Arctic Report Card 2008
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Summary:
Autumn temperatures are at a record 5º C above normal, due to the major loss of sea ice in recent years which allows more solar heating of the ocean. Winter and springtime temperatures remain relatively warm over the entire Arctic, in contrast to the 20th century and consistent with an emerging global warming influence. The year 2007 was the warmest on record for the Arctic, continuing a general, Arctic-wide warming trend that began in the mid-1960s into the following autumns, with warm anomalies above an unprecedented +5° C during October and November across the central Arctic.The major retreat of sea ice extent during the summer of 2007 was set up by sustained winds blowing from the North Pacific across the North Pole (Fig. A3). These winds contributed to sea ice advection toward the Atlantic sector. Additionally, the advection of warm moist air into the central Arctic contributed to melting sea ice, especially in the Pacific sector. The near record minimum sea ice extent in 2008 was nearly the same as in 2007, but the causes were different. The wind pattern in 2007 was unusually constant throughout the summer, while in 2008 the winds were more variable. Summer winds in 2007 appear to be a once in a decade event, while the atmosphere had less of a contribution to sea ice loss in 2008. Winter and spring air temperatures in 2007 and 2008 continue the nearly Arctic-wide extent of positive SAT anomalies, similar to the early years of the twenty-first century (Fig. A4). These years contrast with the twentieth century in which positive and negative SAT anomalies were more spatially distributed. This Arctic-wide background SAT anomaly of greater than +1°C is consistent with projections from IPCC climate models (Chapman and Walsh 2007). Exceptions were the Bering Sea and western Alaska, which experienced a third consecutive cold winter. The Barents Sea continues to be a hot spot, which began in 2006. The climate of the Arctic is influenced by repeating patterns of sea level pressure (SLP) that can dominate individual months or can represent the overall atmospheric circulation flow for an individual winter and spring. The main pattern is known as the Arctic Oscillation (AO) circulation regime, widely considered the main source of Arctic climate variability during the twentieth century. A second pattern influences the Pacific sector of the Arctic, known as the Pacific North American (PNA) pattern. A positive period of the AO has lower sea level pressure over the central Arctic, brings warmer temperatures to Eurasia, and helps to export sea ice into the Atlantic. In 2007 and 2008 the AO returned to a strongly positive wintertime index value for the first time in more than a decade, but its value was still lower than the large positive values of the early 1990s

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