Variations of Sea Ice Cover in East Siberian Sea of Arctic Ocean in 1997—2005

Recently,there are many remarkable variations in the Arctic Ocean with shrinking of sea ice coverage and thinning of sea ice. The purpose of this paper is to study the multi-year variations of sea ice area with the satellite remote sensing data of the East Siberian Sea during 1997—2005 provided by National Snow and Ice Data Center of USA. The study shows that there were heavy conditions of sea ice in the East Siberian Sea in 1997—2001 while there were light conditions of sea ice in this region in 2002—2005. Especially,the sea ice area minimum over the past years occurred in 2005. The four variable-sea ice area index,semi-melt duration,minimum of the sea ice coverage and negative cumulative temperature-are listed for the research of multi-years variations of the sea ice coverage. The sea ice area index is representative of ice condition. The correlation coefficients between the sea ice area index and the semi-melt duration,sea ice area minimum and the negative cumulative temperature are -0.9024,0.9098 and -0.7424,respectively. The sea surface southerly has strengthened in the East Siberian Sea since 2000,which is in favor of the sea ice and warm air moving northwards,resulting in sea ice area decreasing. The river discharge to the East Siberian Sea increased on the whole in 1997—2005,which had negative correlation with sea ice condition.