A31M-02:
Summer-to-winter sea-ice linkage between the Arctic Ocean and the Okhotsk Sea through atmospheric circulation
Wednesday, 17 December 2014: 8:15 AM
Masayo Ogi1, Bunmei Taguchi2, Meiji Honda3, David G Barber4 and Søren Rysgaard4,5, (1)University of Manitoba, Centre for Earth Observation Science, Winnipeg, MB, Canada, (2)JAMSTEC Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, Kanagawa, Japan, (3)Niigata University, Niigata, Japan, (4)University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, MB, Canada, (5)Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark
Abstract:
Contemporary climate science seeks to understand the rate and magnitude of a warming global climate and their impacts on regional variability and teleconnections. One of the key drivers of regional climate is the observed reduction in end of summer sea ice extent over the Arctic. Here we show that interannual variations between the September Arctic sea ice concentration, especially in the East Siberian Sea, and the maximum Okhotsk sea ice extent in the following winter are positively correlated. An increase of sea ice both in the East Siberian Sea and the Okhotsk Sea and corresponding atmospheric patterns, showing a seesaw between positive anomalies of sea level pressures over the Arctic Ocean and negative anomalies over the mid-latitudes, are related to cold anomalies over the high-latitude Eurasian Continent. The patterns of atmospheric circulation and air temperatures are similar to those for the annually integrated Arctic Oscillation (AO). The negative annual AO forms colder anomalies in autumn sea surface temperatures both over the East Siberian Sea and the Okhotsk Sea, which causes heavy sea-ice conditions in both seas through season-to-season persistence.
