Exploring the Arctic Ocean under Arctic amplification
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Editorial
Exploring the Arctic Ocean under Arctic amplification Ruibo Lei1, Zexun Wei2, 3* 1 MNR Key Laboratory for Polar Science, Polar Research Institute of China, Shanghai 200136, China 2 Key Laboratory of Marine Science and Numerical Modeling, First Institute of Oceanography, Ministry of Natural
Resources, Qingdao 266061, China 3 Laboratory for Regional Oceanography and Numerical Modeling, Pilot National Laboratory for Marine Science and
Technology (Qingdao), Qingdao 266237, China Received 15 July 2020; accepted 22 July 2020 © Chinese Society for Oceanography and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Rate of surface air temperature increase in the Arctic is roughly twice that of the global average, and this phenomenon is referred to as “Arctic Amplification” (Serreze and Barry, 2011). The Arctic sea ice season (October to September) of 2017–2018 is the second warmest in Arctic since 1900 (Overland et al., 2018); 2014–2018 are the five warmest years in the Arctic since 1900 (Overland et al., 2018). Mean temperatures in Finland, Norway, and Svalbard in May 2018 are the highest in the instrumental record since the early 1900s (NOAA, 2018), and the extensive warm spells over Scandinavia led to extensive forest fires (Overland et al., 2018). Arctic sea ice extent has decreased considerably mostly as a result of atmospheric and ocean warming. Sea ice decline is present in all months, and is the highest in September with a rate of 12.8% per decade since 1979 (Fetterer et al., 2017). The oldest ice, defined as ice that is more than 4 years old, is also normally the thickest ice. The percentage of the oldest ice in the March has reduced by 95% between 1985 and 2018 (Perovich et al., 2018). Thus, compared with 1979–2018 climatology, the Arctic Ocean in the ice season of 2017–2018 was dominated by much younger and thinner ice (Perovich et al., 2018). The oldest and thickest sea ice of the Arctic Ocean generally remains in the region between the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, Greenland, and the North Pole (Lindsay and Schweiger, 2015). Thus, the unprecedented polynyas that appeared in this region during winter 2017–2018 would promote further reduction of multi-year ice (Moore et al., 2018). Artic sea ice reached an annual minimum extent of 4.59×106 km2 on 19 September 2018, which was the sixth lowest since satellite record began in 1979. Apart from Arctic Amplification, Arctic sea ice loss is driven by many complex radiative (e.g., Lee et al., 2017) and non-radiative forcings (e.g., Zhang, 2015), as well as internal variability (e.g., Ding et al., 2017; Kapsch et al., 2019). Projections from the latest generation of general circulation models indicate continued warming in the Arctic at higher rates than at lower latitudes, which would lead to further Arctic sea ice loss (Overland et al., 2014). With current CO2 emission rates, models project that Arctic sea ice extent would fall below 1×106 km2 within 20 to 25 years (SIMIP Community, 2020). Arctic Amplification and sea ice reduction affect the climate,
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