Temporal Means and Variability of Arctic Sea Ice Melt and Freeze Season Climate Indicators Using a Satellite Climate Data Record
1
Cooperative Institute for Climate and Satellites–North Carolina (CICS–NC), North Carolina State University, Asheville, NC 28801, USA
2
Polar Science Center, Applied Physics Laboratory, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98105, USA
3
Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center & NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, University of Maryland, Greenbelt, MD 20771, USA
4
National Snow and Ice Data Center, Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES), University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309, USA
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Remote Sens. 2018, 10(9), 1328; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs10091328
Received: 5 July 2018 / Revised: 10 August 2018 / Accepted: 16 August 2018 / Published: 21 August 2018
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Remote Sensing of Essential Climate Variables and Their Applications)
Information on the timing of Arctic snow and ice melt onset, sea ice opening, retreat, advance, and closing, can be beneficial to a variety of stakeholders. Sea ice modelers can use information on the evolution of the ice cover through the rest of the summer to improve their seasonal sea ice forecasts. The length of the open water season (as derived from retreat/advance dates) is important for human activities and for wildlife. Long-term averages and variability of these dates as climate indicators are beneficial to business strategic planning and climate monitoring. In this study, basic characteristics of temporal means and variability of Arctic sea ice climate indicators derived from a satellite-based climate data record from March 1979 to February 2017 melt and freeze seasons are described. Our results show that, over the Arctic region, anomalies of snow and ice melt onset, ice opening and retreat dates are getting earlier in the year at a rate of more than 5 days per decade, while that of ice advance and closing dates are getting later at a rate of more than 5 days per decade. These significant trends resulted in significant upward trends for anomalies of inner and outer ice-free periods at a rate of nearly 12 days per decade. Small but significant downward trends of seasonal ice loss and gain period anomalies were also observed at a rate of −1.48 and −0.53 days per decade, respectively. Our analyses also demonstrated that the means of these indicators and their trends are sensitive to valid data masks and regional averaging methods.
View Full-Text
Keywords:
Arctic sea ice; climate data record; climate indicator; decadal trend; melt onset; sea ice retreat; sea ice freeze-up; variability
▼
Show Figures
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited
MDPI and ACS Style
Peng, G.; Steele, M.; Bliss, A.C.; Meier, W.N.; Dickinson, S. Temporal Means and Variability of Arctic Sea Ice Melt and Freeze Season Climate Indicators Using a Satellite Climate Data Record. Remote Sens. 2018, 10, 1328.
Show more citation formats
Note that from the first issue of 2016, MDPI journals use article numbers instead of page numbers. See further details here.
Search more from Scilit