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Heat Transport Pathways into the Arctic and their Connections to Surface Air Temperatures

Preprint published in 2018 by Daniel Mewes, Christoph Jacobi
This paper is available in a repository.
This paper is available in a repository.

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Preprint: policy unknown
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Postprint: policy unknown
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Published version: policy unknown

Abstract

Arctic Amplification causes the meridional temperature gradient between middle and high latitudes to decrease. It is assumed that through this decrease the large-scale circulation changes and therefore the meridional transport of heat and moisture increases. This in turn may increase Arctic warming even further. To investigate patterns of Arctic temperature, horizontal fluxes and their changes in time, we analyzed ERA-Interim daily winter data of vertically integrated horizontal heat transport using Self-Organizing Maps (SOM). Three general transport pathways have been identified: the North Atlantic Pathway with transport mainly over the northern Atlantic, the North Pacific Pathway with transport from the Pacific region, and the Siberian Pathway with transport towards the Arctic over the eastern Siberian region. Transports that originate from the North Pacific are connected with negative temperature anomalies over the central Arctic. These North Pacific Pathways are getting less frequent during the last decades. Patterns with origin of transport in Siberia are found to have no trend and show cold temperature anomalies north of Svalbard. It was found that transport patterns that favor transport through the North Atlantic into the central Arctic are connected with positive temperature anomalies over large regions of the Arctic. These temperature anomalies resemble the warm Arctic cold continent effect. Further, it could be shown that transports through the North Atlantic are getting significantly more frequent during the last decades.

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