LINKING ARCTIC SEA-ICE AND ATMOSPHERIC CIRCULATION ANOMALIES ON INTERANNUAL AND DECADAL TIMESCALES

The relationship between Arctic sea-ice concentration anomalies, parti cularly those associated with the ''Great Salinity Anomaly'' of 1968-1 982, and atmospheric circulation anomalies north of 45 degrees N is in vestigated. Empirical orthogonal function (EOF) analyses are performed an winter Arctic ice concentration from 1954 to 1990, sea level press ure and 500-hPa heights from 1947 to 1994, and 850-hPa temperatures fr om 1963 to 1994. Variability on both interannual and decadal timescale s is apparent in the time series of the leading winter EOFs of all var iables. The first EOF of winter sea-ice concentration was found to cha racterize the patterns of ice variability associated with the Great Sa linity Anomaly in the northern North Atlantic from 1968-82. Spatial ma ps of temporal correlation coefficients between the time series of the first EOF of winter sea-ice concentration and the winter atmospheric anomaly fields are calculated at lags of 0 and +/-1 year. Maximum corr elations were found to exist when the time-series of this ice EOF 1 le ads the atmospheric anomaly fields by one year. A particularly interes ting result is the connection between the presence of ice anomalies in the Greenland and Barents Seas and subsequent pressure anomalies of t he same sign over the Irminger Basin and the Canadian Arctic. The main emphasis of the paper is to identify connections between Arctic sea-i ce and atmospheric circulation anomalies at interannual time-scales.