Variations of oxygen-18 in West Siberian precipitation during the last 50 years

• Published in: Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics
• Main Authors: Butzin, M., Werner, M., Masson-Delmotte, Valérie, Risi, C., Frankenberg, C., Gribanov, K., Jouzel, Jean, Zakharov, V.I.
• Other Authors: Alfred-Wegener-Institut, Helmholtz-Zentrum für Polar- und Meeresforschung (AWI), Climate and Environmental Physics Laboratory Russia, Ural Federal University Ekaterinburg (UrFU), Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement Gif-sur-Yvette (LSCE), Institut national des sciences de l'Univers (INSU - CNRS)-Université Paris-Saclay-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives (CEA)-Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (UVSQ), Glaces et Continents, Climats et Isotopes Stables (GLACCIOS), Institut national des sciences de l'Univers (INSU - CNRS)-Université Paris-Saclay-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives (CEA)-Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (UVSQ)-Institut national des sciences de l'Univers (INSU - CNRS)-Université Paris-Saclay-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives (CEA)-Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (UVSQ), Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique (UMR 8539) (LMD), Département des Géosciences - ENS Paris, École normale supérieure - Paris (ENS Paris), Université Paris sciences et lettres (PSL)-Université Paris sciences et lettres (PSL)-École normale supérieure - Paris (ENS Paris), Université Paris sciences et lettres (PSL)-Université Paris sciences et lettres (PSL)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-École des Ponts ParisTech (ENPC)-École polytechnique (X)-Institut national des sciences de l'Univers (INSU - CNRS)-Université Pierre et Marie Curie - Paris 6 (UPMC), Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), NASA-California Institute of Technology (CALTECH)
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: HAL CCSD 2014
• Subjects: [SDU.STU.CL]Sciences of the Universe [physics]/Earth Sciences/Climatology; North Atlantic; North Atlantic oscillation; Siberia
• Online Access: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01088891; https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01088891/document; https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01088891/file/acp-14-5853-2014.pdf; https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-14-5853-2014

International audience Global warming is associated with large increases in surface air temperature in Siberia. Here, we apply the isotope-enabled atmospheric general circulation model ECHAM5-wiso to explore the potential of water isotope measurements at a recently opened monitoring station in Kourovka (57.04° N, 59.55° E) in order to successfully trace climate change in western Siberia. Our model is constrained to atmospheric reanalysis fields for the period 1957-2013 to facilitate the comparison with observations of dD in total column water vapour from the GOSAT satellite, and with precipitation d18O measurements from 15 Russian stations of the Global Network of Isotopes in Precipitation. The model captures the observed Russian climate within reasonable error margins, and displays the observed isotopic gradients associated with increasing continentality and decreasing meridional temperatures. The model also reproduces the observed seasonal cycle of d18O, which parallels the seasonal cycle of temperature and ranges from -25 ‰ in winter to 5 ‰ in summer. Investigating West Siberian climate and precipitation d18O variability during the last 50 years, we find long-term increasing trends in temperature and d18O, while precipitation trends are uncertain. During the last 50 years, winter temperatures have increased by 1.7 °C. The simulated long-term increase of precipitation d18O is at the detection limit (<1 ‰ per 50 years) but significant. West Siberian climate is characterized by strong interannual variability, which in winter is strongly related to the North Atlantic Oscillation. In winter, regional temperature is the predominant factor controlling d18O variations on interannual to decadal timescales with a slope of about 0.5 ‰ °C-1. In summer, the interannual variability of d18O can be attributed to short-term, regional-scale processes such as evaporation and convective precipitation. This finding suggests that precipitation d18O has the potential to reveal hydrometeorological regime shifts in western ...