Mutual effects of wind speed, air temperature and sea ice concentration in the Arctic and their teleconnections with climate variability in the eastern Baltic Sea region

Abstract

The Arctic is a key region from the perspective of the climatic change. Over the past half century, the Arctic region has warmed at about twice the global rate. It is essential to document and understand the changes, which is much more difficult in the Arctic than for example in the middle-latitudes. One of the biggest problem in the investigations is the spatial irregularity of data. Meteorological stations, which are difficult and expensive to establish and maintain, are sparsely distributed over the Arctic Ocean. We had a rare opportunity to use unique data collected during the Tara expedition. These data were not included into data assimilations and had a high vertical resolution. This gave us a chance to validate atmospheric reanalyses, which are widely applied in the Arctic research. The first ranked was ERA-Interim, still, no single product seems to agree better in all fields. The best reanalyses product for investigating near-surface variables turned out to be NCEP-CFSR. We used this reanalyses product to reveal interactions between 10 m wind speed and the key element of the Arctic climate system – the sea ice. Results showed that not only near-surface winds are influencing the sea ice; also, sea ice is influencing the near-surface winds. Decreasing sea ice generates less stable stratification and stronger near-surface winds. With good vertical resolution data from Tara expedition, for the first time, low-level jets and their generation mechanisms were characterised in the central Arctic. It helps modellers to improve models in the Arctic region. Why we should be interested in changes and interactions in the Arctic region? Because changes there may influence our weather and climate. Results showed that the temperature and wind speed at the 1000 hPa in the eastern Baltic Sea region have significant teleconnection with the sea ice concentration in some regions of the Arctic Ocean in all seasons. By tracking down the teleconnections between the rapidly changing Arctic region and the eastern Baltic Sea region we can get valuable information about possible future trends even if the changes in both regions were caused by a third factor. First attempts has been done to reveal the physical background of these interactions. Future work is needed to improve the understanding about it.