Research Article

Ice Coverage of the Laptev Sea and Air Temperature Variation during Recent Centuries: Observed Data and Reconstructions Using a Geochemical Proxy

Author(s):

Anatolii S. Astakhov*, Kirill I. Aksentov, Valeriy V. Babich, Andrey V. Darin, Ivan A. Kalugin, Mikhail M. Melgunov, Limin Hu, Xuefa Shi and Valentina V. Sattarova   Pages 198 - 212 ( 15 )

Abstract:

Objective: The aim was to reconstruct the climatic parameters and ice of the Laptev Sea over the last centuries and identify the causes of their variability.

Background: The ice-free water area of the Arctic Ocean has increased considerably during the summer-autumn period in recent decades, which may be attributed to several climatic and oceanographic factors.

Methods: The ice-free period duration and mean annual surface air temperature were reconstructed using the transfer function technique to compare hydrometeorological data and the chemical composition of bottom sediments accumulated during the observation period. This approach was based on sub-millimeter scanning of sediments using synchrotron radiation X-ray fluorescence.

Results: The results revealed a specific feature of the variations in the mean annual air temperature over the last 400 years in the Laptev Sea region, whereby higher (up to positive) temperature anomalies were observed during the Little Ice Age. Some discrepancies in the ice coverage and climate fluctuations were observed during the period from the end of the Little Ice Age to the beginning of the period of accelerated ice-cover degradation in the Arctic (1850–1980). These discrepancies can be caused by the beginning of global warming, which have disturbed the natural cyclicality of atmospheric processes, whereas natural variations in ice coverage were more stable.

Conclusion: A joint analysis of the reconstructed variations in air temperature and the duration of the ice-free period revealed the influence of atmospheric processes on the ice conditions of the Laptev Sea.

Keywords:

Paleoclimatology, Laptev sea, ice cover, bottom sediments, geochemistry, little ice age, global warming.

Affiliation:

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