Evaluation of the atmospheric forcing of sea ice at Dumont d'Urville using in situ and remotely sensed data
Abstract
Dumont d'Urville (DDU) is a French research station located off the Adelie Coast of East Antarctica on Petrel Island. This area is characterized by intense katabatic winds and shallow bathymetry, as well as being the site of Adelie and Emperor penguin rookeries. DDU is a permanently occupied station that is heavily instrumented, creating a unique opportunity to integrate in situ meteorological and oceanographic observations with remotely sensed data sets. In the summers of 2016-2017 and 2017-2018, the pack ice was dense enough both to prevent the supply and research vessel l'Astrolabe from reaching the coast and to limit wildlife access to open water. For example, in 2016, the closest open water was nearly 90 km away from the coastline, which had a significant impact on the health of the local bird populations leading to starvation and death of numerous individuals. However, in the summer of 2017-2018, the pack ice broke up early in the melt season, and open water surrounded Petrel Island. We developed a climatology of the summertime conditions at DDU focusing on the dynamic and physical processes that could influence the pack ice, such as temperature, humidity, precipitation, cloud cover, wind speed and direction from in situ observations made from 2005-2019. These meteorological and oceanographic variables are then related to the sea ice concentration and thicknesses from the National Ice Center, as well as to larger scale teleconnections such as the Southern Annular Mode index, the El Nino Southern Oscillation index and the presence of atmospheric rivers, to develop insights into the mechanisms that lead to the presence of dense pack ice. Preliminary analysis shows that anomalously warm temperatures in 2018-2019 helped hasten the pack melt and break-up. Better understanding of the interactions of the atmosphere-ocean-sea ice at DDU that may be responsible for this change will allow us to better predict further change in ice conditions, and access to open water in the future that heavily impact biophysical marine and terrestrial systems.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2020
- Bibcode:
- 2020AGUFMC065...11S
- Keywords:
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- 0475 Permafrost;
- cryosphere;
- and high-latitude processes;
- BIOGEOSCIENCES;
- 0750 Sea ice;
- CRYOSPHERE;
- 4323 Human impact;
- NATURAL HAZARDS;
- 4815 Ecosystems;
- structure;
- dynamics;
- and modeling;
- OCEANOGRAPHY: BIOLOGICAL