Establishing reference values of natural variations of sea ice in the Northern Barents Sea

Abstract

During the last decades the Arctic has been exposed to large climate changes, e.g. increasing temperatures and reduced summer sea-ice cover. Sea-ice cover is also going through a regime shift from thick perennial multiyear ice to an increasingly seasonal sea ice cover in the Arctic Ocean. Yet little is still known of the both the short- and long-term effects on the climate-ocean systems. The aim of this project is to assess Arctic ocean responses to climate change both within the present time and on longer timescales (the past two millennia and the Early Holocene) by using multi-proxy records (HBIs, diatoms) to establish baseline values for natural variations of sea-ice in the regional climate-ocean system.