Department of Physics, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada.
Department of Chemical and Physical Sciences, University of Toronto Mississauga, Mississauga, Canada.
Nat Commun. 2021 Jan 4;12(1):1. doi: 10.1038/s41467-020-20314-w.
The ice arches that usually develop at the northern and southern ends of Nares Strait play an important role in modulating the export of Arctic Ocean multi-year sea ice. The Arctic Ocean is evolving towards an ice pack that is younger, thinner, and more mobile and the fate of its multi-year ice is becoming of increasing interest. Here, we use sea ice motion retrievals from Sentinel-1 imagery to report on the recent behavior of these ice arches and the associated ice fluxes. We show that the duration of arch formation has decreased over the past 20 years, while the ice area and volume fluxes along Nares Strait have both increased. These results suggest that a transition is underway towards a state where the formation of these arches will become atypical with a concomitant increase in the export of multi-year ice accelerating the transition towards a younger and thinner Arctic ice pack.
通常在纳尔斯海峡的南北两端形成的冰拱门在调节北极海洋多年海冰的输出方面发挥着重要作用。北极海洋正朝着年轻、更薄、更具流动性的冰原发展，其多年冰的命运越来越受到关注。在这里，我们使用 Sentinel-1 图像的海冰运动检索来报告这些冰拱门的近期行为以及相关的冰通量。我们表明，在过去 20 年中，拱门形成的持续时间已经缩短，而沿着纳尔斯海峡的冰面积和体积通量都有所增加。这些结果表明，正在向一种状态转变，在这种状态下，这些拱门的形成将变得不典型，同时多年冰的输出增加，加速了向年轻、更薄的北极冰原的转变。
