Impacts of ocean albedo alteration on Arctic sea ice restoration and Northern Hemisphere climate

• Published in: Environmental Research Letters
• Main Authors: Cvijanovic, Ivana, Caldeira, Ken, MacMartin, Douglas G.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: IOP Publishing 2015
• Subjects: Arctic sea ice restoration; ocean albedo alteration; atmospheric impacts; Arctic; Arctic Ocean; Pacific; albedo; Global warming; Sea ice
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/10/4/044020

The Arctic Ocean is expected to transition into a seasonally ice-free state by mid-century, enhancing Arctic warming and leading to substantial ecological and socio-economic challenges across the Arctic region. It has been proposed that artificially increasing high latitude ocean albedo could restore sea ice, but the climate impacts of such a strategy have not been previously explored. Motivated by this, we investigate the impacts of idealized high latitude ocean albedo changes on Arctic sea ice restoration and climate. In our simulated 4xCO_2 climate, imposing surface albedo alterations over the Arctic Ocean leads to partial sea ice recovery and a modest reduction in Arctic warming. With the most extreme ocean albedo changes, imposed over the area 70°–90°N, September sea ice cover stabilizes at ~40% of its preindustrial value (compared to ~3% without imposed albedo modifications). This is accompanied by an annual mean Arctic surface temperature decrease of ~2 °C but no substantial global mean temperature decrease. Imposed albedo changes and sea ice recovery alter climate outside the Arctic region too, affecting precipitation distribution over parts of the continental United States and Northeastern Pacific. For example, following sea ice recovery, wetter and milder winter conditions are present in the Southwest United States while the East Coast experiences cooling. We conclude that although ocean albedo alteration could lead to some sea ice recovery, it does not appear to be an effective way of offsetting the overall effects of CO_2 induced global warming. © 2015 IOP Publishing Ltd. Content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 licence. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI. Received 25 January 2015; Revised 20 February 2015; Accepted for publication 26 March 2015; Published 28 April 2015. Support for this research was provided by the Fund for Innovative Climate and ...