Antarctic sea‐ice variation associated with vertical geopotential height and temperature anomalies

Abstract It is well‐known that the increasing zonal‐mean trend of sea‐ice concentration (SIC) surrounding Antarctica is up to 2015 so this paper first summarized this trend with opposing regional trends in each season along the latitude band 60°–70°S during 1979–2015. The surface wind trends can par...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:International Journal of Climatology
Main Authors: Qian, Weihong, Wu, Kaijun, Leung, Jeremy Cheuk‐Hin
Other Authors: National Natural Science Foundation of China, Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: Wiley 2019
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Online Access:http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/joc.6161
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/joc.6161
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full-xml/10.1002/joc.6161
https://rmets.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/joc.6161
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Summary:Abstract It is well‐known that the increasing zonal‐mean trend of sea‐ice concentration (SIC) surrounding Antarctica is up to 2015 so this paper first summarized this trend with opposing regional trends in each season along the latitude band 60°–70°S during 1979–2015. The surface wind trends can partly explain the observed regional SIC trends. By analysing the surface wind, as well as the tropospheric geopotential height (GPH) and temperature trends, the study revealed that the increasing zonal‐mean SIC trend and opposing regional SIC trends surrounding Antarctica are vertically associated with GPH and temperature trends in the troposphere. This relationship is also found in extreme years for seven SIC maximum and four SIC minimum autumns from 1979 to 2015, particularly reconfirmed in the two SIC minimum autumns of 2017 and 2018, indicating that a positive regional SIC anomaly is vertically associated with an anomalously cold air mass centred around 850 hPa in the troposphere which is located beneath a negative GPH anomaly at the upper troposphere, and vice versa.