2023/03/15 by Hiroshi Sumata, Laura de Steur, Dmitry Divine +2 · 1 voice · 1 citation
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Environmental Science · #Arctic and Antarctic ice dynamics #Climate change and permafrost #Climate variability and models
paper · pdf · doi:10.1038/s41586-022-05686-x
openalex publication_date 2023/03/15 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/03
Abstract Manifestations of climate change are often shown as gradual changes in physical or biogeochemical properties 1 . Components of the climate system, however, can show stepwise shifts from one regime to another, as a nonlinear response of the system to a changing forcing 2 . Here we show that the Arctic sea ice regime shifted in 2007 from thicker and deformed to thinner and more uniform ice cover. Continuous sea ice monitoring in the Fram Strait over the last three decades revealed the shift. After the shift, the fraction of thick and deformed ice dropped by half and has not recovered to date. The timing of the shift was preceded by a two-step reduction in residence time of sea ice in the Arctic Basin, initiated first in 2005 and followed by 2007. We demonstrate that a simple model describing the stochastic process of dynamic sea ice thickening explains the observed ice thickness changes as a result of the reduced residence time. Our study highlights the long-lasting impact of climate change on the Arctic sea ice through reduced residence time and its connection to the coupled ocean–sea ice processes in the adjacent marginal seas and shelves of the Arctic Ocean.