Premium
Arctic oscillation and Arctic sea‐ice oscillation
Author(s) -
Wang Jia,
Ikeda Moto
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
geophysical research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.007
H-Index - 273
eISSN - 1944-8007
pISSN - 0094-8276
DOI - 10.1029/1999gl002389
Subject(s) - sea ice , empirical orthogonal functions , arctic oscillation , climatology , arctic ice pack , arctic sea ice decline , north atlantic oscillation , arctic , geology , mode (computer interface) , the arctic , sea ice concentration , oceanography , oscillation (cell signaling) , drift ice , sea ice thickness , computer science , operating system , biology , genetics
The variability of the sea‐ice cover in the Arctic and subpolar regions associated with the Arctic Oscillation (AO) was investigated using historical data from 1901 to 1997. Unrotating principal component analyses (or empirical orthogonal functions, EOFs) were applied to demeaned, normalized sea‐level pressure (SLP), surface air temperature (SAT), and sea‐ice area (SIA) for the periods 1901–97 and 1953–97. The leading SLP EOF mode is the AO. The leading SIA EOF mode is named the Arctic Sea‐Ice Oscillation (ASIO), which accounts for 41% of the total variance for the period of 1901‐1995. This dominant ASIO is AO‐related; its spatial and temporal patterns are consistent with the leading modes of SLP and SAT, and with the total arctic sea‐ice anomalies. The second SIA mode is North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO)‐related because sea‐ice anomalies in the Labrador Sea region and the Greenland Sea region are out of phase. During the last three decades, the arctic sea ice has significantly decreased, which may be the decreasing phase of long term variations.