Drastic Intensification of the Super Arctic Storm during 5–10 August 2012

Synoptic storms play an important contributing role in the rapidly changing Arctic climate system. In this study, we investigated a super Arctic storm with the minimum sea level pressure of 964hPa over the ice edge. The supper storm induced wide spread high wind and contributed to the sea ice change in Chukchi/Beaufort Seas. By using the ERA-INTERIM reanalysis and Weather Research and Forecast (WRF) model, the evolution of the storm as well as the surface wind and sea ice are analyzed. Our result suggests that a strong baroclinic zone at the ice edge by differential heating among land, sea and ice surface, and thus contribute to the storm rapid intensification. More than 15% of the surface wind associated with the storm exceed 12m/s. The prevailing strong westerly wind played a leading role in transporting sea ice away from Chukchi/Beaufort sea, and favored the sea ice cover decrease.