2021/02/03 by Claude Hillaire‐Marcel, Claude Hillaire-Marcel, Hillaire-Marcel, Claude +4
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Environmental Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Arctic and Antarctic ice dynamics #Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics (physics.ao-ph) #Climate change and permafrost #Cryospheric studies and observations #FOS: Physical sciences #Methane Hydrates and Related Phenomena #physics.ao-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2102.02067
9 pages, 2 figures
openalex publication_date 2021/02/03 · arxiv created 2021/02/06 · arxiv updated 2021/02/09 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The sea-ice cover of the Arctic Ocean is an important element of the climate and ocean system in the Northern Hemisphere as it impacts albedo, atmospheric pressure regimes, CO2-exchange at the ocean/atmosphere interface as well as the North Atlantic freshwater budget and thermohaline circulation [1]. Due to global warming, the Arctic sea-ice cover is presently evolving at an unprecedent rate towards full melt during the summer season, driving the so-called "Arctic amplification" [2]. However, the Arctic sea-ice has also experienced large amplitude variations, from seasonal to orbital (Milankovitch) time scales, in the past. Recent studies led to suggest that whereas insolation has been a major driver of Arctic sea-ice variability through time, sea-level changes governed the development of "sea-ice factories" over shelves (Figure 1), thus fine-tuning the response of the Arctic Ocean to glacial/interglacial oscillations that is slightly out of phase compared to lower latitudes [3,4]. We discuss below how insolation and sea-level changes may have interacted and controlled the sea-ice cover of the Arctic Ocean during warm past intervals and how they could still interfere in the future.