Early winter Kara-Barents Sea warming controlled by warm western North Atlantic SST

Abstract

The Kara-Barents(K-B) seas in the early winter are active area for rapid retreat of Arctic sea ice cover because of intense air-sea interaction/global warming (Smedsrud et al 2013; Kim et al. 2014). According to recent studies, the change in atmospheric circulation over the North Atlantic sector is essential to understand causality between sea-ice decrease over K-B sea and midlatitude circulations in Eurasian continent (Screen et al 2012; Gerber et al 2014; Sato et al 2014). For example, Sato et al (2014) suggested that the planetary wave responses to the poleward shift of sea surface temperature front over the Gulf Stream is associated with decrease of sea ice extent over Barents sea and a cold anomaly over Eurasia. However, the linkage between North Atlantic sector and variablity over K-B sea still remains unclear. In this study, we investigate the relationship between K-B sea region and North Atlantic sst/atmospheric circulation