How does the SST variability over the western North Atlantic Ocean control Arctic warming over the Barents–Kara Seas?

Arctic warming over the Barents–Kara Seas and its impacts on the mid-latitude circulations have been widely discussed. However, the specific mechanism that brings the warming still remains unclear. In this study, a possible cause of the regional Arctic warming over the Barents–Kara Seas during early...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Jung, Ok, Sung, Mi-Kyung, Sato, Kazutoshi, Lim, Young-Kwon, Kim, Seong-Joong, Baek, Eun-Hyuk, Jeong, Jee-Hoon, Kim, Baek-Min
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: Institute of Physics (IOP) 2017
Subjects:
Physics
Arctic
Arctic Ocean
North Atlantic
Online Access:https://dx.doi.org/10.5446/39397
https://av.tib.eu/media/39397
Description
Summary:Arctic warming over the Barents–Kara Seas and its impacts on the mid-latitude circulations have been widely discussed. However, the specific mechanism that brings the warming still remains unclear. In this study, a possible cause of the regional Arctic warming over the Barents–Kara Seas during early winter (October–December) is suggested. We found that warmer sea surface temperature anomalies over the western North Atlantic Ocean (WNAO) modulate the transient eddies overlying the oceanic frontal region. The altered transient eddy vorticity flux acts as a source for the Rossby wave straddling the western North Atlantic and the Barents–Kara Seas (Scandinavian pattern), and induces a significant warm advection, increasing surface and lower-level temperature over the Eurasian sector of the Arctic Ocean. The importance of the sea surface temperature anomalies over the WNAO and subsequent transient eddy forcing over the WNAO was also supported by both specially designed simple model experiments and general circulation model experiments.

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