REGIONAL PREFERENCES IN THE SEASONAL AND MULTIDECADAL LOSS OF ARCTIC SEA ICE: THE ROLE OF CONTINENTAL RUNOFF ...

• Main Author: Eager, Rebecca
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Digital Repository at the University of Maryland 2022
• Subjects: Atmospheric sciences; Arctic; Pacific; Climate change; Global warming; Sea ice
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.13016/cqrj-nc0k; https://drum.lib.umd.edu/handle/1903/28881

Arctic sea ice is of great importance as both a key indicator and a driver of climate change. Sea ice is highly sensitive to temperature changes of the overlying atmosphere and the underlying ocean. The declining trend of Arctic sea ice, especially in late summer when seasonal ice extent is also a minimum, is widely considered a key indicator of the global warming of the planet. This dissertation finds that the observed trends in late summer Arctic sea ice are greatly impacted by natural decadal-to-multidecadal climate variability, mainly by sea surface temperature variability in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation and Pacific Decadal Variability – via a Pan Pacific mode – each contribute a loss of 3-4% of sea ice concentration (SIC) per decade to the overall loss of 24% per decade since 1979.To better understand the mechanisms driving these trends, the impact of decadal and multidecadal climate variability on the Arctic atmosphere, ocean, and continental hydrology is ...