Short-term changes in Arctic sea ice during the melt season from high surface winds in cyclones

Arctic sea ice has declined in both extent and thickness over recent decades. In particular, the replacement of thicker, multi-year ice with thinner, first-year ice has made large portions of Arctic sea ice prone to earlier melting. Arctic cyclones may also be playing more of a role in the accelerated summertime sea-ice loss as the Arctic becomes dominated by first-year ice, but this has not been demonstrated explicitly. In this study, we utilize multiple atmospheric reanalyses and sea-ice diagnostics to examine how the strong Arctic cyclones in August 2012 and 2016 affected the sea-ice coverage. We then use these same products to conduct a statistical analysis of a large sample of summertime Arctic cyclones from 2006-2017 in order to quantify how the cyclone winds modify sea ice both locally and throughout the Arctic on 1-14-day time scales. Results indicate that the transient peaks in surface kinetic energy that are associated with Arctic cyclones do not lead to statistically significant losses in sea-ice concentration in the vicinity of the cyclone, or across the Arctic as a whole, in the days following the cyclone's passage. Instead, the cyclones appear to re-configure the ice edge, especially in the marginal ice zone that is dominated by thin and broken ice. In light of these results, we explore new ways of quantifying the local reconfiguration of the ice edge in the wake of Arctic cyclones that can be used in a forecasting context to anticipate changes in the ice edge on "weather" time scales.