Comprehensive Observational Study in the Seasonal Ice Zone: Role of Air- sea Interaction for Arctic Amplification

Executive Summary: With recent rapid decline of summer Arctic sea-ice, the air-sea interaction over the seasonal ice zone (SIZ) is expected to be much more vigorous, significantly contributing to Arctic Amplification (AA). AA in turns modifies mid-latitude jet streams toward a much wavier pattern, causing extreme weather events over many mid-latitude regions. Our preliminary assessment in this paper demonstrates that high heat flux event (HHFE), much intense heat exchange events during a cold air outbreak in the SIZ, is in particular a key interest, because of its connection to AA and in turn extreme weather in the mid-latitude, especially if we are to improve our seasonal and decadal predictability of the impacts of future Arctic climate changes. Here we propose a comprehensive observational study centered at Korea Polar Research Institute (KOPRI)’s major infrastructures, aiming at accurate evaluation of HHEFs and potentially unveiling their linkages to AA and large-scale circulation. Our proposal includes land-based camp at the northern Barents/Kara Seas and Korean icebreaker ARAON’s excursion in the Chukchi shelf and northern East Siberian Sea. The paper also contains the description of observation techniques for both physical and bio-geochemical parameters within the atmosphere-ocean-sea-ice system. Accurate measurements of such parameters would reveal the entity of air-sea interaction and the way in which air-sea interaction contributes to AA. In the long run the proposed observations can lead to the improvement of numerical models’ capability of the Arctic simulation.