Amplified wintertime Barents Sea warming linked to intensified Barents oscillation

In recent decades, the Barents Sea has warmed more than twice as fast as the rest of the Arctic in winter, but the exact causes behind this amplified warming remain unclear. In this study, we quantify the wintertime Barents Sea warming (BSW, for near-surface air temperature) with an average linear t...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Environmental Research Letters
Main Authors: Ziyi Cai, Qinglong You, Hans W Chen, Ruonan Zhang, Deliang Chen, Jinlei Chen, Shichang Kang, Judah Cohen
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: IOP Publishing 2022
Subjects:
Barents Sea warming
Barents oscillation
clear-sky downward longwave radiation
moisture transport
Environmental technology. Sanitary engineering
TD1-1066
Environmental sciences
GE1-350
Science
Q
Physics
QC1-999
Arctic
Barents Sea
Greenland
Norwegian Sea
North Atlantic
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ac5bb3
https://doaj.org/article/4028f91aaa524034a90f8a8e1bfb027e
Description
Summary:In recent decades, the Barents Sea has warmed more than twice as fast as the rest of the Arctic in winter, but the exact causes behind this amplified warming remain unclear. In this study, we quantify the wintertime Barents Sea warming (BSW, for near-surface air temperature) with an average linear trend of 1.74 °C decade ^−1 and an interdecadal change around 2003 based on a surface energy budget analysis using the ERA5 reanalysis dataset from 1979–2019. Our analysis suggests that the interdecadal change in the wintertime near-surface air temperature is dominated by enhanced clear-sky downward longwave radiation (CDLW) associated with increased total column water vapor. Furthermore, it is found that a mode of atmospheric variability over the North Atlantic region known as the Barents oscillation (BO) strongly contributed to the BSW with a stepwise jump in 2003. Since 2003, the BO turned into a strengthened and positive phase, characteristic of anomalous high pressure over the North Atlantic and South of the Barents Sea, which promoted two branches of heat and moisture transport from southern Greenland along the Norwegian Sea and from the Eurasian continent to the Barents Sea. This enhanced the water vapor convergence over the Barents Sea, resulting in BSW through enhanced CDLW. Our results highlight the atmospheric circulation related to the BO as an emerging driver of the wintertime BSW through enhanced meridional atmospheric heat and moisture transport over the North Atlantic Ocean.

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