Years of research show that climate change signals are amplified in the Arctic, and that sea ice in this region is sensitive to increases in Arctic warming. Sea ice greatly modifies the exchanges of heat, momentum and mass between the atmosphere and the ocean. So, the timings of the sea ice melt and freeze onsets, as well as the length of the melt and freeze seasons, play a key role in the “heat budget” of the atmosphere-ice-ocean system. In a new study published today in the European Geosciences Union journal The Cryosphere, an international team of scientists synthesized multisource data from 2001 to 2018 to explore the spatiotemporal variations of both surface and basal melt/freeze onsets and uncover the mechanism behind them. These findings could improve our understanding of changes in the atmosphere–ice–ocean system and the mass balance of sea ice in a changing Arctic.
