Accelerated sea ice loss in the Wandel Sea points to a change in the Arctic’s Last Ice Area

Schweiger, Axel; Steele, Michael; Zhang, Jinlun; Moore, G. W. K.; Laidre, Kristin L.

doi:10.1038/s43247-021-00197-5

Cited by 28 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 58 publications

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“…This definition reflects the view that certain coastal regions may retain small amounts of landfast sea ice even after the open Arctic Sea is ice free (Wang and Overland, 2009). However, the intractability of melting landfast ice remains an open issue of research, and there is much uncertainty about how resilient such a circumscribed "Last Ice" refuge will be to further warming (Cooley et al, 2020;Mudryk et al, 2021;Schweiger et al, 2021). Reflecting this uncertainty, while we also consider the usual definition of a nearly ice-free Arctic (10 6 km 2 ) for SIA and SIE, we do not account for any poosible structural shift in near-zero sea-ice dynamics.…”

Section: Carbon-trend Fits and Forecasts In Ice-carbon Spacementioning

confidence: 99%

When Will Arctic Sea Ice Disappear? Projections of Area, Extent, Thickness, and Volume

Diebold¹,

Rudebusch²,

Goebel³

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Rapidly diminishing Arctic summer sea ice is a strong signal of the pace of global climate change. We provide point, interval, and density forecasts for four measures of Arctic sea ice: area, extent, thickness, and volume. Importantly, we enforce the joint constraint that these measures must simultaneously arrive at an ice-free Arctic. We apply this constrained joint forecast procedure to models relating sea ice to cumulative carbon dioxide emissions and models relating sea ice directly to time. The resulting "carbon-trend" and "time-trend" projections are mutually consistent and predict an effectively ice-free summer Arctic Ocean by the mid-2030s with an 80% probability. Moreover, the carbon-trend projections show that global adoption of a lower emissions path would likely delay the arrival of a seasonally ice-free Arctic by only a few years.

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Section: Carbon-trend Fits and Forecasts In Ice-carbon Spacementioning

confidence: 99%

When Will Arctic Sea Ice Disappear? Projections of Area, Extent, Thickness, and Volume

Diebold¹,

Rudebusch²,

Goebel³

et al. 2022

Preprint

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“…uly and August 2020 saw unprecedented low sea ice concentration in the Wandel Sea to the north of Greenland, a region that is normally characterized by a thick and compact multi-year ice cover 1 . The Wandel Sea is the eastern part of the Last Ice Area (hereafter, LIA, the area north of Greenland and the Canadian Arctic Archipelago), where thick multi-year ice is predicted to last longer than other regions in the Arctic and is expected to provide a refuge for ice-dependent species [2][3][4] .…”

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confidence: 99%

“…The Wandel Sea is the eastern part of the Last Ice Area (hereafter, LIA, the area north of Greenland and the Canadian Arctic Archipelago), where thick multi-year ice is predicted to last longer than other regions in the Arctic and is expected to provide a refuge for ice-dependent species [2][3][4] . It has been argued 1 that the summer 2020 Wandel sea ice minimum was caused by a long-term trend towards a thinner ice pack as well as anomalous atmospheric circulation during the summer that advected ice out of the region. Interestingly, winds during the preceding winter had also advected thick and old ice into the region, but this was found to have minimal effect on end-ofsummer conditions.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…More recently, the May 2020 development of a polynya north of Ellesmere Island 22 , the July-August 2020 Wandel Sea ice minimum 1 , and the December 2020 through February 2021 anomalous ice transport into the Beaufort Sea from the LIA 23 were all associated with enhanced anticyclonic winds that were the result of a strengthened and expanded Beaufort High with a center further north and east than in the climatology. On the other hand, some recent winters (hereafter defined as January, February, and March) have seen a collapse of the Beaufort High, resulting in a reversal of winds from anticyclonic to cyclonic 24 .…”

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confidence: 99%

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Thick and old sea ice in the Beaufort Sea during summer 2020/21 was associated with enhanced transport

Moore

Steele

Schweiger

et al. 2022

Commun Earth Environ

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The Arctic Ocean has seen a remarkable reduction in sea ice coverage, thickness and age since the 1980s. These changes are most pronounced in the Beaufort Sea, with a transition around 2007 from a regime dominated by multi-year sea ice to one with large expanses of open water during the summer. Using satellite-based observations of sea ice, an atmospheric reanalysis and a coupled ice-ocean model, we show that during the summers of 2020 and 2021, the Beaufort Sea hosted anomalously large concentrations of thick and old ice. We show that ice advection contributed to these anomalies, with 2020 dominated by eastward transport from the Chukchi Sea, and 2021 dominated by transport from the Last Ice Area to the north of Canada and Greenland. Since 2007, cool season (fall, winter, and spring) ice volume transport into the Beaufort Sea accounts for ~45% of the variability in early summer ice volume—a threefold increase from that associated with conditions prior to 2007. This variability is likely to impact marine infrastructure and ecosystems.

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“…The Arctic is warming at several times the global average, resulting in reduced sea-ice extent and a prolonged ice-free period (Laidre et al, 2015b; Kwok, 2018; Onarheim et al, 2018; Stroeve and Notz, 2018; Schweiger et al, 2021). The reductions in sea ice have caused a shift toward smaller primary and secondary producers (Yun et al, 2015; Dalpadado et al, 2016), and negatively affected Arctic fish (Nahrgang et al, 2014; Christiansen, 2017) and pinnipeds (Iacozza and Ferguson, 2014; Stenson and Hammill, 2014; Hamilton et al, 2015).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Drivers of polar bear behavior, and the possible effects of prey availability on foraging strategy

Togunov

Derocher

Lunn

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Change in behavior is one of the earliest measurable responses to variation in habitat suitability, making the study of factors that promote behaviors particularly important in areas undergoing environmental change. We applied hidden Markov models to remote movement data of 14 polar bears, Ursus maritimus, from Western Hudson Bay, Canada between 2011 and 2021 during the foraging season (January--June) when bears inhabit the sea ice. The model incorporated bear movement and orientation relative to wind to classify three behaviors (stationary/drifting, area-restricted search, and olfactory search), and investigated 11 factors to identify conditions that may promote these behaviors. In contrast to other polar bear populations, we found high levels of evening activity, with active behaviors peaking around 20:00. We identified an increase in activity as the ice-covered season progressed. This apparent shift in foraging strategy from still-hunting to active search corresponds to a shift in prey availability (i.e., increase in haul-out behavior from early winter to the spring pupping and molting seasons). Last, we described spatial patterns of distribution with respect to season and ice concentration that may be indicative of variation in habitat quality and segregation by bear age that may reflect competitive exclusion. Our observations were generally consistent with predictions of the marginal value theorem, and differences between our findings compared to other populations could be explained by variation in regional or temporal variation in resource abundance or distribution. Our findings and methodology can help identify periods, locations, and environmental conditions associated with habitat quality and can improve our understanding polar bear behavioral ecology and aid conservation.

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Accelerated sea ice loss in the Wandel Sea points to a change in the Arctic’s Last Ice Area

Cited by 28 publications

References 58 publications

When Will Arctic Sea Ice Disappear? Projections of Area, Extent, Thickness, and Volume

When Will Arctic Sea Ice Disappear? Projections of Area, Extent, Thickness, and Volume

Thick and old sea ice in the Beaufort Sea during summer 2020/21 was associated with enhanced transport

Drivers of polar bear behavior, and the possible effects of prey availability on foraging strategy

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