How Does Arctic Sea Ice Growth Respond to Atmospheric Forcing Now and in the Future?
As the Arctic warms, the thinner sea ice results in more ice production and spatial heterogeneity of thickness, dampening the sea ice growth rate response to the dynamic forcing. This is important in order to understand how the sea ice will interact with the atmosphere in the future.
Arctic ice is an important component of our climate system. It is driven by ocean and atmosphere and it is important to understand how sea ice is formed, now and in the future.
We explore the response of wintertime Arctic sea ice growth to strong cyclones and to large-scale circulation patterns using Earth system model output of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5) from three selected CMIP5 models that are successful in reproducing the wintertime Arctic Oscillation and Arctic Dipole patterns. The three CMIP5 models agree on the weaker response of sea ice growth rate to atmospheric dynamics. As the Arctic warms, the thinner sea ice results in more ice production and spatial heterogeneity of thickness, dampening the sea ice growth rate response to the dynamic forcing. This is important in order to understand how the sea ice will interact with the atmosphere in the future.