{"id":23685,"date":"2022-12-06T09:52:21","date_gmt":"2022-12-06T04:07:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/?p=23685"},"modified":"2022-12-06T09:52:23","modified_gmt":"2022-12-06T04:07:23","slug":"first-complete-picture-of-the-arctic-sea-ice-freeze-thaw-cycle-highlights-sea-ice-response-to-climate-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/first-complete-picture-of-the-arctic-sea-ice-freeze-thaw-cycle-highlights-sea-ice-response-to-climate-change\/","title":{"rendered":"First complete picture of the Arctic sea ice freeze-thaw cycle highlights sea ice response to climate change"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

MUNICH\u00a0\u2013 Years of\u00a0research<\/a>\u00a0show that climate change signals are amplified in the Arctic and that sea ice in this region is sensitive to increases in Arctic warming. Sea ice greatly modifies the exchanges of heat, momentum, and mass between the atmosphere and the ocean. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, the timings of the sea ice melt and freeze onsets, as well as the length of the melt and freeze seasons, play a key role in the \u201cheat budget\u201d of the atmosphere-ice-ocean system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Until now, most studies calculated the Arctic melt and freeze onsets using remote sensing observations from the surface, but rarely investigated the freeze-thaw process at the ice bottom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a\u00a0new study<\/a>\u00a0published today in the European Geosciences Union journal\u00a0The Cryosphere<\/a>, an international team of scientists synthesized multisource data from 2001 to 2018 to explore the spatiotemporal variations of both surface and basal melt\/freeze onsets and uncover the mechanism behind them. These findings could improve our understanding of changes in the atmosphere\u2013ice-ocean system and the mass balance of sea ice in the changing Arctic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Timing of ice surface and bottom melt and freeze onsets of all sites: (a)\u00a0SMO, (b)\u00a0SFO, \u00a9\u00a0BMO, and (d)\u00a0BFO. The color codes (note the different scales for different panels) indicate the respective dates. Grey contours denote the 300 and 2000m isobaths. (e) Variations in dates of melt and freeze onset as a function of the latitude.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Possible delay in Arctic sea ice loss?<\/strong>
\u201cThinner ice thickness and thinner snow cover favor earlier basal freeze onset. The ocean plays a cross-seasonal role in regulating the growth or decay of sea ice,\u201d explains lead author\u00a0Long Lin<\/a>\u00a0from the\u00a0Polar Research Institute of China<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The researchers found that the overall average basal freeze onset of Arctic multiyear ice was almost 3 months later than the surface. \u201cBased on synchronous ice and underlying ocean observations, we found the ice basal freeze-up delay relative to the surface, which can be attributed to the regulation of heat capacity of sea ice itself and the oceanic heat release from the ocean mixed layer and subsurface layer,\u201d Lin says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Lin, although thinner ice generally experiences a longer freezing season, the total ice growth still cannot offset the sea ice loss in summer. \u201cFrom another point of view, the self-regulation of the Arctic sea ice-ocean system will delay the loss of Arctic sea ice.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

New insights into the surface and bottom ice melt onsets<\/strong>
The research also found that the most significant temporal difference of melt onsets between the surface and bottom occurred in the Beaufort Gyre region, where basal melt onsets showed more than a half month earlier than the surface. Besides, both multiyear ice and first-year ice in this region exhibit a trend towards earlier basal melt onset, which can be attributed to the earlier warming of the surface ocean caused by thinning of sea ice thickness and increasing of sea ice mobility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These results present the first complete picture of the Arctic sea ice freeze-thaw cycle, and its coupling with the atmosphere atop and the ocean underlying. It also highlights the importance of synchronous comprehensive monitoring of the air-ice-ocean system, which helps explain the physical nature of the coupling process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The researchers call for more intensive and elaborative ice mass balance observations of diverse ice types and simultaneous upper ocean water properties observations in the future. This, they hope, will vastly improve our ability to fully understand the Arctic ice-ocean system.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Years of\u00a0research\u00a0show that climate change signals are amplified in the Arctic and that sea ice in this region is sensitive to increases in Arctic warming. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23686,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-research"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/timing_of_ice_surface_and_bottom_melt_and_freeze_onsets_of_all_sites.png",1269,683,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/timing_of_ice_surface_and_bottom_melt_and_freeze_onsets_of_all_sites-200x200.png",200,200,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/timing_of_ice_surface_and_bottom_melt_and_freeze_onsets_of_all_sites-675x363.png",675,363,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/timing_of_ice_surface_and_bottom_melt_and_freeze_onsets_of_all_sites-768x413.png",750,403,true],"large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/timing_of_ice_surface_and_bottom_melt_and_freeze_onsets_of_all_sites-675x363.png",675,363,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/timing_of_ice_surface_and_bottom_melt_and_freeze_onsets_of_all_sites.png",1269,683,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/timing_of_ice_surface_and_bottom_melt_and_freeze_onsets_of_all_sites.png",1269,683,false],"ultp_layout_landscape_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/timing_of_ice_surface_and_bottom_melt_and_freeze_onsets_of_all_sites-1200x683.png",1200,683,true],"ultp_layout_landscape":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/timing_of_ice_surface_and_bottom_melt_and_freeze_onsets_of_all_sites-870x570.png",870,570,true],"ultp_layout_portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/timing_of_ice_surface_and_bottom_melt_and_freeze_onsets_of_all_sites-600x683.png",600,683,true],"ultp_layout_square":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/timing_of_ice_surface_and_bottom_melt_and_freeze_onsets_of_all_sites-600x600.png",600,600,true],"newspaper-x-single-post":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/timing_of_ice_surface_and_bottom_melt_and_freeze_onsets_of_all_sites-760x490.png",760,490,true],"newspaper-x-recent-post-big":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/timing_of_ice_surface_and_bottom_melt_and_freeze_onsets_of_all_sites-550x360.png",550,360,true],"newspaper-x-recent-post-list-image":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/timing_of_ice_surface_and_bottom_melt_and_freeze_onsets_of_all_sites-95x65.png",95,65,true],"web-stories-poster-portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/timing_of_ice_surface_and_bottom_melt_and_freeze_onsets_of_all_sites.png",640,344,false],"web-stories-publisher-logo":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/timing_of_ice_surface_and_bottom_melt_and_freeze_onsets_of_all_sites.png",96,52,false],"web-stories-thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/timing_of_ice_surface_and_bottom_melt_and_freeze_onsets_of_all_sites.png",150,81,false]},"author_info":{"info":["RevoScience"]},"category_info":"Research<\/a>","tag_info":"Research","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23685","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23685"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23685\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23686"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}