IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/climat/v131y2015i2p229-243.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Regional atmospheric patterns and the delayed sea-ice freeze-up in the western Arctic

Author

Listed:
  • Thomas Ballinger
  • Scott Sheridan

Abstract

The western Arctic sea ice cover has dramatically changed since the late 1970s, particularly the timing of the autumn freeze-up. While atmospheric dynamic and thermodynamic processes associated with synoptic-scale weather patterns largely impact the onset of regional ice formation, linkages between the subseasonal occurrences of these patterns, across interannual to multidecadal time scales, and the freeze-up are not well understood. This manuscript takes a synoptic climatological atmospheric pattern (AP) classification approach to evaluate the role of warm season-dominant (i.e., May-October) mean sea-level pressure (MSLP) and 1000–500 hPa thickness APs, derived from daily NCEP/NCAR reanalysis fields, on the passive microwave-derived freeze-up dates for the marginal Beaufort/Chukchi Seas and western Arctic Ocean from 1979 to 2013. Analysis of the respective classifications’ frequencies and their relationships to the freeze-up reveals that approximately one-third of freeze-up variance may be explained by early/middle warm season Beaufort Sea High surface pressure pattern frequency changes. A similar amount of freeze-up variance is explained by the occurrence of mid-warm season dominant thermal patterns, either earlier or later than their predominant season. Both results suggest that pattern changes may be associated with changing ocean–atmosphere heat exchanges affiliated with lengthened periods of melt conditions. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2015

Suggested Citation

  • Thomas Ballinger & Scott Sheridan, 2015. "Regional atmospheric patterns and the delayed sea-ice freeze-up in the western Arctic," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 131(2), pages 229-243, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:climat:v:131:y:2015:i:2:p:229-243
    DOI: 10.1007/s10584-015-1383-5
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s10584-015-1383-5
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10584-015-1383-5?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Qiuhong Tang & Xuejun Zhang & Jennifer A. Francis, 2014. "Extreme summer weather in northern mid-latitudes linked to a vanishing cryosphere," Nature Climate Change, Nature, vol. 4(1), pages 45-50, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Xiao-Hua Yang & Bo-Yang Sun & Jian Zhang & Mei-Shui Li & Jun He & Yi-Ming Wei & Yu-Qi Li, 2016. "Hierarchy evaluation of water resources vulnerability under climate change in Beijing, China," Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, Springer;International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, vol. 84(1), pages 63-76, November.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:climat:v:131:y:2015:i:2:p:229-243. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.