Master Thesis Defense by Yu Long

Title: Exploring a Possible Dynamic Interplay of Barents-Kara Sea Ice Loss and ENSO

Abstract:
This project intends to verify the result of Heo et al. (2022)’s paper that reduced sea ice concentration in the Barents-Kara (B-K) sea region can lead to longer El Niño– Southern Oscillation (ENSO) period with the historical and SSP585 data from EC-Earth 3 (EC-Earth, n.d.). The verifying process follows two questions: whether realizations with lower sea ice concentration or sea ice concentration anomaly have longer periods compared to realizations with higher values, and whether the variation in the period with time for each realization itself is related to sea ice. The phenomenon where B-K sea ice reduces and the ENSO period becomes longer in Heo et al. (2022)’s paper can be observed in some cases. But there is no clear evidence indicating that the reduction of B-K sea ice causes the longer ENSO period.

Supervisor: Jens Hesselbjerg Christensen
Censor: Martin Drews (DTU)