Spring melt patterns in the Kara/Barents Sea: 1984

Ice-atmosphere interactions in the Seasonal Sea Ice Zone undergo rapid changes during the spring melt period with the transition from winter to summer conditions. The nature of these interactions is strongly dependent on the characteristics of the surface, which also experiences large changes during this same time period. This paper describes a methodology, based on Extended Principal Components Analysis, which is used to categorize the spatial and temporal patterns of surface change that occur in the Seasonal Sea Ice Zone during the spring/early summer. The methodology is demonstrated for the Kara/Barents Sea in spring 1984 using data from the Nimbus-7 Scanning Multichannel Microwave Radiometer. The analysis shows conditions in the Barents Sea to be largely controlled by ice advection, while the variance in the Kara Sea is dominated by surface melt.