Role of atmospheric variability in driving the "Warm-Arctic, Cold-continent" pattern over the North America sector and sea ice variability over the Chukchi‐Bering Sea

Published in Geophysical Research Letters, 2020

Recommended citation: Guan, Weina, Xianan Jiang, Xuejuan Ren, Gang Chen and Qinghua Ding, 2020: Role of atmospheric variability in driving the "Warm-Arctic, Cold-continent" pattern over the North America sector and sea ice variability over the Chukchi‐Bering Sea, Geophysical Research Letters, doi:10.1029/2020GL088599.

ABSTRACT: While the observed decline of sea ice over the Chukchi-Bering Sea (CBS) has coincided with the ‘‘warm-Arctic, cold-continent” (WACC) pattern over the North America (NA) sector, there is a debate on the causes of the WACC pattern. Here we present a very similar WACC pattern over the NA sector on both interannual and subseasonal time scales. Lead-lag regression analyses on the shorter time scale indicate that an anomalous anticyclonic circulation over Alaska/Yukon in conjunction with the downward surface turbulent heat flux and long-wave radiation anomalies over CBS leads the formation of the WACC pattern by about 1-2 days, while the latter further leads CBS sea ice reduction by about 3 days. These results indicate that atmospheric variability may play an active role in driving both the WACC pattern over NA and CBS sea ice variability.

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