September 2012 Arctic sea ice minimum : Discriminating between sea ice memory, the August 2012 extreme storm and prevailing warm conditions [in "Explaining Extreme Events of 2012 from a Climate Perspective"]
Guemas, Virginie ; Doblas-Reyes, Francisco ; Germe, Agathe ; Chevallier, Matthieu ; Salas y Mélia, David
On 18 September 2012, the Arctic sea ice extent hit a new record low of 3.41 million km2 as reported by the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), i.e., about half of the 1979-2000 September mean. From 6 August to 8 August 2012, an extreme storm (Simmonds and Rudeva 2012) also transited over the Arctic. Such an intense storm had the potential to accelerate the sea ice loss through increased ice breaking and transport toward warmer regions (Parkinson and Comiso 2013) and through increased ocean mixing (Zhang et al. 2013). None of the forecast systems participating in the Study of Environmental ARctic CHange (SEARCH) program were able to predict the extreme 2012 summer sea ice melting at lead times greater than one month. Was this record low extent preconditioned by the sea ice loss from previous years but missed by the climate models because they underestimate the rate of radiatively forced sea ice loss (Stroeve et al. 2012)? Was this record largely driven by the extreme storm?
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