Abstract
Over the past several decades, the Arctic sea ice melting season has significantly lengthened, primarily due to delayed freeze onset (FO). We identified the northern Chukchi and East Siberian Seas as the Arctic region with the most pronounced FO interannual variability and linked it to North Atlantic marine heatwaves (MHWs). Observations revealed that intense and persistent July MHWs near southeast Greenland (seGL) generated anomalous near-surface heating, propelling warm air masses to 300 hPa (higher altitude) compared to the ~ 400–500 hPa level influenced by general sea surface warming. This altered geopotential height gradient over seGL, thereby facilitating the downstream propagation of planetary-scale wave activity flux (WAF) in August, with the signal ultimately reaching the northern Chukchi and East Siberian Seas by September. The WAF-strengthened anticyclonic circulation induced abnormal descending warm airflow, resulting in delayed FO. This process combines water vapor transport-regulated thermodynamics (64%) and sea ice divergence effects (36%), collectively explaining FO interannual variability in this region (northern Chukchi and East Siberian Seas).
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Data availability
The data that support the findings of this study are openly available. The SST data is downloaded at https://psl.noaa.gov/data/gridded/data.noaa.oisst.v2.highres.html. The ERA5 data comes from https://doi.org/10.24381/cds.6860a573. The FO data is downloaded at https://psl.noaa.gov/data/gridded/data.noaa.oisst.v2.highres.html. The SIC and sea ice age data are downloaded at https://nsidc.org/data.
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Acknowledgements
Authors thank the ERA5, the NOAA, the NASA, and NSIDC for providing these valuable datasets. This study used python to generate all figures.
Funding
This research is supported by the funding to Jie Su from the National Key R&D Program of China (2023YFC2809101) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (42076228).
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Xuan Zhou: Conceptualization, Data curation, Methodology, Software, Visualization, Formal analysis, Writing original draft & Editing. Jie Su: Structure design, Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing–review. Tianhao Zhao: Conceptualization, Methodology, Formal analysis. Han Zhang and Zhifeng Qu: Conceptualization, Methodology, Formal analysis. Xuan Zhou led the writing of the original draft with the help of Zhifeng Qu, Han Zhang, Tianhao Zhao, and Jie Su. All the authors discussed the results and commented on this paper.
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Zhou, X., Su, J., Zhao, T. et al. Effects of North Atlantic summer marine heatwaves on Arctic sea ice freeze-up delay: modulation by atmospheric teleconnections. Clim Dyn 63, 390 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-025-07887-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-025-07887-2