Arctic Ocean sea ice volume: What explains its recent depletion?

Various observations and model results point to an arctic sea ice cover that was extraordinarily thin in the 1990s. This thin ice cover was caused by a strengthened cyclonic circulation of wind and ice and by unusual warmth of springtime air temperatures. Here modeled sea ice volume is decomposed into two components: first, a dynamic or wind‐forced response to interannually varying winds but a fixed annual cycle of air temperature and second, a thermally forced solution responding only to interannually varying temperatures. Over the 52‐year simulation from 1948 to 1999 these two components have a similar range and variance; the wind‐forced component has no substantial trend, but the temperature‐forced component has a significant downward trend of −3% per decade. Total ice volume shows a trend of −4% per decade. Export slightly exceeds production over the simulation. Annual export and production can differ from each other and from year to year by ±30%. This behavior seems to characterize an ice cover highly constrained by interannual variations in forcing and not in balance. The bulk (two thirds) of volume loss from the 1960s to the 1990s is a result of a striking thinning of undeformed ice. The remainder of the volume loss is due to thinning of ridged ice and reduced concentrations. The central Arctic Ocean and particularly the East Siberian Sea suffer the greatest losses (of up to 2 m); the ice north of the Canadian archipelago also thinned since the 1960s by ∼0.5 m.