Relationship between ice concentrations in the retreat (December) and advance (April) seasons is investigated in the Antarctic Ocean using SMMR and SSM/I data. For most years, the negative (positive) anomalies in ice concentration in the retreat season lead to the negative (positive) anomalies in the next advance season with strong correlation. This positive feedback can be regarded as ice‐albedo feedback in a coupled ice‐ocean system. In the retreat season, net heat input into the upper ocean from the atmosphere becomes maximum and is mostly determined by ice concentration. Because of large interannual variation of ice concentration in the retreat season, the anomaly in the heat input becomes tremendous. It is inferred that this anomaly is memorized in the ocean, and then affects the next advance of sea ice, skipping over the open ocean period (February–March). This process can partly explain the interannual variation of the sea ice cover.
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Nihashi et al. (2001) studied this question.
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