Storminess in the Arctic in ERA-5

Recent studies have attempted to link summertime "Great" Arctic cyclones to sea ice loss through mechanical breakdown of the ice edge, thus exposing more surface area and leading to more ice melting. An open question is whether or not these phenomena are becoming more frequent and if they are becoming stronger in aggregate. Using the new ERA-5 dataset, we quantify Arctic storminess as the area-integrated kinetic energy of the 10-meter wind from 70 °N to 90 °N. After filtering the annual cycle and re-centering the data, it is found that the most anomalous events occur in February, while July storminess is relatively consistent year-to-year within the historical record. Long-term trends, whether measured as yearly variability or as intraseasonal anomalous events, are discussed using this metric. We use these findings to contextualize the "Great" Arctic cyclones of 2012 and 2016, as well as other anomalous events.