Arctic sea ice as an element of the global climate system

In addition to the atmosphere, the global climatic system encompasses the global ocean and its sea ice cover as well as features on land that include glaciers, permafrost, rivers, and lakes. These system components continuously interact with each other. A number of studies identify patterns of such interaction, including Formation and Dynamics of Modern Climate of the Arctic regions (Alekseev et al., 2004), which provides recent qualitative patterns of polar-process interaction in the global climatic system. Its contributing authors stress that the “Arctic is quite a sensitive part of the global climatic system” (p. 4).