A flip-flopping, yearslong pattern of winds helps control the fate of the Arctic’s sea ice — by regulating how much of the Atlantic Ocean’s relatively warm, salty water sneaks northward into the Arctic Ocean.
“This phase has lasted about 15 years. We’re about at the end,” says physical oceanographer Igor Polyakov of the University of Alaska Fairbanks. “The sea ice will be responding. There’s a great possibility for this rapid change in the system.”
Earth’s busy, interactive layers of ocean and atmosphere feature many different regional and global patterns that toggle between two different phases over years to decades, such as the El Niño and La Niña phases of the El Niño Southern Oscillation (SN: 6/15/23).
The Arctic Dipole is a smaller-scale, regional pattern of winds that is having a global impact, Polyakov and colleagues suggest. To assess its influence, the researchers compared atmospheric wind patterns since 1979 with trends in summer ice extent and thickness gathered from satellite, airplane and shipboard surveys over that time frame. A clear relationship emerged, they say.
2023-08-31 13:14:28
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