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Abstract. Today's Arctic is characterized by a lengthening of the sea ice melt season, as well as by fast and at times unseasonal melt events. Such anomalous melt cases have been identified in Pacific and Atlantic Arctic sector sea ice studies. Through observational analyses, we document an unprecedented, concurrent marginal ice zone melt event in the Bering Sea and Labrador Sea in March of 2023. Taken independently, variability in the cold-season ice edge at synoptic timescales is common. However, such anomalous, short-term ice loss over either region during the climatological sea ice maxima is uncommon, and the tandem ice loss that occurred qualifies this as a rare event. The atmospheric setting that supported the unseasonal melt events was preceded by a sudden stratospheric warming event amidst background La Niña conditions that led to positive tropospheric height anomalies across much of the Arctic and the development of anomalous mid-troposphere ridges over the ice loss regions. These large-scale anticyclonic centers funneled extremely warm and moist airstreams onto the ice causing melt. Further analysis identified the presence of atmospheric rivers within these warm airstreams whose characteristics likely contributed to this bi-regional ice melt event. Whether such a confluence of anomalous wintertime events associated with troposphere–stratosphere coupling may occur more often in a warming Arctic remains a research area ripe for further exploration. 

Abstract. Today’s Arctic is characterized by a lengthening of the sea ice melt season, but also by fast and at times unseasonal melt events. Such anomalous melt cases have been identified in Pacific and Atlantic Arctic sector sea ice studies. Through observational analyses, we document an unprecedented, simultaneous marginal ice zone melt event in the Bering Sea and Labrador Sea in March of 2023. Taken independently, variability in the cold season ice edge at synoptic time scales is common. However, such anomalous, short-term ice loss over either region during the climatological sea ice maxima is uncommon, and the tandem ice loss that occurred qualifies this as a rare event. The atmospheric setting that supported the unseasonal melt events was preceded by a sudden stratospheric warming event that, along with ongoing La Niña teleconnections, led to positive tropospheric height anomalies across much of the Arctic and the development of anomalous mid-troposphere ridges over the ice loss regions. These large-scale anticyclonic centers funneled extremely warm and moist airstreams onto the ice causing melt. Further analysis identified the presence of atmospheric rivers within these warm airstreams whose characteristics likely contributed to this bi-regional ice melt event. Whether such a confluence of anomalous wintertime events associated with troposphere-stratosphere coupling may occur more often in a warming Arctic remains a research area ripe for further exploration. 

Abstract. An extreme warming event near the North Pole, with 2 m temperature rising above 0 °C, was observed in late December 2015. This specific event has been attributed to cyclones and their associated moisture intrusions. However, little is known about the characteristics and drivers of similar events in the historical record. Here, using data from European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts Reanalysis, version 5 (ERA5), we study these winter extreme warming events with 2 m temperature over a grid point above 0 °C over the high Arctic (poleward of 80° N) that occurred during 1980–2021. In ERA5, such wintertime extreme warming events can only be found over the Atlantic sector. They occur rarely over many grid points, with a total absence during some winters. Furthermore, even when occurring, they tend to be short-lived, with the majority of the events lasting for less than a day. By examining their surface energy budget, we found that these events transition with increasing latitude from a regime dominated by turbulent heat flux into the one dominated by downward longwave radiation. Positive sea level pressure anomalies which resemble blocking over northern Eurasia are identified as a key ingredient in driving these events, as they can effectively deflect the eastward propagating cyclones poleward, leading to intense moisture and heat intrusions into the high Arctic. Using an atmospheric river (AR) detection algorithm, the roles of ARs in contributing to the occurrence of these extreme warming events defined at the grid-point scale are explicitly quantified. The importance of ARs in inducing these events increases with latitude. Poleward of about 83° N, 100 % of these events occurred under AR conditions, corroborating that ARs were essential in contributing to the occurrence of these events. Over the past 4 decades, both the frequency, duration, and magnitude of these events have been increasing significantly. As the Arctic continues to warm, these events are likely to increase in both frequency, duration, and magnitude, with great implications for the local sea ice, hydrological cycle, and ecosystem. 

Abstract Atmospheric rivers (ARs) reaching high-latitudes in summer contribute to the majority of climatological poleward water vapor transport into the Arctic. This transport has exhibited long term changes over the past decades, which cannot be entirely explained by anthropogenic forcing according to ensemble model responses. Here, through observational analyses and model experiments in which winds are adjusted to match observations, we demonstrate that low-frequency, large-scale circulation changes in the Arctic play a decisive role in regulating AR activity and thus inducing the recent upsurge of this activity in the region. It is estimated that the trend in summertime AR activity may contribute to 36% of the increasing trend of atmospheric summer moisture over the entire Arctic since 1979 and account for over half of the humidity trends in certain areas experiencing significant recent warming, such as western Greenland, northern Europe, and eastern Siberia. This indicates that AR activity, mostly driven by strong synoptic weather systems often regarded as stochastic, may serve as a vital mechanism in regulating long term moisture variability in the Arctic. 

Abstract The rapid decline of summer Arctic sea ice over the past few decades has been driven by a combination of increasing greenhouse gases and internal variability of the climate system. However, uncertainties remain regarding spatial and temporal characteristics of the optimal internal atmospheric mode that most favors summer sea ice melting on low-frequency time scales. To pinpoint this mode, we conduct a suite of simulations in which atmospheric circulation is constrained by nudging tropospheric Arctic (60°–90°N) winds within the Community Earth System Model, version 1 (CESM1), to those from reanalysis. Each reanalysis year is repeated for over 10 model years using fixed greenhouse gas concentrations and the same initial conditions. Composites show the strongest September sea ice losses are closely preceded by a common June–August (JJA) barotropic anticyclonic circulation in the Arctic favoring shortwave absorption at the surface. Successive years of strong wind-driven melting also enhance declines in Arctic sea ice through enhancement of the ice–albedo feedback, reaching a quasi-equilibrium response after repeated wind forcing for over 5–6 years, as the effectiveness of the wind-driven ice–albedo feedback becomes saturated. Strong melting favored by a similar wind pattern as observations is detected in a long preindustrial simulation and 400-yr paleoclimate reanalysis, suggesting that a summer barotropic anticyclonic wind pattern represents the optimal internal atmospheric mode maximizing sea ice melting in both the model and natural world over a range of time scales. Considering strong contributions of this mode to changes in Arctic climate, a better understanding of its origin and maintenance is vital to improving future projections of Arctic sea ice. 

Abstract Over the past decades, Arctic climate has exhibited significant changes characterized by strong Pan-Arctic warming and a large scale wind shift trending toward an anticyclonic anomaly centered over Greenland and the Arctic ocean. Recent work has suggested that this wind change is able to warm the Arctic atmosphere and melt sea ice through dynamical-driven warming, moistening and ice drift effects. However, previous examination of this linkage lacks a capability to fully consider the complex nature of the sea ice response to the wind change. In this study, we perform a more rigorous test of this idea by using a coupled high-resolution modelling framework with observed winds nudged over the Arctic that allows for a comparison of these wind-induced effects with observations and simulated effects forced by anthropogenic forcing. Our nudging simulation can well capture observed variability of atmospheric temperature, sea ice and the radiation balance during the Arctic summer and appears to simulate around 30% of Arctic warming and sea ice melting over the whole period (1979-2020) and more than 50% over the period 2000 to 2012, which is the fastest Arctic warming decade in the satellite era. In particular, in the summer of 2020, a similar wind pattern reemerged to induce the second-lowest sea ice extent since 1979, suggesting that large scale wind changes in the Arctic is essential in shaping Arctic climate on interannual and interdecadal time scales and may be critical to determine Arctic climate variability in the coming decades. 

Abstract The rapid Arctic sea ice retreat in the early 21^stcentury is believed to be driven by several dynamic and thermodynamic feedbacks, such as ice-albedo feedback and water vapor feedback. However, the role of clouds in these feedbacks remains unclear since the causality between clouds and these processes is complex. Here, we use NASA CERES satellite products and NCAR CESM model simulations to suggest that summertime low clouds have played an important role in driving sea ice melt by amplifying the adiabatic warming induced by a stronger anticyclonic circulation aloft. The upper-level high pressure regulates low clouds through stronger downward motion and increasing lower troposphere relative humidity. The increased low clouds favor more sea ice melt via emitting stronger longwave radiation. Then decreased surface albedo triggers a positive ice-albedo feedback, which further enhances sea ice melt. Considering the importance of summertime low clouds, accurate simulation of this process is a prerequisite for climate models to produce reliable future projections of Arctic sea ice. 

Abstract Arctic sea ice melting processes in summer due to internal atmospheric variability have recently received considerable attention. A regional barotropic atmospheric process over Greenland and the Arctic Ocean in summer (June–August), featuring either a year-to-year change or a low-frequency trend toward geopotential height rise, has been identified as an essential contributor to September sea ice loss, in both observations and the CESM1 Large Ensemble (CESM-LE) of simulations. This local melting is further found to be sensitive to remote sea surface temperature (SST) variability in the east-central tropical Pacific Ocean. Here, we utilize five available large “initial condition” Earth system model ensembles and 31 CMIP5 models’ preindustrial control simulations to show that the same atmospheric process, resembling the observed one and the one found in the CESM-LE, also dominates internal sea ice variability in summer on interannual to interdecadal time scales in preindustrial, historical, and future scenarios, regardless of the modeling environment. However, all models exhibit limitations in replicating the magnitude of the observed local atmosphere–sea ice coupling and its sensitivity to remote tropical SST variability in the past four decades. These biases call for caution in the interpretation of existing models’ simulations and fresh thinking about models’ credibility in simulating interactions of sea ice variability with the Arctic and global climate systems. Further efforts toward identifying the causes of these model limitations may provide implications for alleviating the biases and improving interannual- and decadal-time-scale sea ice prediction and future sea ice projection. 

Abstract In the past 40 years, the global annual mean surface temperature has experienced a nonuniform warming, differing from the spatially uniform warming simulated by the forced responses of large multimodel ensembles to anthropogenic forcing. Rather, it exhibits significant asymmetry between the Arctic and Antarctic, with intermittent and spatially varying warming trends along the Northern Hemisphere (NH) midlatitudes and a slight cooling in the tropical eastern Pacific. In particular, this “wavy” pattern of temperature changes over the NH midlatitudes features strong cooling over Eurasia in boreal winter. Here, we show that these nonuniform features of surface temperature changes are likely tied together by tropical eastern Pacific sea surface temperatures (SSTs), via a global atmospheric teleconnection. Using six reanalyses, we find that this teleconnection can be consistently obtained as a leading circulation mode in the past century. This tropically driven teleconnection is associated with a Pacific SST pattern resembling the interdecadal Pacific oscillation (IPO), and hereafter referred to as the IPO-related bipolar teleconnection (IPO-BT). Further, two paleo-reanalysis reconstruction datasets show that the IPO-BT is a robust recurrent mode over the past 400 and 2000 years. The IPO-BT mode may thus serve as an important internal mode that regulates high-latitude climate variability on multidecadal time scales, favoring a warming (cooling) episode in the Arctic accompanied by cooling (warming) over Eurasia and the Southern Ocean (SO). Thus, the spatial nonuniformity of recent surface temperature trends may be partially explained by the enhanced appearance of the IPO-BT mode by a transition of the IPO toward a cooling phase in the eastern Pacific in the past decades.