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Sea surface temperature anomalies related to the Antarctic sea ice extent variability in the past four decades

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Abstract

The Antarctic sea ice extent, though varying considerably with season and region, had been on a slight increasing trend from late 1970s until mid-2010s when the trend was suddenly reversed. The sea surface temperature anomalies related to the multi-decadal expansion and recent contraction in the Antarctic sea ice extent remain to be uncovered. Here, we demonstrate that the variations in the Antarctic sea ice extent from 1979 through 2020, including the abrupt change in direction that occurred in mid-2010’s, can be explained at least partially by the sea surface temperature (SST) oscillations in the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. Specifically, we show that the changes in the Antarctic sea ice extent are significantly correlated with the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO) in all seasons and to the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) in austral winter and spring. We further demonstrate that SST anomalies trigger planetary wavetrains of different magnitudes and propagating paths depending on seasons. These planetary wavetrains induce anomalous atmospheric circulations over the Southern Ocean that, through transport and melting/freezing, ultimately change sea ice extent.

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Data Availability

All data used in the current analysis are downloadable from public domains. Specifically, the monthly Antarctic sea ice from the US National Snow & Ice Data Center (NSIDC) can be accessed from http://nsidc.org/data/NSIDC-0051. ERA5 reanalysis is available at https://doi.org/10.24381/cds.6860a573. SST dataset derived from NOAA’s Extended Reconstructed SST V5 can be downloaded from https://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/cmb/ersst/v5/netcdf/. OLR dataset are derived from https://psl.noaa.gov/data/gridded/data.uninterp_OLR.html. The monthly AMO and IPO indices are obtained from https://climatedataguide.ucar.edu/climate-data/atlantic-multi-decadal-oscillation-amo and https://psl.noaa.gov/data/timeseries/IPOTPI/, respectively.

Code availability

The MATLAB code used in this paper is available as long as authors are contacted.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) for the ERA5 data. We also acknowledge the help from the two anonymous reviewers in improving the manuscript.

Funding

This study is funded by the National Science Foundation of China (41941009), the National Key R&D Program of China (No. 2022YFE0106300), and the fundamental research funds for the Norges Forskningsråd. (No. 328886).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. MNR Key Laboratory for Polar Science, Polar Research Institute of China, Shanghai, China

    Lejiang Yu & Bo Sun

  2. Department of Geography, Environment and Spatial Sciences, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA

    Shiyuan Zhong

  3. Key Laboratory of Marine Hazards Forecasting, National Marine Environmental Forecasting Center, Ministry of Natural Resources, Beijing, China

    Cuijuan Sui

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  1. Lejiang Yu
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  2. Shiyuan Zhong
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  4. Bo Sun
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Contributions

LY designed the research, analyzed the data, and wrote the first draft of the paper. SZ revised the first draft and provided useful insights during various stages of the work. CS and BS provided some comments and helped with editing the paper. All authors reviewed the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Cuijuan Sui.

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Yu, L., Zhong, S., Sui, C. et al. Sea surface temperature anomalies related to the Antarctic sea ice extent variability in the past four decades. Theor Appl Climatol 155, 2415–2426 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-023-04820-7

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