Features of northwest passage variation of sea ice concentration from 2002 to 2010 and analysis of possible reasons

Abstract

In recent years, rapid warming of Arctic has made the Northwest Passage navigation possible. In this paper, we roughly studied features of variation of sea ice's concentration during the summer season, June, August and September, using AMSR-E sea ice concentration product with the resolution of 6.25 kilometers from the year 2002 to 2010. By studying the variation, we got deeper understanding of the main features of sea ice seasonal and inter-annual variation and distribution. What's more, we looked into the relevance between sea surface temperature(SST), sea level pressure(SLP) and the reducing amount of annual sea ice concentration (May minus September) based on the NSST daily average data from NASA MODISA and SLP monthly average data from NCEP.