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

• 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

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.