Advances in Remote Sensing Technology and the Three Poles

11 Antarctic Sea Ice Variability and Trends Over the Last Four Decades

Swathi M., Juhi Yadav, Avinash Kumar^*, and Rahul Mohan

National Centre for Polar and Ocean Research, Ministry of Earth Sciences, Govt. of India, Goa, India^* Corresponding author

11.1 Introduction

In the Earth’s climate system, polar sea ice is a critical component as it modifies heat, momentum, and moisture exchanges within the ocean-ice-atmosphere system. Additionally, it provides early indication of climate change related to variations in solar energy absorption (Comiso and Nishio, 2008) and influences climate change of regional and global scales via ice-albedo feedback (Parkinson, 2004; Bintanja et al., 2013).

Antarctic sea ice expansion in a warming world remains a puzzle. Some data and model results indicate that sea ice in Antarctica will decline in a warmer climate, although slower than the anticipated rate of decline in the Arctic (Kumar et al, 2020, 2021; Bromwich et al., 2013; Siegert et al., 2019). The relationship between regional Antarctic sea-ice changes and coastal air temperatures is inverse (Massom and Stammerjohn, 2010). However, a study using a coupled model of ice-ocean-atmosphere shows that sea-ice cover will grow with global warming (Zhang, 2007; Bintanja et al., 2013) due to increased snow precipitation on the sea ice. This would reduce the salinity of the near-surface ocean layers, resulting in an increased mixed layer stability and decreased surface heat flux, leading to more sea ...