by In early 2022, the Arctic experienced its strongest cyclone on record, with winds reaching 100 km/h (62 mph). Although storms are not uncommon in the Arctic, this one caused a large loss of sea ice that surprised Arctic researchers.
In the Arctic, sea ice, frozen seawater that floats above the ocean in the polar regions, reaches its greatest coverage in March and what is thought to be its thickest maximum in April, the researchers told Live Science. But as sea ice accumulated this year, it suffered a major setback. Between January 20 and 28, the storm developed during greenland and traveled northeast into the Barents Sea, where massive waves reached 26 feet (8 meters) in height. Like a wild bronco, those waves bucked sea ice at the edge of an ice pack 6 feet (2 m) from top to bottom, while even larger waves swept 60 miles (100 km) into the center of the pack. Although the weather models accurately predicted the storm’s evolution, the sea ice models did not predict how much the storm would affect the thickness of the ice.
Six days after the storm dissipated, sea ice in affected waters north of Norway and Russia had thinned by 1.5 feet (0.5 m), twice what sea ice models had predicted. Researchers analyzed the storm in a study published Oct. 26 in the Geophysical Research Journal: Atmospheres (opens in a new tab).
Related: The most stable sea ice in the Arctic is vanishing alarmingly fast
“The six-day loss of sea ice was the largest change we could find in historical observations since 1979, and the area of ice lost was 30% greater than the previous record,” said the lead author. Ed Blanchard-Wrigglesworth (opens in a new tab)an atmospheric scientist at the University of Washington in Seattle, said in a statement (opens in a new tab). “Ice models predicted some losses, but only about half of what we saw in the real world.”
The study found that atmospheric heat from the storm affected the area minimally, so something else must have been going on.
The authors of the article offered some insights into why the sea ice was thinning so fast so fast. It may have been that their models had incorrectly estimated the thickness of the sea ice before the storm. Or perhaps the violent waves from the storm broke up the sea ice more than anticipated. It could also be that the waves stirred up deeper, warmer water, which then rose to melt the sea ice pack from the bottom.
Sea ice thickness is notoriously difficult to study and model. Interactions between ice, ocean, and atmosphere affect the thickness of sea ice in ways that scientists don’t fully understand. And some of these interactions occur on a scale too small to model. For example, scientists know that pools of meltwater that appear on top of sea ice in the Arctic summer influence the thickness of the sea ice, but that effect is difficult to model (opens in a new tab). Melt pools can also throw off satellites, which can measure those pools as “ocean” rather than water on top of sea ice.
And as the climate warms, it’s more important than ever to understand Arctic storms and their effect on sea ice. In an article published in the magazine nature communications (opens in a new tab) In November, a team of NASA scientists found that sea ice loss and warming temperatures will lead to stronger arctic storms for the end of the century (opens in a new tab). Those more intense storms could bring rain that could melt sea ice, cause warmer temperatures, and stir up warmer water from the depths.
“In the future, this is something to keep in mind, that these extreme events could produce these episodes of large sea ice loss,” Blanchard-Wrigglesworth said.
