The effect of surface heat fluxes on interannual variability in the spring onset of snow melt in the central Arctic Ocean

The timing of spring snow melt onset (SMO) on Arctic sea ice strongly affects the heat accumulation in snow and ice during the melt season. SMO itself is controlled by surface heat fluxes. Satellite passive microwave (SSM/I) observations show that the apparent melt onset (MO) varies a lot interannually and even over 50–100 km distances. The MO record appeared to be a complex blend of SMO on top of sea ice and opening of leads and polynyas due to divergent sea ice drift. We extracted SMO out of the original MO record using sea ice concentration data. Applying ERA Interim reanalysis, we evaluated the portion of SMO variance explained by radiative and turbulent surface heat fluxes in the period of 1989–2008. The anomaly of the surface net heat flux 1–7 days prior to SMO explained up to 65% of the interannual variance in SMO in the central Arctic. The main term of the net flux was the downward longwave radiation, which explained up to 90% of SMO variance within the western central Arctic. The role of the latent and sensible heat fluxes in earlier/later SMO was not to bring more/less heat to the surface but to reduce/enhance the surface heat loss. Solar radiation was not an important factor alone, but together with other fluxes improved the explained variance of SMO. Local 20-year SMO trends averaged over the central Arctic Ocean are toward earlier melt by 9 days per decade.