Impact of the Arctic oscillation from March on summertime sea ice

Abstract

Current understanding of the cold season Arctic oscillation (AO) impact on the summertime sea ice is revisited in this study by analyzing the role from each month. Earlier studies examined the prolonged AO impact using a smooth average over 1–2 seasons (e.g. December–March, December–April, March–May), ignoring large month-to-month AO variability. This study finds that the March AO is most influential on the summertime sea ice loss. First, the March AO is most highly negative-correlated with the AO in summer. Secondly, surface energy budget, sea level pressure, and low-tropospheric circulation exhibit that their time-lagged responses to the positive (negative) phase of the March AO grow with time, transitioning to the patterns associated with the negative (positive) phase of the AO that induces sea ice decrease (increase) in summer. Time evolution of the surface energy budget explains the growth of the sea ice concentration anomaly in summer, and a warming-to-cooling transition in October. The regional difference in sea ice anomaly distribution can be also explained by circulation and surface energy budget patterns. The sea ice concentration along the pan-Arctic including the Laptev, East Siberian, Chukchi, and Beaufort Sea decreases (increases) in summer in response to the positive (negative) phase of the March AO, while the sea ice to the northeast of Greenland increases (decreases). This sea ice response is better represented by the March AO than by the seasonally averaged winter AO, suggesting that the March AO can play more significant role. This study also finds that the sea ice decrease in response to the positive AO is distinctively smaller in the 20th century than in the 21st century, along with the opposite sea ice response over the Canada Basin due to circulation difference between the two periods.