Importance of heat transport and local air‐sea heat fluxes for Barents Sea climate variability

Abstract

An isopycnic coordinate ocean model has been used to investigate the importance of different mechanisms on the Barents Sea climate variability for the period 1948–2006 Observed and simulated time series from the Kola Section are used to evaluate the model, and the model captures both the temperature and its variability. Based on lagged correlations between different climatological time series, it is shown here that heat transport through the Barents Sea Opening and solar heat flux are about equally important to the climate variability in the Barents Sea. The heat transport has greater potential of predictability due to a relatively long time lag. Furthermore, the non‐solar and the net heat flux variability is governed by fluctuations in the oceanic heat content. All time series considered important for the Barents Sea climate variability show significant correlation to the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) pattern on a decadal time scale. As the associated low pressure system in the Nordic Seas moves eastward from 1948–1977 to 1978–2006, the correlation between NAO and heat transports into the Barents Sea becomes higher.

Recent advances in understanding the Arctic climate system state and change from a sea ice perspective: a review

“…A general large-scale relationship between ocean northward heat transport in the Norwegian Sea and Arctic ice cover is considered to be well established (e.g. Sandø et al, 2010, Smedsrud et al, 2010. It was long unclear to what extent processes connecting Atlantic water with ice melt could be described realistically.…”

Predictability of the Barents Sea Ice in Early Winter: Remote Effects of Oceanic and Atmospheric Thermal Conditions from the North Atlantic

“…Numerical simulations demonstrate that the interannual variability and longer-term decrease in the sea ice area reflect the variability of the Atlantic inflow (Årthun and Schrum 2010;Sandø et al 2010;Årthun et al 2012;Koenigk and Brodeau 2014). Recently, Schlichtholz (2013) pointed out based on observational data that the wintertime (December-March) surface air temperature and sea ice variability is to a large extent driven by anomalous local meridional winds.…”

Dense water formation and circulation in the Barents Sea

“…Warm periods are characterized by higher salinities, less ice (short freezing season) and higher air-sea heat fluxes (Årthun and Schrum, 2010). To evaluate the sensitivity of the different banks to Ådlandsvik and Loeng, 1991;Sandø et al, 2010).…”

“…The MICOM setup from which the boundary data were generated is described in Sandø et al (2010). The new advection scheme, a total variation diminishing (TVD) scheme, is monotonicity preserving and has very low numerical diffusion (Sweby, 1984), thus providing a better representation of fronts in temperature and salinity.…”