Past and future interannual variability in Arctic sea ice in coupled climate models

Mioduszewski, John R.; Vavrus, Stephen; Wang, Muyin; Holland, Marika; Landrum, Laura

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-13-113-2019

Articles | Volume 13, issue 1

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-13-113-2019

© Author(s) 2019. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-13-113-2019

© Author(s) 2019. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 13, issue 1

Research article

|

14 Jan 2019

Research article |

| 14 Jan 2019

Past and future interannual variability in Arctic sea ice in coupled climate models

John R. Mioduszewski, Stephen Vavrus, Muyin Wang, Marika Holland, and Laura Landrum

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Final revised paper (published on 14 Jan 2019)
Supplement to the final revised paper
Preprint (discussion started on 01 Jun 2018)
Supplement to the preprint

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

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RC1: 'Interannual variability of Arctic sea ice area', Anonymous Referee #1, 23 Jun 2018
RC2: 'Review of "Future interannual variability of Arctic sea ice in coupled climate models" by Mioduszewski et al.', Anonymous Referee #2, 27 Jun 2018
AC1: 'Response to Reviewers', John Mioduszewski, 26 Aug 2018

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

AR by John Mioduszewski on behalf of the Authors (20 Sep 2018) Author's response

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (21 Sep 2018) by Dirk Notz

AR by John Mioduszewski on behalf of the Authors (29 Sep 2018) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (01 Oct 2018) by Dirk Notz

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (14 Oct 2018)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

The revised version of this manuscript is certainly improved. This includes the overall quality of writing and presentation, as well as how the novel aspects of the present findings are highlighted and the discussion of how this study fits in with the existing literature. However, I still have a couple of major concerns (and several more minor ones) that I would like to see addressed. These are detailed below:

Major comments:

1) Even though the authors mention the recent study by Massonnet et al (2018) in the introduction, they basically dismiss it as having no bearing on the present study since Massonnet et al primarily consider sea ice volume, not area. However, volume and area are closely related (through thickness of course), and both Massonnet et al and the present study consider the role of ice thickness in some detail, as well as the main driver of changes in thickness: thermodynamic processes. I therefore believe the present findings should be put in context with those of Massonnet et al. Furthermore, I similarly believe it at least worth a cursory discussion of why Massonnet et al would find sea ice volume variability to decrease monotonically, while sea ice area variability increases initially.

2) Each time I read the manuscript I struggle to assess how much the differences in the variability evolution between months are just due to the winter months starting at much larger ice cover? I just realized (and apologize that I didn't earlier) that the plot I would really like to see is a scatterplot of standard deviation vs retreat rate, with different symbols for different months (and maybe color coded by time?). How good is the correlation for the individual months (a correlation that is a main finding highlighted in the abstract, L37)? Do all months fall on the same curve?

Minor comments:

L43 I would feel more comfortable if this statement was qualified somewhat. Maybe something like "Our findings suggest that thermodynamic..." or "Our results agree with previous findings that thermodynamic ..."

L72 Please rephrase: this sounds like there won't be more trade routes opening until the end of the century, where in fact the Northeastern Passage was just travelled by a MAERSK container ship a couple of weeks ago.

L83 Thin sea ice is not only more vulnerable to atmospheric forcing because of thermodynamics - it is also more easily deformed dynamically (e.g., ridged or opening leads).

L87 "... sea ice EXTENT have been ..."

L100 " ... much coarser ..." Coarser than who? The present study? Please clarify.

L101 " ... between entire blocks of time ..." change to " ... between two discrete time periods ..."

Fig 4 and associated text, in particular L206-217: I must admit that after reading and re-reading the text multiply times and staring at the figure for a while, I still don't quite understand what is being said/shown. Maybe this can be rewritten more clearly. At this point my understanding is something like "The increase and decrease in variability in September is matched most closely by the increase and decrease in ice that is 30 cm thick". Is that correct?

Fig 7: I find it makes the figure harder to read that the ice concentration (in %) and concentration trend (in %/day) are plotted on essentially the same axis, even though they represent very different quantities. I personally think it would be easier to interpret 7a,b if the ice concentration had its own axis for the bottom third of each panel. As it is it suggests that there is a relevant link in the magnitude of how the concentration changes and how the concentration trends change.

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RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (23 Oct 2018)

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (24 Oct 2018) by Dirk Notz

AR by John Mioduszewski on behalf of the Authors (02 Dec 2018)

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (07 Dec 2018) by Dirk Notz

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (13 Dec 2018)

ED: Publish subject to technical corrections (13 Dec 2018) by Dirk Notz

AR by John Mioduszewski on behalf of the Authors (16 Dec 2018) Manuscript

Short summary

Arctic sea ice is projected to thin substantially in every season by the end of the 21st century with a corresponding increase in its interannual variability as the rate of ice loss peaks. This typically occurs when the mean ice thickness falls between 0.2 and 0.6 m. The high variability in both growth and melt processes is the primary factor resulting in increased ice variability. This study emphasizes the importance of short-term variations in ice cover within the mean downward trend.