Climate change and heat exchange between atmosphere and ocean in the Arctic based on data from the Barents and the Kara sea

Abstract

The paper investigates the current regime of turbulent heat exchange with the atmosphere over the Barents and Kara Seas, as well as its spatial, seasonal and temporal variability (1979–2018). It is shown that over the past decades, the areas of the location of the centers of maximum energy exchange between the sea surface and the atmosphere have not changed significantly in comparison with the middle and second half of the XX century. It was revealed that the greatest seasonal and synoptic variability of heat fluxes is typical of the central and western parts of the Barents Sea. It was found that both indicators of variability in the cold season are 2–5 and more times higher than in the warm season, and the spatial heterogeneity of the indicators of variability in winter is about twice as large as in summer. Quantitative estimates have shown that, within the Barents Sea, the spatial variability of fluxes in winter may be 5–10 times or more higher than the summer values. Above the Kara Sea, the greatest heterogeneity in the fluxes field is typical of the autumn and early winter seasons. It has been found that the annual sums of heat fluxes from the surface of the Barents Sea exceed the values for the Kara Sea, on average, 3–4 and 5–6 times, for sensible and latent heat fluxes, respectively, and in some years may differ tens of times. For the period under study, a single trend of the integral fluxes over the water area and their annual magnitude is not expressed, although there are multi-year decadal fluctuations. It is shown that, despite the significant difference in the thermal regime of the Barents and Kara seas and the lower atmosphere above them, the interannual changes in the total turbulent flows are quite well synchronized, which indicates the commonality of large-scale hydrometeorological processes in these seas, which affect the energy exchange between the seas and the atmosphere.