Disentangling the coupling between sea ice and tundra productivity in Svalbard

• Published in: Scientific Reports
• Main Authors: Macias-Fauria, M, Karlsen, SR, Forbes, BC
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Springer Nature 2017
• Subjects: Arctic; Svalbard; Svalbard Archipelago; North Atlantic; North Atlantic oscillation; Sea ice; Tundra
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-06218-8; https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:6864e9b8-4f8c-4c05-b635-baed56b937a5

The rapid decline in Arctic sea ice poses urgent questions concerning its ecological effects, such as on tundra terrestrial productivity. However, reported sea ice/terrestrial productivity linkages have seldom been constrained, and the mechanism governing them remains elusive, with a diversity of spatial scales and metrics proposed, at times in contradiction to each other. In this study, we use spatially explicit remotely sensed sea ice concentration and high-resolution terrestrial productivity estimates (Normalised Difference Vegetation Index, NDVI) across the Svalbard Archipelago to describe local/sub-regional and large-scale components of sea ice/terrestrial productivity coupling. Whereas the local/sub-regional component is attributed to sea breeze (cold air advection from ice-covered ocean onto adjacent land during the growing season), the large-scale component might reflect co-variability of sea ice and tundra productivity due to a common forcing, such as large-scale atmospheric circulation (North Atlantic Oscillation, NAO). Our study clarifies the range of mechanisms in sea ice/terrestrial productivity coupling, allowing the generation of testable hypotheses about its past, present, and future dynamics across the Arctic.