| Summary: | The past decades have witnessed a rapid loss of the Arctic sea ice and a significant lengthening of the melt season. The years with the lowest summertime sea ice minimum were found to be accompanied by the latest freeze-up onset on record. Here, a synthetic approach is taken to examine the connections between sea ice melt timing and summer sea ice evolution from the remote sensing perspective. A 40-year (1979–2018) satellite-based time-series analysis shows that the date of autumn sea ice freeze-up is significantly correlated with the sea ice extent in early summer (r = −0.90, <i>p</i> < 0.01), while the spring melt onset is not a promising predictor of summer sea ice evolution. The delay in Arctic sea ice freeze-up (0.61 days year<sup>−1</sup>) in the Arctic was accompanied by a decline in surface albedo (absolute change of −0.13% year<sup>−1</sup>), an increase in net short-wave radiation (0.21 W m<sup>−2</sup> year<sup>−1</sup>), and an increase in skin temperature (0.08 °C year<sup>−1</sup>) in summer. Sea ice loss would be the key reason for the delay in autumn freeze-up, especially in the Laptev, East-Siberian, Chukchi and Beaufort Seas, where sea ice has significantly declined throughout the summer, and strong correlations were found between the freeze-up onset and the solar radiation budget since early summer. This study highlights a connection between the summer sea ice melting and the autumn refreezing process through the ice-albedo feedback based on multisource satellite-based observations.
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