Specific Relationship between the Surface Air Temperature and the Area of the Terra Nova Bay Polynya, Antarctica

Antarctic polynyas play an important role in regional atmosphere-ice-ocean interactions and are considered to help generate the global deep ocean conveyer belt. Polynyas therefore have a potential impact on the Earth's climate in terms of the production of sea ice and high-salinity shelf water. In this study, we investigated the relationship between the area of the Terra Nova Bay polynya and the air temperature as well as the eastward and northward wind based on the ERA5 and ERA-Interim reanalysis datasets and observations from automatic weather stations during the polar night. We examined the correlation between each factor and the polynya area under different temperature conditions. Previous studies have focused more on the effect of winds on the polynya, but the relationship between air temperature and the polynya area has not been fully investigated. Our study shows, eliminating the influence of winds, lower air temperature has a stronger positive correlation with the polynya area. The results show that the relationship between the polynya area and air temperature is more likely to be interactively influenced. As temperature drops, the relationship of the polynya area with air temperature becomes closer with increasing correlation coefficients. In the low temperature conditions, the correlation coefficients of the polynya area with air temperature are above 0.5, larger than that with the wind speed.