HR: 0800h
AN: GC51A-1054    [Abstracts]
TI: The Role of Local Cyclone Activity in Spitsbergen Winter Temperatures and Fram Strait Sea Ice Export
AU: * Rogers, J C
EM: rogers.21@osu.edu
AF: The Ohio State University, Atmospheric Science Program 1036 Derby Hall, Columbus, OH 43210-1361 United States
AU: Yang, L
EM: yang.998@osu.edu
AF: The Ohio State University, Atmospheric Science Program 1036 Derby Hall, Columbus, OH 43210-1361 United States
AB: Winter temperatures at Spitsbergen were at the core of the Arctic warming of the 1920s and Fram Strait ice export was part of the Great Salinity Anomaly of the 1960s. Along with Iceland and the Barents Sea, the region around Fram Strait and Spitsbergen is one of three northernmost Atlantic centers of high winter cyclone frequencies. The role of local winter cyclone activity and cyclogenesis in the climate of this area is examined. Cyclones moving toward, over and west of Spitsbergen occur in relatively mild, low ice export winters, and then continue into the Arctic basin north of Greenland and the Canadian archipelago. Cyclogenesis is also frequent off the northeast Greenland coast over the East Greenland Current during these winters associated with south-southwesterly flow around unusually high pressure over Scandinavia. Anomalously cold/high ice export winters have little cyclone activity around Fram Strait and cyclone activity is then concentrated in the Barents Sea and Eurasia side of the Arctic basin. Only 30% of the variance in time series of Spitsbergen temperatures and Fram Strait ice export is shared, possibly because cyclonic heat advection over Spitsbergen also brings northerly flow over the East Greenland Current, just as do Barents Sea cyclones.
DE: 3349 Polar meteorology
DE: 4215 Climate and interannual variability (3309)
DE: 3309 Climatology (1620)
DE: 1620 Climate dynamics (3309)
SC: Global Climate Change [GC]
MN: 2004 AGU Fall Meeting