The 2023 record low Antarctic sea ice traced to synergistic influences of preconditioning, wind-induced transport and the ice albedo feedback

doi:10.21203/rs.3.rs-3743543/v1

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The 2023 record low Antarctic sea ice traced to synergistic influences of preconditioning, wind-induced transport and the ice albedo feedback

https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-3743543/v1

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Antarctic sea ice extent (SIE) reached a new record low in February 2023. In this study, we trace this record back to its possible origins by providing a detailed view on the evolution of the coupled ocean-atmosphere-sea ice system during the 12 months preceding the record. The impact of preceding conditions is assessed with observations, reanalyses, and output from the regional ocean-sea ice coupled model NEMO3.6-LIM3. We find that the 2022–2023 annual cycle was characterized by consistently low SIE throughout the year, anomalously high SIE melting rates in December 2022, and nearly circumpolar negative SIE anomalies in February 2023. From March to August 2022, advection-induced positive air temperature anomalies inhibited the growth of sea ice in the Weddell and Bellingshausen Seas. Concurrently, strong southerly winds in the Eastern Ross Sea caused by an anomalously deep Amundsen Sea Low in spring transported significant volumes of sea ice northward, contributing to severe melting offshore in December while triggering the ice-albedo feedback onshore through coastal divergence. This ice-albedo feedback was unusually active in late 2022 and favored accelerated melt towards the minimum. This study highlights the impacts of multifactorial processes during the preceding seasons to explain the recent summer sea ice minima.

Earth and environmental sciences/Climate sciences/Cryospheric science

Earth and environmental sciences/Climate sciences/Atmospheric science

Antarctic sea ice plays an essential role in the global climate system through its impacts on ocean-atmosphere interactions^1,2, ocean circulation^3,4, ice-shelf stability^5–7, ice-sheet surface mass balance^8.9 and ecosystems^10,11. The current state of Antarctic sea ice characterized by frequent record-low sea ice extents (SIE) since 2016 after a slight long-term increase (1979–2014) has been gaining a lot of attention^12,13. On 21 February 2023, SIE reached a new summer minimum of 1.79 million km^{2 14}, 6.8% lower than the 2022 minimum and 38% lower than the climatology (1981–2010). Negative SIE anomalies have remained throughout the advance season in 2023 and led to the lowest winter maximum ever observed (16.9 million km²) on 10 September 2023. To better understand the dominant mechanisms behind the recent extremes, it is necessary to examine and compare each case individually since both similarities and differences exist among them^13,15.

Previous studies on the exceptional sea ice melt during austral spring and summer 2016–2017 have identified several key drivers susceptible to produce low SIE conditions. These drivers include anomalous atmospheric meridional heat advection associated with a positive zonal wavenumber-3 (ZW3) pattern since August, a deepened Amundsen Sea Low (ASL) in September, a near-record negative Southern Annular Mode (SAM) in November^16–18 and anomalous subsurface ocean warming^19–21. Those local anomalies have themselves been connected to remote potential drivers like the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO)¹⁶, the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD)²², stratospheric circulation anomalies²² and decadal sea surface temperature (SST) variability in the tropics^23,24. In contrast, the 2022 and 2023 summer minima appeared in the context of a positive SAM but were also impacted by an anomalously warm state of the subsurface ocean¹³. The lagged impact of a deepened ASL on summer sea ice through enhanced sea ice export and ice-albedo feedback has been suggested to play an important role in this case^25–27. Studies have already suggested the possible causes of the 2023 summer minimum, which occurred at a time of a very strong positive SAM and after three La Niña years^13,14. Further investigation is still necessary to determine the specific conditions leading to this minimum and by this to better understand the different processes potentially controlling Antarctic sea ice minima.

In this study, we conducted a year-round (March 2022–February 2023) analysis and investigated the link between the summer 2023 minimum and the conditions during the preceding months using satellite observations, atmospheric reanalyses, and an ice-ocean coupled model simulation. By conducting an analysis of these datasets, we are able to propose a consistent story that explains how the 2023 SIE record developed owing to the atmospheric, oceanic, and sea ice processes that operated over the 12 months before the record. Specifically, we demonstrate how the deepened ASL in spring triggered the positive ice-albedo feedback and resulted in the summer sea ice loss in the eastern Ross Sea.

Observations. We use the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) daily 25-km gridded SIC products (NSIDC-0051)²⁸ from 1979 to 2022, while near-real-time products (NSIDC-0081)²⁹ are used since January 2023. The SIC data is based on passive microwave measurements from the Nimbus-7 SMMR and DMSP SSM/I-SSMIS instruments that are processed with the NASA Team algorithm. We also use the daily NSIDC sea ice index providing consistently processed sea ice extent since 1979, in order to compare the annual cycles among different events.

Reanalyses. Monthly mean sea level pressure (SLP), 2-m air temperature (T2m), 10-m wind ($\nu$10), 1000-hPa air temperature and wind, surface heat fluxes (short-wave radiative flux, long-wave radiative flux, sensible heat flux, latent heat flux) over the period 1979–2023 are obtained from the ERA5 reanalysis³⁰. Temperature advection at 1000 hPa is calculated as $-\stackrel{⃑}{v}\cdot \nabla T$ with $\stackrel{⃑}{v}$ and $T$ being the 1000-hPa horizontal winds and air temperature, respectively. All these variables are available on a grid of 0.25°×0.25° resolution and have been widely used in Antarctic studies^31–33. We use 1981–2010 climatology as a baseline to calculate the monthly anomalies following the NSIDC standard.

Amundsen Sea Low (ASL) indices. We use ASL indices³⁴ to quantify the ASL changes and connect them with sea ice changes. The ASL depth and position are defined as the minimum pressure and its longitude within the ASL sector (170°–298° E, 80°–60° S), respectively. ASL indices are derived from monthly ERA5 reanalysis data surface pressure fields.

Models output. A Pan-Antarctic Regional OCEan-sea ice coupled model (PAROCE) integration is used to investigate the sea ice thickness (SIT) budget in the eastern Ross Sea, as SIT measurements from satellite altimetry are still prone to large uncertainties^35,36. The PAROCE configuration is based on the NEMO3.6 ocean model³⁷ coupled with the LIM3.6 sea ice model^38,39. The configuration covers the Southern Ocean (SO) south of 30° S. This model is run at a horizontal resolution close to 1/4° (decreasing from 24 km at the 30° S boundary to 14 km at 60° S) and features 75 vertical levels (increasing from 1 m at the surface to about 200 m at depth). The model and configuration have been fully described and evaluated⁴⁰ and applied on a recent Antarctic sea ice study¹⁵. In this study, the model is driven by ERA5 atmospheric reanalysis over the SO domain from Jan 1980 to Feb 2023, and is forced by the ORAS5 oceanic reanalysis at the ocean boundaries⁴¹.

Before the SIT budget analysis is conducted from the model output, the model performance has been evaluated. The correlations between standardized SIE anomalies of NSIDC observations and model output in four seasons range from 0.68 to 0.93, showing a high consistency for the long-term changes (Supplementary Fig. 1). Specifically, the modeled 2023 summer (DJF) SIE is more than 1 standard deviation below the model climatological average as the observations. Besides, the positive sea ice edge (defined as grid cells where sea ice concentration (SIC) is between 14% and 16%) anomalies in October and the following abrupt decline in November are captured by the PAROCE simulation (Supplementary Fig. 2b). As we will see, the eastern Ross Sea (130-160W) and, specifically, the coastal Amundsen polynya region (70–80S, 120–180W), are key areas to look at if we want to understand the 2023 minimum. The modeled SIC and SIT distributions in this region in December are compared against SIC observations (NSIDC) and SIT reanalysis (The Global Ice-Ocean Modeling and Assimilation System, GIOMAS) which is widely used in the Antarctic sea ice research (Supplementary Fig. 3)^42,43. The regional average SIC (SIT) anomalies of model outputs and NSIDC (GIOMAS) are − 25.3% (-0.6 m) and − 13.7% (-0.4 m), respectively. Generally, the PAROCE simulation can capture the main features from observations and is thus useful for the SIT budget analysis.

Sea ice volume flux. Modeled monthly SIC, SIT and sea ice drift (SID) are used to calculate the sea ice volume flux outwards the Amundsen polynya region (70–80S, 120–180W). The values on the original grids are interpolated on the boundaries of that region at regular intervals based on horizontal resolutions in the model. The sea ice volume flux across the three gates enclosing the polynya region (indicated in Fig. 2p) is calculated as:

$$flux=\sum _{i=1}^{n}{SIC}_{i}{SIT}_{i}{SID}_{i}\varDelta L$$

where ${SIC}_{i}$, ${SIT}_{i}$ and ${SID}_{i}$ denote the SIC, SIT and SID at each grid point; $n$ denotes the number of intervals along the three gates; $\varDelta L$ denotes the length of each interval.

Characteristics of 2022–2023 annual cycle. We start our analysis by characterizing the development of SIE from March 2022 to February 2023 and by placing it in the broader historical context. Figure 1a displays the evolution of observed SIE from March 2022 to February 2023 and matches it with the corresponding observations for 2016–2017 and 2021–2022 (i.e., the two lowest years on record before the event under study), 2017–2018 (i.e., the year following the 2016–2017 summer minimum), as well as the climatological average (1981–2010). We find that the 2023 record results from the combination of two characteristics. First, a consistently lower-than-average SIE prevailed during the whole ice growth season, which found its origin as early as February 2022 (i.e., the previous record), suggesting a strong role for preconditioning. Second, melt rates (measured as day-to-day changes in sea ice extent; Fig. 1b) were unusually high in December 2022, reaching the absolute maximum in melting rate for all the investigated years. These exceptional melt rates further accelerated sea ice loss towards the summer minimum. It is also worth noting that the 2022–2023 sea ice started to retreat at a normal timing in September (Figs. 1a, 1b), unlike the earlier retreat during former two record lows^12,44.

The SIE is a limited indicator of changes as it neglects spatial aspects. A look at the spatial expression of the anomalies discussed above can further direct the search for the mechanisms underlying these changes. On 21 February, when the SIE reached its minimum value, SIC anomalies displayed a nearly circumpolar pattern except in the western Indian Ocean (Fig. 1c), while sea ice anomalies were more regional in the former minimum events¹⁵. The negative SIC anomalies in 2023 are particularly evident in the Amundsen, Bellingshausen and Ross Seas regions. A look at the SIC melt rate anomalies in December (Fig. 1d) reveals that the intense melt rates in SIE in December are dominated by strong SIC changes in the north-eastern Ross Sea.

Based on these observations, the 2023 summer SIE minimum can be characterized as (1) having inherited low SIE conditions from the previous summer (2022) and persisted throughout the year, (2) having resulted from exceptional late-spring/early-summer melt rates, which mostly operated in the north-eastern Ross Sea where sea ice normally survives into the summer, and (3) having displayed consistent reductions in other sectors where summer sea ice is climatologically extensive. One exception is the western Indian sector, but the contribution of this sector to the total SIE is negligible (5% for the SIE climatological average)⁴⁵.

Recent studies pointed out that subsurface warming played a decisive role in causing more frequent sea ice extremes^13,21. A potential regime shift to persistent low-extent sea ice state was also suggested. To explore if the subsurface warming has had an effect on the 2023 minimum, we inspected the upper-ocean temperature anomalies in different regions derived from the PAROCE simulation during 2022–2023 (Supplementary Fig. 4). We find that warmer subsurface ocean conditions have prevailed in all basins of the Southern Ocean in the first 100 m of the ocean, except in the Amundsen and Bellingshausen Seas in summer. The warming was particularly prominent in the Indian and Pacific sectors. We note that the oceanic warming is not specifically high in the eastern Ross Sea, which indicates the potential impacts of other processes on the extreme sea ice melt there. From a long-term perspective (Supplementary Fig. 5), it appears that a remarkable warming has also been initiated in these sectors since 2019. A warmer ocean state can favor the basal and lateral melting or hinder the basal growth in such event, as basal melt is a dominant source for sea ice melting in the Southern Ocean^46,47, but the detailed mechanism of ice-ocean interactions is beyond the scope of this study. In the following, we will focus on the impacts of local atmospheric processes on the sea ice anomalies and especially investigate the cause of the high melting rates in the eastern Ross Sea.

Local impacts of atmospheric anomalies. Now that we have described the temporal and spatial characteristics of SIE throughout 2022–2023, we can turn our attention to the candidate mechanisms that drove these changes. We examine here the atmospheric variables and SIC anomalies and their potential mutual connections during the four seasons of 2022–2023. Note that the division of the Southern Ocean here (Fig. 2m) is made as to highlight the special feature of the eastern Ross Sea.

In autumn, a slightly deepened ASL established in the eastern Ross Sea (Fig. 2a) and air temperature was anomalously warm in the eastern Pacific region (ABS + ERS; Fig. 2e). The intraseasonal air temperature changes mainly come from strong heat transport from lower latitudes through warm air advection (Fig. 2i), hindering offshore sea ice growth in the eastern Pacific region. In the coastal region of the Ross Sea, less sea ice and warmer air temperature can be seen while cold advection started to prevail and led to decreased temperature anomalies at the end of autumn.

During winter, the negative SLP anomaly moved eastward to the ABS region (Fig. 2b), causing positive temperature anomalies in the Weddell Sea, Bellingshausen Sea, eastern Indian Ocean (Fig. 2f) with warm advection and negative SIC anomalies there (Fig. 2j, 2n). In contrast, more sea ice was produced due to cold advection in the Ross Sea, as expected with the typical ASL pattern.

During spring, the SLP anomaly deepened in the Bellingshausen Sea (Fig. 2c), accompanied by strong warm advection in the Bellingshausen Sea and Eastern Antarctic and cold advection in the Ross Sea (Fig. 2k). Consequently, a SIC dipole (positive anomalies in the Ross Sea and negative ones in the Bellingshausen Sea) appeared and SIC decreased in the Eastern Antarctic (Fig. 2o). Due to anomalous northerly winds, more ice was transported to the northern Ross Sea and the ice edge was pushed further north by about 2 degrees of latitude till late November (Supplementary Fig. 2a). After that, sea ice edge anomalies retreated abruptly by about 5 degrees of latitude in December. Little ice survived in the Bellingshausen Sea in October after the consistent warm advection pattern that had prevailed.

In summer, SLP presented an annular negative anomaly over the whole Antarctic and the regional temperature anomalies were limited. Sea ice experienced stronger melting than usual in most regions, consistent with warm advections in the ABS and Eastern Antarctic (Fig. 2l). Nevertheless, a large polynya appeared along the coast of Amundsen Sea in December (see the red domain highlighted in Fig. 2p). Interestingly, air temperature anomalies and advection anomalies were only weakly positive over that domain in summer (Fig. 2h). This apparent inconsistency between the sea ice state and the atmospheric forcing pushed us to elucidate the origins of this polynya from the aspect of preconditions since the SIE reduction in this region (70–80S, 120–180W) accounts for 37% of the total reduction in February.

Impact of spring preconditions in the eastern Ross Sea. Guided by the analysis above, we now focus on the preceding atmospheric impacts on sea ice anomalies in the eastern Ross Sea. In this region, sea ice edge anomalies are exclusively positive in spring and dropped abruptly afterwards (Supplementary Fig. 2a), while there was an extreme melting rate and the development of a coastal polynya in December.

Since the sea ice anomalies happened without significant atmospheric anomalies, we investigate the impacts of preceding sea ice volume (SIV) anomalies by showing the modeled SIC and SIV changes during October-December 2022 and climatology from the PAROCE configuration in the polynya region (Fig. 3a, 3b). The performance of the model output has been assessed (see Methods, Supplementary Figs. 1–3) and the model is considered to be sufficiently realistic to reproduce sea ice anomalies in this region. Although SIC showed few anomalies and remained high before December, the SIV has already presented large negative anomalies since the beginning of sea ice growth in 2022 based on the model outputs, indicating that the generally thinner ice along the coast in spring is a potential precondition for the formation of polynya. Different from the conditions inside (onshore) the polynya region, sea ice displayed higher SIC than average outside (offshore) the region (Fig. 3c) and positive anomalies in SIV (Fig. 3d) before December. After that, both SIC and SIV started to decrease. This dipole between negative SIV anomalies close to the coast and positive ones offshore suggests an impact of northward transport from coastal region to northeastern Ross Sea. A SIT tendency budget analysis is further conducted below with the model outputs to confirm this hypothesis (note that the modeled SIT refers to the grid-cell average thickness and is equal to the SIV divided by the grid cell area).

Figure 4 shows the modeled SIT budgets inside and outside the Amundsen polynya region during October–December 2022 and climatology and each term has been quantified in Supplementary Table 1–2. The daily SIT changes have been divided into growth terms (basal growth, lateral growth, growth due to snow-ice formation, growth due to dynamic transportation) and melt terms (surface melt, lateral melt, basal melt, melt due to dynamic transportation). Inside the polynya region, growth terms in 2022 are generally similar to the climatology, except some transportation-induced growth in December due to anomalous northerly winds (Fig. 2l). However, extreme transportation-induced melt dominated the total SIT tendency from October to late November 2022 (more than twice the climatology), indicating a strong outwards SIV transport. From mid-November to end-December 2022, anomalous melting developed rapidly. This melt was first primarily driven by surface melt (three-fold of climatology), accompanied by growing negative SIC anomalies (Fig. 3a) and thus more open water fraction. From late November onward, oceanic melt (basal melt plus lateral melt) took over and accounted for the largest contribution of the total melt (as also observed for the climatology). In late December, the total melt decreased due to little SIV left (Fig. 3b). Correspondingly, outside the polynya region, transportation-induced growth, which originates from sea ice transportation, is significantly larger during October to November 2022 than climatology. Surface melt is also anomalously large from late-November to mid-December 2022 while oceanic melt is comparable to climatology. Checking the modeled snow depth anomalies over the polynya region (Supplementary Fig. 6), we find that the snow depth presented year-round negative anomalies and a marked drop from September to December, suggesting that surface melt was accompanied by a thinner late-winter/spring snow pack on sea ice.

We also analyze the net surface heat flux anomalies from ERA5 reanalysis, and further separate it into long-wave radiation, short-wave radiation, latent heat flux and sensible heat flux (Supplementary Fig. 7). The net surface heat flux shows increased absorption in the polynya region, dominated by net short-wave radiation flux anomalies. By splitting the net short-wave flux into a downward and an upward component, we can attribute the net surface heat flux anomalies to a less reflective surface, thus implying that the positive ice-albedo feedback⁴⁸ controls those net short-wave anomalies.

The deepened ASL in spring has been demonstrated as the potential trigger of positive ice-albedo feedback accompanied with a large sea ice area flux outwards the region²⁷. Here, we use the model outputs to calculate the monthly SIV transport outwards the three gates of Amundsen polynya region, and to connect them with the changing ASL index with the ice-albedo feedback initiation. Specifically, supplementary Fig. 8 displays the anomalies of the ASL depth, the ASL longitudinal position, the ERA5 meridional winds, the SIV transport, and the modeled albedo during August–December 2022. The ASL remained deeper than in the climatology throughout the entire winter, spring and summer seasons. In October, though the depth anomalies were slightly smaller, the ASL was located more eastward than usual, bringing strong southerly winds in the polynya region. Similar ASL conditions lasted until November, resulting in the largest SIV transport anomalies outwards. Consequently, large fractions of open water appeared, surface albedo decreased, and upper-ocean was heated by solar energy, triggering the positive ice-albedo feedback.

Concluding remarks. The new Antarctic sea ice minimum in summer 2023 happened following the last minimum in 2022. The 2022–2023 sea ice evolution featured year-round lower-than-average SIE since March, extremely high melting rate in December in the northeastern Ross Sea and a circumpolar melting in summer. In general, negative sea ice anomalies are consistent with advection-induced air temperature anomalies, especially in the Weddell Sea, Bellingshausen Sea and Eastern Antarctic. In the Eastern Ross Sea, strong southerly winds driven by ASL transported sea ice along the coast northward, forming a large polynya and increasing the solar absorption of upper ocean. As a result, severe surface melting happened and the ice-albedo feedback amplified the initial change.

The recurrent low summer sea ice minimums in recent years as well as the exceptionally low winter sea ice maximum in 2023 pose a direct threat to coastal areas. The potential implications encompass coastal erosion, reduced ice-shelf stability, and disruptions to ecosystems. Consecutive observations and improved model performances are imperative to understand the multiscale variabilities inherent in the evolving state of Antarctic sea ice.

Competing interest statement

The authors declare no competing interests.

Author contributions

Qinghua Yang conceived the idea for the study; Jinfei Wang, François Massonnet, Hugues Goosse and Hao Luo performed the calculations, and drafted the manuscript; Antoine Barthélemy conducted the experiment; All authors critically discussed the results and contributed to the writing throughout the whole process. Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to Qinghua Yang ([email protected]).

Acknowledgment

This study was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 41941009), the National Key R&D Program of China (No. 2022YFE0106300), and the Southern Marine Science and Engineering Guangdong Laboratory (Zhuhai) (NO. SML2022SP401). This work has received support from the Belgian Science Policy (BELSPO) project RESIST ("Recent Arctic and Antarctic sea ice lows: same causes, same impacts? »)

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The 2023 record low Antarctic sea ice traced to synergistic influences of preconditioning, wind-induced transport and the ice albedo feedback

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