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Updated: Mar 31, 2026

Investigating the Relationship between Sea Surface Chlorophyll and Major Features of the South China Sea with Satellite Information
Published on: June 13, 2020
Sources of heterogeneous variability and trends in Antarctic sea-ice
Richard J Matear1, Terence J O'Kane1, James S Risbey1
1CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere, GPO Box 1538, Hobart, Tasmania 7001, Australia.
Abstract:
While the Northern Hemisphere sea-ice has uniformly declined over the past several decades, the observed sea-ice in the Southern Hemisphere has exhibited regions of increase and decrease. Here we use a comprehensive set of ocean-sea-ice simulations (1990-2007) to elucidate the drivers of the observed heterogeneous sea-ice trends. We show wind variability is an important determinant of the heterogeneous pattern of the variability and trends in Southern Hemisphere sea-ice. Only in the West Pacific region does Southern Annular Mode wind forcing contribute significantly to the trend in sea-ice duration. El Niño Southern Oscillation wind forcing contribution to the sea-ice duration trend is confined to the Atlantic and Pacific. In the Indian Ocean, weather is a significant driver of the sea-ice duration trend. Only in the East Pacific region is wind forcing alone insufficient to give rise to the observed sea-ice decline and must be augmented by warming to reproduce the observations.
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