EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

High interannual variability of sea ice thickness in the Arctic region

Seymour Laxon (), Neil Peacock and Doug Smith
Additional contact information
Seymour Laxon: University College London
Neil Peacock: University College London
Doug Smith: Met Office Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research

Nature, 2003, vol. 425, issue 6961, 947-950

Abstract: Abstract Possible future changes in Arctic sea ice cover and thickness, and consequent changes in the ice-albedo feedback, represent one of the largest uncertainties in the prediction of future temperature rise1,2. Knowledge of the natural variability of sea ice thickness is therefore critical for its representation in global climate models3,4. Numerical simulations suggest that Arctic ice thickness varies primarily on decadal timescales3,5,6 owing to changes in wind and ocean stresses on the ice7,8,9,10, but observations have been unable to provide a synoptic view of sea ice thickness, which is required to validate the model results3,6,9. Here we use an eight-year time-series of Arctic ice thickness, derived from satellite altimeter measurements of ice freeboard, to determine the mean thickness field and its variability from 65° N to 81.5° N. Our data reveal a high-frequency interannual variability in mean Arctic ice thickness that is dominated by changes in the amount of summer melt11, rather than by changes in circulation. Our results suggest that a continued increase in melt season length would lead to further thinning of Arctic sea ice.

Date: 2003
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature02050 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:425:y:2003:i:6961:d:10.1038_nature02050

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/nature02050

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-19
Handle: RePEc:nat:nature:v:425:y:2003:i:6961:d:10.1038_nature02050