Decline in Arctic sea ice thickness from submarine and ICESat records: 1958–2008

Kwok, R.; Rothrock, D. A.

doi:10.1029/2009gl039035

Cited by 881 publications

(729 citation statements)

References 6 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

694

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Arctic change has been reflected in decreasing sea ice thickness (Kwok and Rothrock 2009), reduced summer sea ice extent (Stroeve et al 2007(Stroeve et al , 2008Comiso 2012), changed freshwater content and distribution (McPhee et al 2009;Rabe et al 2011;Morison et al 2012;Giles et al 2012), and increased atmospheric temperature (Overland et al 2008) and oceanic heat content (Steele et al 2008;Polyakov et al 2010). Changes in all these properties are of concern given their possible linkages with global climate, for example by controlling stratification in the sub-Arctic seas and thereby modulating convection and the meridional overturning circulation (Aagaard and Carmack 1989;Hu et al 2010).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Arctic Ocean Circulation Patterns Revealed by GRACE

et al. 2014

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Measurements of ocean bottom pressure (OBP) anomalies from the satellite mission Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE), complemented by information from two ocean models, are used to investigate the variations and distribution of the Arctic Ocean mass from 2002 through 2011. The forcing and dynamics associated with the observed OBP changes are explored. Major findings are the identification of three primary temporal-spatial modes of OBP variability at monthly-to-interannual time scales with the following characteristics. Mode 1 (50% of the variance) is a wintertime basin-coherent Arctic mass change forced by southerly winds through Fram Strait, and to a lesser extent through Bering Strait. These winds generate northward geostrophic current anomalies that increase the mass in the Arctic Ocean. Mode 2 (20%) reveals a mass change along the Siberian shelves, driven by surface Ekman transport and associated with the Arctic Oscillation. Mode 3 (10%) reveals a mass dipole, with mass decreasing in the Chukchi, East Siberian, and Laptev Seas, and mass increasing in the Barents and Kara Seas. During the summer, the mass decrease on the East Siberian shelves is due to the basin-scale anticyclonic atmospheric circulation that removes mass from the shelves via Ekman transport. During the winter, the forcing mechanisms include a large-scale cyclonic atmospheric circulation in the eastern-central Arctic that produces mass divergence into the Canada Basin and the Barents Sea. In addition, strengthening of the Beaufort high tends to remove mass from the East Siberian and Chukchi Seas. Supporting previous modeling results, the month-to-month variability in OBP associated with each mode is predominantly of barotropic character.

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Arctic Ocean Circulation Patterns Revealed by GRACE

et al. 2014

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…An interesting aspect of Southern Hemisphere sea-ice is its contrasting behaviour in recent decades to Northern Hemisphere sea-ice 4 . In the Northern Hemisphere, observations reveal that the sea-ice area, extent and volume have declined rapidly during recent decades 5,6 , with the change in extent being À 5% per decade since 1985 (ref. 5).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Sources of heterogeneous variability and trends in Antarctic sea-ice

et al. 2015

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

While the Northern Hemisphere sea-ice has uniformly declined over the past several decades, the observed sea-ice in the Southern Hemisphere has exhibited regions of increase and decrease. Here we use a comprehensive set of ocean-sea-ice simulations (1990)(1991)(1992)(1993)(1994)(1995)(1996)(1997)(1998)(1999)(2000)(2001)(2002)(2003)(2004)(2005)(2006)(2007) to elucidate the drivers of the observed heterogeneous sea-ice trends. We show wind variability is an important determinant of the heterogeneous pattern of the variability and trends in Southern Hemisphere sea-ice. Only in the West Pacific region does Southern Annular Mode wind forcing contribute significantly to the trend in sea-ice duration. El Niño Southern Oscillation wind forcing contribution to the sea-ice duration trend is confined to the Atlantic and Pacific. In the Indian Ocean, weather is a significant driver of the sea-ice duration trend. Only in the East Pacific region is wind forcing alone insufficient to give rise to the observed sea-ice decline and must be augmented by warming to reproduce the observations.

show abstract

“…While the accuracy and the spatial coverage was sufficient to give evidence of 30 sea ice thinning in the Arctic and to provide a basis for simulating the trend, these data are of limited use for evaluating the spatial and temporal variability of sea ice across the Arctic, and in climate models. More recently, cryosphere-focused satellite altimeters such as the NASA Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) and ESA CryoSat-2 (CS2) have allowed estimation of sea ice thickness across the Arctic (Giles et al, 2007, Kwok and Rothrock, 2009, Laxon et al, 2013.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

New insight from CryoSat-2 sea ice thickness for sea ice modelling

Feltham¹,

Schröder²,

Tsamados³

2018

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Abstract. Estimates of Arctic sea ice thickness are available from the CryoSat-2 (CS2) radar altimetry mission during ice growth seasons since 2010. We derive the sub-grid scale ice thickness distribution (ITD) with respect to 5 ice thickness categories used in a sea ice component (CICE) of climate simulations. This allows us to initialize the ITD in stand-alone 10 simulations with CICE and to verify the simulated cycle of ice thickness. We find that a default CICE simulation strongly underestimates ice thickness, despite reproducing the inter-annual variability of summer sea ice extent. We can identify the underestimation of winter ice growth as being responsible and show that increasing the ice conductive flux for lower temperatures (bubbly brine scheme) and accounting for the loss of drifting snow results in the simulated sea ice growth being more realistic. Sensitivity studies provide insight into the impact of initial and atmospheric conditions and, thus, on the role of 15 positive and negative feedback processes. During summer, atmospheric conditions are responsible for 50% of September sea ice thickness variability through the positive sea ice and melt pond albedo feedback. However, atmospheric winter conditions have little impact on winter ice growth due to the dominating negative conductive feedback process: the thinner the ice and snow in autumn, the stronger the ice growth in winter. We conclude that the fate of Arctic summer sea ice is largely controlled by atmospheric conditions during the melting season rather than by winter temperature. Our optimal model configuration does 20 not only improve the simulated sea ice thickness, but also summer sea ice concentration, melt pond fraction, and length of the melt season. It is the first time CS2 sea ice thickness data have been applied successfully to improve sea ice model physics.

show abstract

Decline in Arctic sea ice thickness from submarine and ICESat records: 1958–2008

Cited by 881 publications

References 6 publications

Arctic Ocean Circulation Patterns Revealed by GRACE

Arctic Ocean Circulation Patterns Revealed by GRACE

Sources of heterogeneous variability and trends in Antarctic sea-ice

New insight from CryoSat-2 sea ice thickness for sea ice modelling

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About