Antarctic sea ice multidecadal variability triggered by Southern Annular Mode and deep convection

Antarctic sea ice exerts great influence on Earth’s climate by controlling the exchange of heat, momentum, freshwater, and gases between the atmosphere and ocean. Antarctic sea ice extent has undergone a multidecadal slight increase followed by a substantial decline since 2016. Here we utilize a 300-yr sea ice data assimilation reconstruction and two NOAA/GFDL and five CMIP6 model simulations to demonstrate a multidecadal variability of Antarctic sea ice extent. Stronger westerlies associated with the Southern Annular Mode (SAM) enhance the upwelling of warm and saline water from the subsurface ocean. The consequent salinity increase weakens the upper-ocean stratification, induces deep convection, and in turn brings more subsurface warm and saline water to the surface. This salinity-convection feedback triggered by the SAM provides favorable conditions for multidecadal sea ice decrease. Processes acting in reverse are found to cause sea ice increase, although it evolves slower than sea ice decrease.

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Related Dataset #1 : INM INM-CM5-0 model output prepared for CMIP6 CMIP piControl

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Author Morioka, Y.
Manabe, S.
Zhang, Liping
Delworth, T. L.
Cooke, W.
Nonaka, M.
Behera, S. K.
Publisher UCAR/NCAR - Library
Publication Date 2024-12-01T00:00:00
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Topic Category geoscientificInformation
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Metadata Date 2025-07-10T19:56:32.102912
Metadata Record Identifier edu.ucar.opensky::articles:42410
Metadata Language eng; USA
Suggested Citation Morioka, Y., Manabe, S., Zhang, Liping, Delworth, T. L., Cooke, W., Nonaka, M., Behera, S. K.. (2024). Antarctic sea ice multidecadal variability triggered by Southern Annular Mode and deep convection. UCAR/NCAR - Library. https://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d73r0z6x. Accessed 03 August 2025.

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