L.: Atmospheric CO2 balance: The role of arctic sea ice, Geophys

[1] Climatic changes in the Northern Hemisphere have led to remarkable environmental changes in the Arctic Ocean, including significant shrinking of sea-ice cover in summer, increased time between sea-ice break-up and freeze-up, and Arctic surface water freshening and warming associated with melting sea-ice, thawing permafrost, and increased runoff [Carmack, 2000;Morison et al., 2000; Semiletov et al., 2000; Serreze et al., 2000]. These changes are commonly attributed to the greenhouse effect resulting from increased carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration. The greenhouse effect should be most pronounced in the Arctic where the largest air CO2 concentrations and winter-summer variations in the world for a clean background environment were detected [Conway et al., 1994; Climate Monitoring and Diagnostics Laboratory Data Archive