Abstract
The sea ice cover has experienced substantial changes in Antarctica in the past decades, yet its responses to the long-term trend of the local atmosphere are still not clear. With the aid of an Antarctic coupled sea ice-ocean-ice shelf model, the sea ice seasonality in response to the long-term trend of the local atmospheric forcing has been quantified based on a sea ice budget analysis. Significantly spatial variabilities have been found in the Antarctic sea ice in response to the long-term trend of the local atmospheric forcing. The sea ice area and volume decrease in the Weddell Sea and increase in the Ross Sea throughout the year. In the Amundsen-Bellingshausen Seas sector, the sea ice area decreases from December to June and increases from July to November, while the sea ice volume decreases throughout the year. In the Indian-Western Pacific Oceans sector, the sea ice area decreases from January to May and increases from June to December, while the sea ice volume increases throughout the year. The long-term trend of the local atmospheric forcing modulates the sea ice loss in the melting period mainly through modifying the ice-ocean heat flux over the ice base, while it governs the sea ice growth in the freezing period by the combined effects of the ice-ocean heat flux and the atmosphere-ocean heat flux. Although the trend of the surface wind can also lead to distinct variations by the local sea ice convergence/divergence, the integrated contributions over the basin scale are relatively small.
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Data availability
The AMSR family sea ice concentration data are accessed at https://seaice.uni-bremen.de/data/. The ICESat sea ice thickness data are accessed at https://nsidc.org/data/nsidc-0304/. The JRA-55 data are accessed at http://jra.kishou.go.jp/JRA-55/. The Antarctic model configuration and simulation data are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
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Acknowledgements
The authors thank the two anonymous reviewers for the constructive comments. This work is supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (2018YFA0605902), by the innovation Group Project of Southern Marine Science and Engineering Guangdong Laboratory (Zhuhai) (311021008), and by the Independent Research Foundation of Southern Marine Science and Engineering Guangdong Laboratory (Zhuhai) (SML2021SP306).
Funding
FZ and ZT are supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (2018YFA0605902). CL is supported by the innovation Group Project of Southern Marine Science and Engineering Guangdong Laboratory (Zhuhai) (311021008), and by the Independent Research Foundation of Southern Marine Science and Engineering Guangdong Laboratory (Zhuhai) (SML2021SP306).
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Zhao, F., Liang, X., Tian, Z. et al. Impacts of the long-term atmospheric trend on the seasonality of Antarctic sea ice. Clim Dyn 60, 1865–1883 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-022-06420-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-022-06420-z