Seasonal land-Sea Difference of Arctic Amplification Strength: Insights From Reanalysis Datasets

Abstract

Quantitative and contrastive understanding of the seasonal land-sea difference in Arctic amplification (AA) strength is important but it still has not been well characterized. This research studied this issue using five reanalysis datasets and compared AA strength with exiting knowledges on AA variations. Results showed that the seasonal AA over Arctic land maintains a relatively stable magnitude (i.e., on the order of 2) and spatial coverage in different seasons; there is no AA effect in summer and the AA magnitudes fluctuate with a relatively large range in different seasons over the Arctic sea. The AA effect over the Arctic sea is more pronounced than that of the Arctic land in terms of magnitude and spatial coverage except in the summer. Results also implied that the AA strength over the sea reported by previous studies is lower than that derived from reanalysis datasets, while the AA strength over the land reported by previous studies is roughly consistent with that of this study. These findings enrich the existing knowledges about the seasonal land-sea difference of the AA and are beneficial to exploring the driving mechanisms of seasonal AA variations.