Ecological conditions for 3 temperature- and sea ice-sensitive species show the sub-Arctic North Atlantic has been cooling and gaining ice since 1940.
In recent months, several scientific publications have documented a dramatic cooling trend in the subpolar North Atlantic, with temperatures plummeting 2°C since 2008 (Bryden et al., 2020) or -0.78°C per decade since 2004 (Fröb et al., 2019). Maroon et al. (2020) even point out 2015 was the coldest of the last 100 years.
Image Source: Bryden et al., 2020
Image Source: Fröb et al., 2019
Image Source: Maroon et al., 2020
Now a new study (Weckstrom et al., 2020) not only documents the cooling in the subpolar North Atlantic has been ongoing for 80 years, but the sub-Arctic sea ice in this region has been steadily increasing in extent since about 1940 too.
The sea ice reconstruction was derived from an ecological study of 3 warmth-demanding “sea-ice species” abundant only in regions with a narrow temperature threshold.
