Increasing riverine heat influx triggers Arctic sea ice decline and oceanic and atmospheric warming

Hotaek Park; Eiji Watanabe; Youngwook Kim; Igor Polyakov; Kazuhiro Oshima; Xiangdong Zhang; John S. Kimball; Daqing Yang

doi:10.1126/SCIADV.ABC4699

Increasing riverine heat influx triggers Arctic sea ice decline and oceanic and atmospheric warming

Hotaek Park, Eiji Watanabe, Youngwook Kim, Igor Polyakov, Kazuhiro Oshima, Xiangdong Zhang, John S. Kimball, Daqing Yang

Numerical Terradynamic Simulation Group

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

76 Scopus citations

Abstract

Arctic river discharge increased over the last several decades, conveying heat and freshwater into the Arctic Ocean and likely affecting regional sea ice and the ocean heat budget. However, until now, there have been only limited assessments of riverine heat impacts. Here, we adopted a synthesis of a pan-Arctic sea ice-ocean model and a land surface model to quantify impacts of river heat on the Arctic sea ice and ocean heat budget. We show that river heat contributed up to 10% of the regional sea ice reduction over the Arctic shelves from 1980 to 2015. Particularly notable, this effect occurs as earlier sea ice breakup in late spring and early summer. The increasing ice-free area in the shelf seas results in a warmer ocean in summer, enhancing ocean-atmosphere energy exchange and atmospheric warming. Our findings suggest that a positive river heat-sea ice feedback nearly doubles the river heat effect.

Original language	English
Article number	eabc4699
Journal	Science advances
Volume	6
Issue number	45
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1126/SCIADV.ABC4699
State	Published - Nov 4 2020

Funding

This work was supported chiefly by the Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research of Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) (KAKENHI 26340018, 17H01870, and 19H05668); the Arctic Challenge for Sustainability II (ArCS II; JPMXD1300000000, JPMXD1420318865) project funded by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), Japan; NASA grants NNH18ZDA001N-TE, 80NSSC19K0649, 80NSSC18K0980, and NNX15AT74A; NSF grants AON-1203473, AON-1724523, AON-1947162, and 1708427; DOE grant DE-SC0020640; the Norwegian Nansen Legacy program (project no. 276730); and CarbonBridge program (project no. 226415) both funded by the Research Council of Norway (RCN). We thank J. Walsh for comments on the manuscript and T. Yamazaki for comments on data analysis.

Funders	Funder number
1708427, AON-1947162, AON-1203473, AON-1724523
276730, 226415, DE-SC0020640
National Aeronautics and Space Administration	80NSSC19K0649, 80NSSC18K0980, NNX15AT74A, NNH18ZDA001N-TE
Japan Society for the Promotion of Science	19H05668, JPMXD1420318865, 17H01870, 26340018, JPMXD1300000000
Japan Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology

UN SDGs

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10.1126/SCIADV.ABC4699

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title = "Increasing riverine heat influx triggers Arctic sea ice decline and oceanic and atmospheric warming",

abstract = "Arctic river discharge increased over the last several decades, conveying heat and freshwater into the Arctic Ocean and likely affecting regional sea ice and the ocean heat budget. However, until now, there have been only limited assessments of riverine heat impacts. Here, we adopted a synthesis of a pan-Arctic sea ice-ocean model and a land surface model to quantify impacts of river heat on the Arctic sea ice and ocean heat budget. We show that river heat contributed up to 10\% of the regional sea ice reduction over the Arctic shelves from 1980 to 2015. Particularly notable, this effect occurs as earlier sea ice breakup in late spring and early summer. The increasing ice-free area in the shelf seas results in a warmer ocean in summer, enhancing ocean-atmosphere energy exchange and atmospheric warming. Our findings suggest that a positive river heat-sea ice feedback nearly doubles the river heat effect.",

author = "Hotaek Park and Eiji Watanabe and Youngwook Kim and Igor Polyakov and Kazuhiro Oshima and Xiangdong Zhang and Kimball, \{John S.\} and Daqing Yang",

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doi = "10.1126/SCIADV.ABC4699",

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AU - Park, Hotaek

AU - Watanabe, Eiji

AU - Kim, Youngwook

AU - Polyakov, Igor

AU - Oshima, Kazuhiro

AU - Zhang, Xiangdong

AU - Kimball, John S.

AU - Yang, Daqing

N1 - Publisher Copyright: Copyright © 2020 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial License 4.0 (CC BY-NC).

PY - 2020/11/4

Y1 - 2020/11/4

N2 - Arctic river discharge increased over the last several decades, conveying heat and freshwater into the Arctic Ocean and likely affecting regional sea ice and the ocean heat budget. However, until now, there have been only limited assessments of riverine heat impacts. Here, we adopted a synthesis of a pan-Arctic sea ice-ocean model and a land surface model to quantify impacts of river heat on the Arctic sea ice and ocean heat budget. We show that river heat contributed up to 10% of the regional sea ice reduction over the Arctic shelves from 1980 to 2015. Particularly notable, this effect occurs as earlier sea ice breakup in late spring and early summer. The increasing ice-free area in the shelf seas results in a warmer ocean in summer, enhancing ocean-atmosphere energy exchange and atmospheric warming. Our findings suggest that a positive river heat-sea ice feedback nearly doubles the river heat effect.

AB - Arctic river discharge increased over the last several decades, conveying heat and freshwater into the Arctic Ocean and likely affecting regional sea ice and the ocean heat budget. However, until now, there have been only limited assessments of riverine heat impacts. Here, we adopted a synthesis of a pan-Arctic sea ice-ocean model and a land surface model to quantify impacts of river heat on the Arctic sea ice and ocean heat budget. We show that river heat contributed up to 10% of the regional sea ice reduction over the Arctic shelves from 1980 to 2015. Particularly notable, this effect occurs as earlier sea ice breakup in late spring and early summer. The increasing ice-free area in the shelf seas results in a warmer ocean in summer, enhancing ocean-atmosphere energy exchange and atmospheric warming. Our findings suggest that a positive river heat-sea ice feedback nearly doubles the river heat effect.

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JO - Science advances

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ER -

Increasing riverine heat influx triggers Arctic sea ice decline and oceanic and atmospheric warming

Abstract

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UN SDGs

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