Numerical Simulation of Atmosphere-Ocean-Sea Ice Interaction During Interannual Cycle in High Northern Latitudes

The interannual atmosphere-ocean-sea ice interaction (AOSI) in high northern latitudes is studied with a global atmosphere-ocean-sea ice coupled model system, in which the model components of atmosphere and land surface are from China National Climate Center and that of ocean and sea ice are from LASG,Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences. A daily flux anomaly correction scheme is employed to couple the atmosphere model and the ocean model with the effect of inhomogenity of sea ice in high latitudes is considered. The coupled model system has been run for 50 yr and the results of the last 30 years are analyzed. After the sea level pressure (SLP), surface air temperature (SAT), sea surface temperature (SST), sea ice concentration (SIC), and sea surface sensible heat flux (SHF) are filtered with a digital filter firstly,their normalized anomalies are used to perform the decomposition of combined complex empirical orthogonal function (CCEOF) and then they are reconstructed with the leading mode. The atmosphere-ocean-sea ice interactions in high northern latitudes during a periodical cycle (approximately 4 yr) are analyzed. It is shown that: (1) When the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) is in its positive phase, the southerly anomaly appears in the Greenland Sea, SAT increases, the sea loses less SHF, SST increases and SIC decreases accordingly; when the NAO is in its negative phase, the northerly anomaly appears in the Greenland Sea, SAT decreases, the sea loses more SHF, SST decreases and SIC increases accordingly. There are similar features in the Barents Sea, but the phase of evolution in the Barents Sea is different from that in the Greenland Sea. (2) For an average of multi-years, there is a cold center in the inner part of the Arctic Ocean near the North Pole. When there is an anomaly of low pressure, which is closer to the Pacific Ocean, in the inner part of the Arctic Ocean, anomalies of warm advection appear in the region near the Pacific Ocean and anomalies of cold advection appear in the region near the Atlantic Ocean. Accompanying with these anomalies of warm and cold advection in these two regions, warm and cold anomalies appear respectively. Accordingly, SHF sent to the atmosphere from the sea surface decreases and increases, and SST increases and decreases, SIC decreases and increases in these two regions. When there is an anomaly of high pressure in the inner part of the Arctic Ocean, the former relationships reverse. From these results, it can be deduced that, during the interannual cycle of the coupled atmosphere-ocean system, the variability of large-scale atmospheric circulation plays a dominant role and variations of SST and SIC are mainly responding to that of atmospheric circulation.