Observational and Modeling Studies of the Influence of Sea Ice Anomalies on Atmospheric Circulation

Abstract

For many decades the role of sea ice in climate variability has been the subject of considerable speculation. Scientific investigations based on data of varying quantity and quality have appeared rather regularly in the literature since the late nineteenth century. Much of the earlier work focussed on relationships between ice extent, storm tracks and surface temperatures. Apparent multi-year cycles in regional ice cover were also frequent topics in the earlier publications, although these cycles have generally failed the test of time. More recently, the emphasis has shifted to ice-ocean coupling and the role of sea ice in greenhouse warming. As the survey presented in Section 3 will indicate, the aggregate of sea ice research over the past few decades contains a “spectral gap” in the sense that there have been few applications to monthly and seasonal forecasting. However, ice-atmosphere interactions over shorter and longer timescales have been studied sufficiently to permit some meaningful inferences about the short-term climatic roles of sea ice.