Vertical ocean heat redistribution sustaining sea-ice concentration trends in the Ross Sea

Several processes have been hypothesized to explain the slight overall expansion of Antarcticsea ice over the satellite observation era, including externally forced changes in local winds orin the Southern Ocean’s hydrological cycle, as well as internal climate variability. Here, weshow the critic...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nature Communications
Main Authors: Lecomte, Olivier, Goosse, Hugues, Fichefet, Thierry, de Lavergne, Casimir, Barthélemy, Antoine, Zunz, Violette
Other Authors: UCL - SST/ELI/ELIC - Earth & Climate
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: Nature Publishing Group 2017
Subjects:
CISM:CECI
Antarc*
Ross Sea
Sea ice
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/2078.1/187368
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-017-00347-4
Description
Summary:Several processes have been hypothesized to explain the slight overall expansion of Antarcticsea ice over the satellite observation era, including externally forced changes in local winds orin the Southern Ocean’s hydrological cycle, as well as internal climate variability. Here, weshow the critical influence of an ocean–sea-ice feedback. Once initiated by an externalperturbation, it may be sufï¬cient to sustain the observed sea-ice expansion in the Ross Sea,the region with the largest and most signiï¬cant expansion. We quantify the heat trapped atthe base of the ocean mixed layer and demonstrate that it is of the same order of magnitudeas the latent heat storage due to the long-term changes in sea-ice volume. The evidence thussuggests that the recent ice coverage increase in the Ross Sea could have been achievedthrough a reorganization of energy within the near-surface ice-ocean system.

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