Brief communication: Arctic sea ice thickness internal variability and its changes under historical and anthropogenic forcing

• Main Authors: Achter, Guillian, Ponsoni, Leandro, Massonnet, François, Fichefet, Thierry, Legat, Vincent
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2019
• Subjects: Arctic; Sea ice
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-2019-299; https://tc.copernicus.org/preprints/tc-2019-299/

We use model simulations from the CESM1-CAM5-BGC-LE dataset to characterise the Arctic sea ice thickness internal variability both spatially and temporally. These properties, and their stationarity, are investigated in three different contexts: (1) constant, pre-industrial, (2) historical and (3) projected conditions. Spatial modes of variability show highly stationary patterns regardless of the forcing and mean state. A temporal analysis reveals two peaks of significant variability and despite a non-stationarity on short time-scales, they remain more or less stable until the first half of the 21st century, where they start to change once summer ice-free events occur, after 2050.