Variability and Conjugacy of Ice Conditions in the System of East Arctic Seas (the Laptev, East Siberian, and Chukchi Seas)

V. V. Plotnikov and V. I. Pustoshnova

The analysis of the long-term variability and spatiotemporal conjugacy of formation processes of ice conditions in the water areas of the Laptev, East Siberian, and Chukchi seas is carried out on the basis of the available data on the ice cover conditions in the above seas. On the whole, the type of relationships between the ice processes in the system of East Arctic seas indicates the existence of certain mechanisms generating the wave processes in the climatic system of the Arctic Basin manifested in the phase opposition in the development of ice conditions on the western and eastern peripheries of the basin under consideration. The statistical analysis of series of the ice coverage of water areas under consideration demonstrated that the existence of the long-term trend of this characteristic in some seas has its spatiotemporal features: the probability of the trend existence increases from west to east (from the Laptev Sea to the Chukchi Sea) and the trends are of opposite signs.