Abstract
Abstract. In austral spring 2016 the Antarctic region experienced anomalous sea ice retreat in all sectors, with sea ice extent in October and November 2016 being the lowest in the Southern Hemisphere over the observational period (1979–present). The extreme sea ice retreat was accompanied by widespread warming along the coastal areas as well as in the interior of the Antarctic continent. This exceptional event occurred along with a strong negative phase of the Southern Annular Mode (SAM) and the moistest and warmest spring on record, over large areas covering the Indian Ocean, the Ross Sea and the Weddell Sea. In October 2016, the positive anomalies of the totally integrated water vapor (IWV) and 2 m air temperature (T2m) over the Indian Ocean, western Pacific, Bellingshausen Sea and southern part of Ross Sea were unprecedented in the last 39 years. In October and November 2016, when the largest magnitude of negative daily sea ice concentration anomalies was observed, repeated episodes of poleward advection of warm and moist air took place. These results suggest the importance of moist and warm air intrusions into the Antarctic region as one of the main contributors to this exceptional sea ice retreat event.
Highlights
Sea ice in both polar regions is an important indicator for the expression of global climate change and its polar amplification
The Antarctic sea ice extent (SIE) from September until December 2016 was characterized by significant negative anomalies, with November and December 2016 ranking as the lowest SIE for those respective months in the sea ice record (Fig. S1)
November mean SIE was more than 5 standard deviations below the 1981–2010 average (Stammerjohn and Scambos, 2017)
Summary
Sea ice in both polar regions is an important indicator for the expression of global climate change and its polar amplification. It plays an important role in modulating the global climate system by influencing the atmospheric and oceanic circulations (Cohen et al, 2018). It has a strong impact on the global economic system through changes in marine and natural resource development. Recent observed changes in the Arctic have become the “face” for global climatic changes, especially due to the rapidly decreasing trend in the summer sea ice extent (SIE) over the last 2 decades (Serreze and Stroeve, 2015). The trends in the Arctic SIE over the satellite observational record from 1979 to present are negative for all months, with the largest trend recorded at the end of the melt season in September (Serreze et al, 2007; Stroeve et al, 2015), with an average decline of 12.9% per decade relative to the long-term mean of the 1981–2010 September average (Grosfeld et al, 2016)
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