Short-term Impacts of Arctic Summer Cyclones on Sea Ice Extent in the Marginal Ice Zone

The degree to which Arctic cyclones locally affect sea ice cover during the melt season is unclear. To address this, we use the ERA-5 reanalysis to statistically analyze how surface energy fluxes and wind forcing from Arctic cyclones in the marginal ice zone between May and August (1999–2018) locally affect sea ice extent on 1–10 day time scales. In May and June, cyclones decelerate the local seasonal loss of sea ice extent compared to when no cyclone is present, which we hypothesize is due to cyclones reducing net shortwave radiative fluxes at the surface. By July and August, cyclones no longer decelerate the seasonal loss of sea ice extent, despite still reducing the net surface energy flux. Surface wind forcing across the ice edge only explains up to 13.5% of the variance in local sea ice extent in August, suggesting that processes other than wind-induced drift and atmospheric energy fluxes drive late-summer sea ice extent variability.