In January 2016, the Arctic experienced an extremely anomalous warming event after an extraordinary increase in air temperature at the end of 2015. During this event, a strong intrusion of warm and moist air and an increase in downward longwave radiation, as well as a loss of sea ice in the Barents and Kara seas, were observed. Observational analyses revealed that the abrupt warming was triggered by the entry of a strong Atlantic windstorm into the Arctic in late December 2015, which brought enormous moist and warm air masses to the Arctic. Although the storm terminated at the eastern coast of Greenland in late December, it was followed by a prolonged blocking period in early 2016 that sustained the extreme Arctic warming. Numerical experiments indicate that the warming effect of sea ice loss and associated upward turbulent heat fluxes are relatively minor in this event. This result suggests the importance of the synoptically driven warm and moist air intrusion into the Arctic as a primary contributing factor of this extreme Arctic warming event.

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A B S T R A C T Changes in Arctic clouds during boreal winter (December through February) and their relationship with sea ice and atmospheric conditions in recent decades have been examined using satellite and reanalysis data, and they are compared with output data from atmospheric general circulation model (AGCM) experiments. All the datasets used in this study consistently show that cloud amount over the Arctic Ocean (north of 678N) decreased until the late 1990s but rapidly increased thereafter. Cloud increase in recent decade was a salient feature in the lower troposphere over a large part of the Arctic Sea, in association with obvious increase of lower tropospheric temperature and moisture. The comparison between the two periods before and after 1997 indicates that interannual covariability of Arctic clouds and lower tropospheric temperature and moisture was significantly enhanced after the late 1990s. Large reduction of sea ice cover during boreal winter decreased lower tropospheric static stability and deepened the planetary boundary layer. These changes led to an enhanced upward moisture transport and cloud formation, which led to considerable longwave radiative forcing and, as a result, strengthened the cloudÁmoistureÁtemperature relationship in the lower troposphere. AGCM experiments under reduced sea ice conditions support those results obtained by satellite and reanalysis datasets reproducing the increases in cloud amount and lower tropospheric temperature and their enhanced covariability.

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