Abstract
Arctic sea ice is a key component of the Arctic hydrologic cycle. This
cycle is connected to land and ocean temperature variations and Arctic
snow cover variations, spatially and temporally. Arctic temperature
variations from historical observations shows an early 20th century
increase (i.e. warming), followed by a period of Arctic temperature
decrease (i.e. cooling) since the 1940s, which was followed by another
period of Arctic temperature increase since the 1970s that continues
into the two decades of the 21st century. Evidence has been accumulating
that Arctic sea ice extent can experience multi-decadal to centennial
time scale variations as it is a component of the Arctic Geohydrological
System. We investigate the multi-satellite and sensor daily values of
area extent of Arctic sea ice since SMMR on Nimbus 7 (1978) to AMSR2 on
GCOM-W1 (2019). From the daily time series we use the first year-cycle
as a wave-pattern to compare to all subsequent years-cycles, currently
to 30 June 2019, and constitute a derivative time series. In this time
series we find the emergence of a multi-decadal cycle, showing a
relative minimum during the period of 2007 to 2014, and subsequently
rising. This may be related to an 80-year cycle (hypothesis). The
Earth’s weather system is principally driven the solar radiation and its
variations. If the multi-decadal cycle in Arctic sea ice area extent
that we interpret continues, it may be linked physically to the
Wolf-Gleissberg cycle, a factor in the variations of terrestrial
cosmogenic isotopes, ocean sediment layering and glacial varves, ENSO
and Aurora. Our hypothesis and results give more evidence that the
multi-decadal variation of Arctic sea ice area extent is controlled
natural physical processes of the Sun-Earth system.