warmings in the overlying atmosphere associated with the periodicity of storms in the northeast Chukchi Sea.It is found that the melt season at the buoy site in 2004 was about 15% longer than normal.The buoy observed vertical ice temperature profiles were used as a diagnostic for sea ice model evaluation.The results show that the simulated ice temperature profiles have large discrepancies as compared with the observations.     

Development of a new sea ice growth and lead parameterization

A thermodynamic sea ice model that has been numerically structured to take time steps on the order of a week has been shown to be sensitive to time step size. This sensitivity was caused by the extrapolation of initial ice growth rates over the long time step. A new parameterization of new sea ice growth on open ocean and in leads that can be used over a large range of time step sizes (at least from 0.3 to 12 days) is described here. In this parameterization new sea ice growth is computed as a power law function of the initial energy deficit in the ocean. This power law takes into account the rapid reduction of the ice growth rate as the sea ice gets thicker, and therefore reduces sensitivity to time step size. Tests of this parameterization show that this method does a good job of simulating the rate of new ice growth when compared to data from Mawson, Antarctica, and is relatively insensitive to the length of the time step.     

The effect of snow on Antarctic sea ice simulations in a coupled atmosphere-sea ice model

 The effect of a snow cover on sea ice accretion and ablation is estimated based on the ‘zero-layer’ version sea ice model of Semtner, and is examined using a coupled atmosphere-sea ice model including feedbacks and ice dynamics effects. When snow is disregarded in the coupled model the averaged Antarctic sea ice becomes thicker. When only half of the snowfall predicted by the atmospheric model is allowed to land on the ice surface sea ice gets thicker in most of the Weddell and Ross Seas but thinner in East Antarctic in winter, with the average slightly thicker. When twice as much snowfall as predicted by the atmospheric model is assumed to land on the ice surface sea ice also gets much thicker due to the large increase of snow-ice formation. These results indicate the importance of the correct simulation of the snow cover over sea ice and snow-ice formation in the Antarctic. Our results also illustrate the complex feedback effects of the snow cover in global climate models. In this study we have also tested the use of a mean value of 0.16 Wm^-1 K^-1 instead of 0.31 for the thermal conductivity of snow in the coupled model, based on the most recent observations in the eastern Antarctic and Bellingshausen and Amundsen Seas, and have found that the sea ice distribution changes greatly, with the ice becoming much thinner by about 0.2 m in the Antarctic and about 0.4 m in the Arctic on average. This implies that the magnitude of the thermal conductivity of snow is of considerable importance for the simulation of the sea ice distribution. An appropriate value of the thermal conductivity of snow is as crucial as the depth of the snow layer and the snowfall rate in a sea ice model. The coupled climate models require accurate values of the effective thermal conductivity of snow from observations for validating the simulated sea ice distribution under the present climate conditions. Received: 20 November 1997/Accepted: 27 July 1998