Large-scale sea ice-Surface temperature variability linked to Atlantic meridional overturning circulation

Petru Vaideanu; Christian Stepanek; Mihai Dima; Jule Schrepfer; Fernanda Matos; Monica Ionita; Gerrit Lohmann

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0290437

Large-scale sea ice-Surface temperature variability linked to Atlantic meridional overturning circulation

PLoS One. 2023 Aug 30;18(8):e0290437. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0290437. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Petru Vaideanu^{1

2}, Christian Stepanek¹, Mihai Dima^{1

2}, Jule Schrepfer¹, Fernanda Matos¹, Monica Ionita^{1

3

4}, Gerrit Lohmann^{1

5}

Affiliations

¹ Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research, Bremerhaven, Germany.
² Faculty of Physics, University of Bucharest, Bucharest, Romania.
³ Emil Racovita Institute of Speleology, Romanian Academy, Cluj-Napoca, Romania.
⁴ Faculty of Forestry," Stefan cel Mare" University of Suceava, Suceava, Romania.
⁵ MARUM & Department of Environmental Physics, University of Bremen, Bremen, Germany.

Abstract

Due to its involvement in numerous feedbacks, sea ice plays a crucial role not only for polar climate but also at global scale. We analyse state-of-the-art observed, reconstructed, and modelled sea-ice concentration (SIC) together with sea surface temperature (SST) to disentangle the influence of different forcing factors on the variability of these coupled fields. Canonical Correlation Analysis provides distinct pairs of coupled Arctic SIC-Atlantic SST variability which are linked to prominent oceanic and atmospheric modes of variability over the period 1854-2017. The first pair captures the behaviour of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) while the third and can be associated with the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) in a physically consistent manner. The dominant global SIC-Atlantic SST coupled mode highlights the contrast between the responses of Arctic and Antarctic sea ice to changes in AMOC over the 1959-2021 period. Model results indicate that coupled SST-SIC patterns can be associated with changes in ocean circulation. We conclude that a correct representation of AMOC-induced coupled SST-SIC variability in climate models is essential to understand the past, present and future sea-ice evolution.

Copyright: © 2023 Vaideanu et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Antarctic Regions
Climate*
Ice Cover*
Temperature

Grants and funding

This work was funded by the Helmholtz Association through the joint program "Changing Earth - Sustaining our Future" (PoF IV) program of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research (AWI). P.V. and M.D. were also funded by project PN-III-P1-1.1-PD-2021-0505, Ctr. PD22/2022, CLIMATICFOOTPRINTS of the Romanian UEFISCDI. P.V. was also funded by the Helmholtz Information & Data Science Academy (HIDA) via Helmholtz Visiting Researcher Grant. The specific roles of these authors are articulated in the ‘author contributions’ section. This work is also part of the Abrupt Climate Shifts and Extremes over Eurasia in Response to Arctic Sea Ice Change (ACE) project funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) 01LP2004A. Publication fees were covered by the Open Access Publication Funds of Alfred-Wegener-Institut Helmholtz-Zentrum für Polar- und Meeresforschung. The funders had no role in study design, data collection, and analysis, the decision to publish, or the preparation of the manuscript.