Trends of ice breakup date in south-central Ontario

Abstract

Large-scale ice phenology studies have revealed overall patterns of later freeze, earlier breakup, and shorter duration of ice in the Northern Hemisphere. However, there have been few studies regarding the trends, including their spatial patterns, in ice phenology for individual waterbodies on a local or small regional scale, although the coherence of ice phenology has been shown to decline rapidly in the first few hundred kilometers. In this study, we extracted trends, analyzed affecting factors, and investigated relevant spatial patterns for ice breakup date time series at 10 locations with record length ≥90 years in south-central Ontario, Canada. Wavelet methods, including the multiresolution analysis (MRA) method for nonlinear trend extraction and the wavelet coherence (WTC) method for identifying the teleconnections between large-scale climate modes and ice breakup date, are proved to be effective in ice phenology analysis. Using MRA method, the overall trend of ice breakup date time series (1905-1991) varied from earlier ice breakup to later ice breakup, then to earlier breakup again from south to north in south-central Ontario. Ice breakup date is closely correlated with air temperature during certain winter/spring months, as well as the last day with snow on the ground and number of snow-on-ground days. The influences of solar activity and Pacific North American on ice breakup were comparatively uniform across south-central Ontario, while those of El Niño-Southern Oscillation, North Atlantic Oscillation, and Arctic Oscillation on ice phenology changed with distance of 50-100 km in the north-south direction.