Atmosphere Ocean Science Friday Seminar

---

Energy Balance Models and Sea Ice

Speaker: Hassan Mason, CAOS

Location: Online

Date: Friday, February 19, 2021, 4 p.m.

Notes:

Antarctic sea ice extent has increased on average since 1979 despite increasing greenhouse gas concentrations and global warming. Most current comprehensive global climate models fail to capture this increase, instead simulating a shrinking Antarctic sea ice cover in simulations of the historical period. Changes in surface winds and resulting sea ice drift have been proposed to explain the observed sea ice expansion, but the complex relationship between ice motion and ice extent remains poorly understood. Here we use an idealized zonally-uniform seasonally-varying model of global climate and sea ice that includes specified sea ice motion. This model allows us to investigate how changes in sea ice drift velocity influence sea ice volume and extent. The results have implications for how changes in Antarctic sea ice motion during recent decades relate to the observed ice expansion.