Sources of heterogeneous variability and trends in Antarctic sea-ice
While the Northern Hemisphere sea-ice has uniformly declined over the past several decades, the observed sea-ice in the Southern Hemisphere has exhibited regions of increase and decrease. Here we use a comprehensive set of ocean-sea-ice simulations (1990-2007) to elucidate the drivers of the observe...
| Published in: | Nature Communications |
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| Main Authors: | , , , |
| Format: | Article in Journal/Newspaper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Nature Publishing Group
2015
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms9656 http://ecite.utas.edu.au/118776 |
| Summary: | While the Northern Hemisphere sea-ice has uniformly declined over the past several decades, the observed sea-ice in the Southern Hemisphere has exhibited regions of increase and decrease. Here we use a comprehensive set of ocean-sea-ice simulations (1990-2007) to elucidate the drivers of the observed heterogeneous sea-ice trends. We show wind variability is an important determinant of the heterogeneous pattern of the variability and trends in Southern Hemisphere sea-ice. Only in the West Pacific region does Southern Annular Mode wind forcing contribute significantly to the trend in sea-ice duration. El Nio Southern Oscillation wind forcing contribution to the sea-ice duration trend is confined to the Atlantic and Pacific. In the Indian Ocean, weather is a significant driver of the sea-ice duration trend. Only in the East Pacific region is wind forcing alone insufficient to give rise to the observed sea-ice decline and must be augmented by warming to reproduce the observations. |
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