Advances in Antarctic Sea Ice Studies in India

Abstract

Sea ice cover plays a key role in regulating the Earth’s climate by influencing the global atmospheric and oceanic circulation through various feedback mechanisms. The only viable source for the continuous monitoring of sea ice cover, its variability and characterization in the vast and remote polr region is the utilization of data acquired by orbiting satellites supported by Ship based observations. India has been contributing significantly in the development of techniques for extraction of sea ice from state-of-art Indian sensors and other international missions. Significant progress has been made towards understanding sea ice variability in the Antarctic region. Based on various studies in polar regions, it has been observed that during last few decades, Arctic is showing the consistent decline of summer sea ice cover, in contrast to Antarctica which is showing regional anomalies with positive and negative trends. Role of sea ice concentration in Indian monsoon has also been
examined. Relation of El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and sea ice extents have been studied. A climatic dataset of Sea Ice Occurrence Probability (SIOP) generated for the Antarctic region was used to compare the climatic sea ice growth and melt patterns in the eastern and the western regions of the Antarctic.This paper reviews the recent contributions mainly by Indian scientists in the studies of sea ice with inclusion of a few international scientific contributions.