Brief communication: Increasing shortwave absorption over the Arctic Ocean is not balanced by trends in the Antarctic

On the basis of a new, consistent, long-term observational satellite dataset we show that, despite the observed increase of sea ice extent in the Antarctic, absorption of solar shortwave radiation in the Southern Ocean poleward of 60° latitude is not decreasing. The observations hence show that the...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Cryosphere
Main Authors: Katlein, Christian, Hendricks, Stefan, Key, Jeffrey
Format: Text
Language:English
Published: 2018
Subjects:
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-11-2111-2017
https://tc.copernicus.org/articles/11/2111/2017/
Description
Summary:On the basis of a new, consistent, long-term observational satellite dataset we show that, despite the observed increase of sea ice extent in the Antarctic, absorption of solar shortwave radiation in the Southern Ocean poleward of 60° latitude is not decreasing. The observations hence show that the small increase in Antarctic sea ice extent does not compensate for the combined effect of retreating Arctic sea ice and changes in cloud cover, which both result in a total increase in solar shortwave energy deposited into the polar oceans.