Subsurface ocean flywheel of coupled climate variability in the Barents Sea hotspot of global warming

Accelerated shrinkage of the Arctic sea ice cover is the main reason for the recent Arctic amplification of global warming. There is growing evidence that the ocean is involved in this phenomenon, but to what extent remains unknown. Here, a unique dataset of hydrographic profiles is used to infer the regional pattern of recent subsurface ocean warming and construct a skillful predictor for surface climate variability in the Barents Sea region - a hotspot of the recent climate change. It is shown that, in the era of satellite observations (1981–2018), summertime temperature anomalies of Atlantic water heading for the Arctic Ocean explain more than 80% of the variance of the leading mode of variability in the following winter sea ice concentration over the entire Northern Hemisphere, with main centers of action just in the Barents Sea region. Results from empirical forecast experiments demonstrate that predictability of the wintertime sea ice cover in the Barents Sea from subsurface ocean heat anomalies might have increased since the Arctic climate shift of the mid-2000s. In contrast, the corresponding predictability of the sea ice cover in the nearby Greenland Sea has been lost.